It was a tough decision. It always is. A band in my Top 5 was coming to town and they were playing a larger venue. This particular occasion it was Death Cab for Cutie at the Nokia Theater. Before that it was Spoon at the Gibson Amphitheater, and even before that it was Weezer at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland. Next it will probably be Brand New somewhere ridiculous like the Long Beach Arena or the Tacoma Dome. I felt like a hypocritical jerk, judging my fellow concertgoers as we descended on the Nokia Theater in downtown LA. My sarcasm clearly a defense mechanism, as I remarked that the UCLA art department must be on a field trip in the area, or that the entire FIDM student body was probably in attendance. As we approached the venue my inner music snob unleashed itself upon seeing that KROQ (not Indie103) had secured the rights to set up a tent outside the show. This was somehow a travesty. How had Death Cab become a KROQ band? Who let this happen? I was a full-blown Indie-Rock version of the Incredible Hulk (see: elitist jerk), ready to tear my Harvey Danger t-shirt off in a fit of rage and scare everyone away.

Walking into the Nokia Theater was like walking into some sort of museum. It was nice. The carpet was clean. There were pictures of Beyonce Knowles and Chris Daughtry on the walls. Nothing was old or broken, drinks were expensive, and everything was sponsored. The concession stand didn't even have Pabst Blue Ribbon. Instead there was actually a place where I could go to look at the latest Nokia phones. Which could come in handy I suppose if I wanted to go phone shopping in between bands. Everything seemed sterile; not a cloud of cigarette smoke in sight. As we sat through Rogue Wave's opening set I obsessed, as I am wont to do. I obsessed about the KROQ tent some more. I obsessed about what song Death Cab should open with (which is actually a whole different story). Mostly though I obsessed about why pervasive corporate sponsorship at concerts makes me so angry. I should explain here that I am actually a firm believer in capitalism. I do not read Adbusters. I spend 5 days a week working for "The Man" and I am totally OK with that. It's not that I don't want my favorite bands to become successful or make money, because I do. It's not even that I don't like to share my favorite bands with that many other people (although screaming 16 year olds sitting next to me didn't help). It's the fact that I already know going into this show that it is destined to be the third best Death Cab show I have seen. Out of three. It couldn't be as good as when they played with Nada Surf and northwest pre-teen sensations Smoosh at the Showbox in Seattle in November of 2003. Nor could it stand up next to Death Cab, Ben Kweller and Pedro the Lion at the same venue in 2004. Even though I spent most of that first show dizzy with a nicotine buzz purely from inhaling the curtain of secondhand smoke hanging in the air (true story) it was better. Even though I spent the duration of the song "Champagne From a Paper Cup" in the bathroom ready to barf up the hamburgers I got from Dick's before the show, it was better. It was better if only because I walked away having felt something. Even if that something was nausea, that was better than the disconnected feeling I got from being 400 feet from the stage, confined by seats I never wanted to sit in. As Mr. Gibbard and friends marched their way through what was in retrospect a well-crafted set list, the internal debate raged. How much of a hypocritical jerk was I really being?

I thought back to that night at the Showbox in 2003 with my head hung over the toilet, spewing cheap hamburger and chocolate milkshake. I thought back to the soundtrack to that experience and finally it made sense. Death Cab didn't play Champagne From a Paper Cup this time around, and I'm glad they didn't. This concert at the Nokia Theater was not champagne from a paper cup. It was champagne from a crystal glass. Music is a medium of the heart. It is about authenticity, about making people feel, not think or do. It is not a formula (touché, Rivers Cuomo!) nor does it function as effectively on a balance sheet as it does in my soul cavity. I felt in that moment that every company sponsoring this event was trying to rape my feelings. I still enjoyed the show after that, but it was like any relationship that lacks emotional involvement. Ben's sentiments actually meant less to me when presented within that context of corporate sponsorship, even if that meant I was drinking them from a nicer glass. As far as I was concerned, Nokia could have my thoughts, they can even have a chunk of my wallet, but my feelings want a restraining order.

Fittingly, and perhaps on purpose, the third song of the set was "Why You'd Want to Live Here" which is a biting commentary about the (sometimes) shallow and toxic nature of the city of Los Angeles. I like to think that Ben was reminding me of what he really thought of the city I live in as well as the building in which we encountered each other that night. The final song of the 5-song encore was exactly what it should have been: the 8-minute audio orgasm Transatlanticism. In this song Ben told me what I wanted to hear, "I need you so much closer". Maybe next time Ben, maybe next time. As for the Nokia Theater, it was beautiful, but it didn't mean a thing to me.