The Rentals Returned

I'm now home from watching the Rentals perform. The first few songs were pretty good, nice and upbeat. The middle was boring. The end of the regular set was nearly perfect. The last three songs were Keep Trying, I Just Threw Out the Love of my Dreams, and Waiting. Friends of P, introduced with Walk on the Wild Side, was the encore. In all honestly, the show could have been completely horrible all around, but seeing Rachel Haden sing love of my dreams made it worth the cover. The biggest problem with the show is that it was on the outside stage at Emo's. For those who are unaware, this means that you get all of the summer night heat, but none of the summer night breeze. I'm clearly getting old because I had to step into the fully open air portion of the club. The excitement of the night came during the encore when some guy walked past me and another guy yelled 'get out of here' to the first guy. The first guy kept walking so the second guy, an Emo's employee, grabbed the first guy's throat and tried to subdue him. That wasn't working, so a second guy jumped in to escort the guy, or rather to wrestle the guy/choke the guy/generally beat the guy who was flailing all the while. Again, this was maybe two feet away from me and I was the closest non-combatant to the action. The guy on the receiving end of the beating's friends eventually arrived and broke everything up and the skirmish ended with the guy getting escorted towards the door by his friends while he flipped off and cussed out the much larger bouncer-types who had previously been choking him and holding him on the floor. Beautiful.