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Bleach

Bleach Ain’t Cheap in Oklahoma.

 

When: Aug. 18

Where: The Edge Building, Grace Fellowship Church, Tulsa, OK

           Bleach always puts on a good show. That's why I have no less than three Bleach shirts- they blow me away every time. This time was no exception. Due to my own stupidity, I missed the opener bands, and even the first couple songs of Bleach's set- but thankfully, that wasn’t a problem, as they played for over an hour.
          The small yet dedicated crowd (how many innocent bystanders are you going to get in a Wednesday night show?) of about 100-150 was in full blast. The boys in Bleach responded by blasting through their usuals, such as "Get Up", "December", and "Knocked Out" with amazing energy and presence. The highlights of the show were many, but the peaks were definitely "Jaded Now", "We are Tomorrow", and the encore.

            "Jaded Now" is Bleach's epic song- it builds from a simplistic, basic guitar line by adding in more and more elements until the climactic finale where Dave Baysinger screams out “I'm not Scared!” to which the band unleashes a torrent of anguished sound that can only be described as outpour. It was absolutely stunning live, as Dave's single scream took on a whole new passion and the band seemed to feed off of it. That's the definition of a good live band.

            Their last 'official' song in the set was the ubiquitous "We Are Tomorrow". I've seen them four times, and three out of the four times they've done this song. It's one of the top crowd-rousing anthems I know of- and it made the crowd go nuts. A mosh started in here, and the security broke it up- but that's how passionate everyone was. The song was electric, from start to finish. Dave Baysinger crowdsurfed. While singing.

But they couldn't go away like that. No- they had to come back. The encore was three songs long, and worth every second. They played a song about Oklahoma (if I had lived here longer, I would probably know where it's from), to which the crowd clapped along and even sang a bit. I thought it was a great kudos to Oklahoma that Bleach likes it here so much as to learn a song about us. Good job, Oklahoma scene. The second song was "Baseline"- the crowd went berserk again. We didn't know what they were going to do for the last Bleach song ever performed in Oklahoma, but we knew it had to be big.

            So they went for the rarely played "Super Good Feeling". This is quite possibly my favorite Bleach song, and I've never heard them play it live- neither had anyone else in the audience. No better way to end it, as the crowd attested to with the noise levels. Even better, all throughout the encore, Baysinger was taking phones from people in the audience, putting them right up next to the microphone, and singing into both at once- I think he did this for 4 or 5 cell-phones. How awesome is that?!?

            Suffice to say, Bleach blew everyone away. I can't believe Bleach is gone- it makes me genuinely depressed. There are rumors that they'll stick around as an album-only no-tour band....I hope those pull through right, and we can get some new Bleach music out of it. God Bless Bleach.

-Stephen Carradini