No Doubt @ Lakewood

Lakewood Amphitheatre, Atlanta's main outdoor concert venue, used to be pretty much the only place I ever saw shows. In fact, my first concert ever (Elton John) was there (back in 8th grade or so). After that, I've seen everything from big festivals like Ozzfest (4x) and a local radio festival called Big Day Out, to 311, Incubus, Live, and Blink-182. Well, fast-forward five years since my last show there, and I was starting to miss it.

Now, although I'm not a huge No Doubt fan, when I found out their performance at Lakewood with Paramore (one of my big guilty pleasure bands) and The Sounds (a recent band I've kinda gotten into) only cost $15 on Ticketmaster for lawn seats (my favorite place in the venue anyway), I was pretty set on going. So, Friday night Candace and I headed down there via MARTA, catching the whole show. Unfortunately, I'm disappointed to report that both The Sounds and Paramore weren't really good enough to warrant going, despite my interest in both of them. Paramore was neither here nor there really, but The Sounds actually played a set featuring almost entirely bland songs off the albums I don't have.

Fortunately though, No Doubt kicked ass! Their stage setup was really neat, their onstage video was great, they really got into the show and even interacted with the crowd in front of them, and they played a really solid set featuring material spread evenly from their three mainstream albums. Highlights most certainly include "Just A Girl" (what a great riff!), "Sunday Morning" (perhaps my favorite No Doubt song, and the closer for the evening), "Hella Good" (fun despite being off their more-pop-than-rock album), and the particularly poignant "Running" (especially when combined with old home-video footage of the band while they were coming up).

So, despite a bland set of openers, No Doubt alone was well worth the ticket. Glad I went!