Nickelback and Daughtry ‘feed the machine’ at SPAC
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » I largely find the saying “not made for critics but for the fans,” or any variation on that, to be mildly nauseating, especially in terms of film. If a movie gets universally bad reviews, it’s probably because, well, it’s a bad movie. Music, for better or worse, tends to be different. Music is a far more relative art form than film; if it makes you feel a certain way, then who’s to say it’s bad? Sure, no music is critique-proof, but music is about far more than what’s just on the surface.
I say all of this because I was prepared to mercilessly tear apart the Nickelback concert at Saratoga Performing Arts Center on Monday, part of their “Feed the Machine” tour with the American Idol alum-led Daughtry. Nickelback is a band that got famous off of melodramatic soft rock songs who always desperately wanted to be a hard rock band. Songs like “If Everyone Cared” echo this, which has a decent message but is just as eye-rollingly simplistic about the world’s social issues as something like Macklemore’s “Same Love.” It’s “disguised rock,” and I bought it at a young age but have since grown out of it.
But something happened at SPAC Monday night that changed my perspective, just a tad (Nickelback is still a pretty bad band, but even I can admit that I knew nearly every song they performed, and so would most people, probably). I spoke with people who got through tough times by listening to Nickelback, from depression to domestic violence. Granted, I also spoke to someone who said that “Nickelback is the kind of music you’d find at a strip club,” but that’s besides the point. The point is, as bad as Nickelback may be, it’s all relative to an extent; for some, they mean the world.
To the band’s credit, they seem to have accepted their place in the music world; lead singer Chad Kroeger summed it up perfectly as he was slinging back his fourth drink of Jagermeister up on stage: like Jagermeister, you either love Nickelback or you hate them, there’s no in between, he said. The crowd at SPAC loved when he routinely took shots on stage and screamed “Cheers” to the audience. But for me, it represented everything that Nickelback has become, or always were: trying desperately to be cool in a world that has, for the most-part, dismissed them. I wish I was slamming back Jagermeister to get through the concert.
Before Nickelback even came on stage, though, their opening acts, Shaman’s Harvest and Daughtry, performed. Shaman’s Harvest were scheduled for 6 p.m. and boy, did they not disappoint on that front. Too bad nobody I talked to knew who they were; a quick Google search told me they’ve been around since 1996 and have SIX ALBUMS, apparently. The lead singer had a speaking voice that sounded like a bad interpretation of an even worse interpretation of a bad country singer, even though they were supposedly a rock band.
During Harvest’s performance, the lead singer would routinely swear, and I heard a woman yell out “watch your mouth, there’s kids here!” There’s something wrong with this sentiment, no matter how goodwilled it may be: if a child is at a Nickelback concert, they have far worse things to worry about than bad language, like going home with a splitting headache or growing up with poor taste in music.
Then came Daughtry, who performed a bevy of their hits as well as a new song called “Backbone” and a cover of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters,” which seems a tad out of Daughtry’s league, but the crowd seemed into it. Again, it’s all relative.
But the majority of the night was spent with Nickelback. The stage looked like a machine of some kind (Nickelback has never been known for their subtly). They performed their classic hits, a new song off their new album by the same name as the tour and even brought a quartet of fans up on stage to sing “Rockstar.” The crowd went nuts the entire time. I can acknowledge that some people may find their music still meaningful and that’s fine. But lets just say that if yesterday was “my last day,” I would have preferred to be “far away” from a Nickelback concert.