My latest article

I’m still upset about it.

I reviewed Cold­play, April 21, and in the process slagged the open­ing act. That’s ok; if I didn’t like ‘em, I didn’t like ‘em.

The trou­ble is, I got the wrong act. The band I thought was The Pierces was actu­ally Metron­omy. Con­se­quently, The Pierces are upset, I’m upset that The Pierces are upset and I’m sur­prised by how much this blun­der has upset me.

In all the years of review­ing, I’ve never made this mis­take and, the way I nor­mally work, never thought I would. If I wanted to ratio­nal­ize this, I’d say it was bound to hap­pen. When it did, I lost sleep and spent a long time won­der­ing how I could rec­tify the situation.

I have excuses pre­pared. First, I spent all my time get­ting closer to Cold­play at the expense of the open­ing acts. I’d seen Cold­play twice before but never felt  either review cap­tured the point the band was at. I lis­tened to the cur­rent album inces­santly, made notes, read what I could. The sub­se­quent review of the April 21 show had me feel­ing good; per­haps I’d finally given Cold­play  its due. Then, the mis­take was pointed out. I felt ter­ri­ble, espe­cially since I’d tried  so hard to pre­pare for Cold­play. In fact, I’d for­got­ten all about Metron­omy and the only rea­son I remem­bered The Pierces was that I was sent an email about the group by its publicist.

Prior to the con­cert, I’d called Rogers Arena about reserv­ing a space in the hand­i­capped area. Thus assured I had a space under my name, my friend Tommy Kuzsel and I drove to Rogers Arena. The gate keeper didn’t know any­thing about hand­i­capped park­ing, so time was con­sumed con­vinc­ing her we were allowed and had reserved a space, waited for an ele­va­tor. Then, we asked Rogers’ secu­rity about where we were assigned to park. Secu­rity didn’t know any more than the gate­keeper. We were led to Will Call and used up more time, waited for an ele­va­tor to take us up to our floor, slowly walked the 12 sec­tions to 118. By the time we reached our seats, The Pierces had been and gone. The lights went down and a band came on. Not know­ing The Pierces had played already and hav­ing com­pletely for­got­ten Metron­omy, I assumed this was The Pierces. Wrong.

It didn’t help that Metron­omy never intro­duced itself — or, if it did, I never heard such an announce­ment. The error was made and, despite the cir­cum­stances, I can’t hide from it.

It’s one of those things review­ers laugh about. There are sto­ries about review­ers cri­tiquing the open­ing act as the head­liner, oth­ers review­ing shows that never hap­pened. Poor schmuck, we think, and snig­ger. As well, such a mis­take under­mines cred­i­bil­ity in the pub­lic eye. Not to say it also erodes the reviewer’s confidence.

I might be too self-conscious. I’ve con­fessed my guilt to oth­ers who have con­cluded that this is no big deal. Yet, it is to The Pierces and it is to me.

If were to do this again, I’d rec­om­mend The Pierces and skip Metronomy.