surprised the wife and took her out to the keane show at the fox theatre in oakland on friday night for an early mother’s day present. the band hadn’t toured in a while but they came out and put on an excellent show. there were a few acoustic sets thrown in and one acoustic guitar solo by the lead singer, tom chaplin – who managed to sweat through both his t-shirt and a light windbreaker during the performance.

this was opening night on their US tour and the cool thing is that i don’t know if they were anticipating the love they got from the crowd. i was a few rows from the stage and the guys could be seen looking at each other in between songs, almost like, ‘can you believe this?’ they seemed genuinely appreciative of the crowd roaring for more. i think there would have been a second encore if the lights didn’t turn on at the venue.

also, as i mentioned to phammy that night, there’s no doubt in my mind that this would have been us if we had stuck to playing and writing music back in the lonetree days instead of giving up and playing little tikes basketball and getting normal jobs – no doubt in my mind.

an interesting tidbit from the keane wiki [wikipedia]:

After listening to Rice-Oxley’s piano playing during a weekend at Virginia Water, Surrey in 1997, Chris Martin invited him to join his newly formed band Coldplay. However, Rice-Oxley declined because he did not want to leave The Lotus Eaters, stating “I was seriously interested, but Keane were already operational and Coldplay’s keyboard player idea was dropped.”

tri had tickets for saturday night’s show in LA but hadn’t heard back yet, as of press time, what that show was like.