Concert Review: Guster in Concert: The Review

What is Guster? Well, combine ping-pong balls, party hats, two guitars, bongos, tuxedos, an improvised rocket ship and the Y2K bug... you just might come close. On Halloween Eve, when the demons were prowling the streets of Boston, a crowd gathered with Guster in the sold-out Orpheum Theater to ring in... the New Year? Let's start at the beginning.

In 1992, Guster came into being. Ryan Miller (vocals and guitar), Adam Gardner (vocals and guitar) and Brian Rosenworcel (percussion) discovered each other on the Tufts campus and formed the Boston-area band originally known as Gus. They relied--and still rely--on their reps, fans who volunteer to sell albums and spread the word about their band. Eventually, dissatisfied with the common band name "Gus," the unique band made the switch to "Guster," the band who put on one of the best performances, quite frankly, that I've ever been to.

I say "performance" because it was more than just a concert. After The Push Stars--a mellow-pop Boston-area band on the rise--opened, there was a suspect 20-minute delay, and smoke started to filter out into the audience from backstage. The crowd was getting tense, eager to see what Guster had in store. At last, the three band members, dressed in tuxedos and seated in aluminum space-age chairs, descended to the smoke filled stage to "Also Sprach Zarathustra," the theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey. As I soon learned from the band members, the audience was there to help Guster ring in the new millennium.

Okay, it sounds hokey. But it was fun. Guster immediately launched into a rocking "What You Wish For," the first song on their new album. Though Guster played primarily from the newly released Lost and Gone Forever, songs from their previous two records, the debut-album Parachute and GoldFly, also made it into their set list. It's hard to describe exactly what Guster sounds like, but at the concert they played at the full range of their abilities. Essentially, they play everything--the surreal, the real and the ingenious. Brian, the group's backbone, works the bongos with awesome speed, while Adam and Ryan harmonize on vocals and guitars. Using instruments ranging from the standard (guitars and bongos) to the bizarre (typewriters and whistling), Guster is, in a word, creative.

You may still be wondering why this concert was so great. It was not just that the band is on the verge of exploding onto the mainstream music scene, although with super-producer Steve Lillywhite of U2 and Dave Matthews fame at the helm, the trio is undoubtedly going places. It was that the audience actually got involved in the show. At the end of "Airport," a cascade of ping-pong balls descended upon the crowd. Of course, throwing the balls at the band had become somewhat of a tradition at shows (the CD version of their single ends with the sounds of a ping-pong game) ever since their coffee shop days. The band was obviously enjoying themselves and even invited several of their friends from other Boston-area bands to join them on stage. When the clock struck "midnight" at 11:00 real time, the band celebrated the "New Millennium" complete with falling balloons and a "power outage" courtesy of Y2K. But it would take far more than that to stop Guster. In a daring move, they played "Mona Lisa" completely unplugged in the hushed theater and even got half the audience to sing along with them. Guster ended the performance appropriately with the sad, uplifting "Rocket Ship" as they blasted off to their home planet in their rocket-chairs.

The show was not just a concert. It was an experience. Guster develops a real loyalty with its fan base and realizes that music is about communication and--more importantly--having fun. These guys are getting bigger every day. But catch them in concert before they get too big. I promise you won't be disappointed.