Helloooooo I am back with my very last concert post for the foreseeable future.
You’re glad and I’m glad and we’re gonna get my amateur musings out of the way now.
So, Quinn XCII last Wednesday at The Riviera Theatre!
I’ve wanted to see Quinn live for a while now (bc, yunno, Michigan), but didn’t get the chance until this tour — which in hindsight is OK because “From Michigan With Love” is a fantastic album, so I’m glad this tour was the one I FINALLY got to catch.
It’s actually a little funny. Quinn collaborates with fellow Michigander Ayokay a lot. The day before I saw Quinn in concert, I saw Nightly live… and they played their collaboration with Ayokay. Basically I NEED TO SEE AYOKAY ASAP. That’s all.
I really like Quinn’s vocals. They remind me a lot of Mike Posner (can I get a Mike/Mike collab please? Gimme Michigan’s finest, thank you) and I like that his music is pretty genre-bending. I often fall into the trap of listening to the same type of music over and over, so I like when artists infuse different styles and to help me get out of that habit and bridge the gap to other genres of music.
Quinn was really fun live. Vocalists without instruments to attend to are sometimes hit-or-miss on stage, but Quinn was really energetic. He used pretty much every inch of the stage and somehow managed to wear a full-body orange jumpsuit (with Michigan on the back!) on the 293878 degree stage for the entire set?
I thought it was really cool that one of Quinn’s openers was Ashe. The two have a collaboration, so Quinn pulled her out on stage for “Right Where You Should Be,” which was very convenient.
I kind of wish Quinn had picked a different song to end on. The encore was comprised of “Another Day in Paradise” and “Flare Guns,” which has a pretty heavy presence by Chelsea Cutler. The pre-recording of Cutler’s vocals mixed with the live performance by Quinn was a little weird, and even though I really love Cutler and this song, I would have rather seen Quinn end with something entirely his so he didn’t have to awkwardly dawdle on stage while Cutler’s vocals played.
The one thing I definitely hated about this show, though, was the crowd. I went with my friend Jake. We’re both in our late 20s, and we were on the older end of the spectrum. We encountered way too many drunk and obnoxious kids. A really obnoxious girl threatened to beat up Jake because he’s 6-feet tall and she was 5-feet tall and couldn’t see (uh, hello, I’m short too, people cannot control their height — that’s concert life for you and you just have to DEAL WITH IT) and everyone was throwing empty cups/ beer cans everywhere. It was cool to see everyone so into the performance for most of the show, sure, but at one point, Quinn played a beautiful acoustic version of his song “Panama” and I could barely hear it because everyone in the crowd was talking non-stop.
Also a lot of people in the crowd were wearing Red Wings jerseys/ Tigers hats/ Carhartt which was kinda cool, but at the same time part of me was like “oh god these terrible people are representing my beloved state of Michigan?!”
I’m getting old.
I was actually pretty glad Jake and I found a little strip of floor along the venue’s wall that we stood against for the whole show — away from the crowd. I could see most of the stage and nobody was touching me/ spilling their drinks on me. I usually don’t mind crowds at concerts but damn I’m not kidding this one was rough.
Anyway, that’s the last concert for the foreseeable future. (I know, you’re devastated, I can tell.)
