Wil Francis and Angel Ibarra of Aiden get intimate with the crowd in Joplin.

The venue, coupled with the city and the weeknight scheduling, made for an embarassingly small crowd.  The opening acts–Civet, God or Julie, and a local opener–were largely forgettable.  What followed was not.

The prologue to the band’s entry, complete with voice-over from “The Devil’s Advocate,” made the situation that much more awkward, especially when frontman Wil Francis burst onstage to bring the set to life and was met with muffled yet enthusiastic cheers from the single row lining the stage.  Everyone else who had come were hanging out in the back of the cavernous venue near the juice bar (no alcoholic beverages–or swearing, for that matter–allowed here!).  Through the opening song, the disparity was obvious: there simply weren’t enough bodies in front to match the energy coming from the stage.

The band were clearly uncomfortable, and the show was in quick need of salvation (no, not that kind).

So Wil invited the entire audience onto the stage with the band.

Hot Topic-clad teens quickly abandoned their mothers and fell over themselves to scamper onstage, and everyone jockeyed for position in the ragtag semicircle that surrounded the band like kids gawking at a schoolyard fight.  Not too far from the truth, as more than one person had to duck Nick Wiggins’ bass, and Wil was hardly gentle with his moshing.

With everyone literally in the band’s face, their aggression finally came through, and the sweaty, packed, rough, high-energy vibe that is typical of an Aiden show was suddenly there.  One never knows what to expect from Aiden–especially their frontman–and they did not disappoint.  Instrumental acrobatics, obscene gestures, and even a spitwad or two kept the audience slightly off-balance, which is just the way the now-four-piece band likes it.

The disapproving looks from the juice bar became inconsequential as Aiden forgot self-censorship and tore through their set, including their excellent cover of the Misfits’ “Die, Die My Darling.”  The Foundry certainly had never seen the likes of Aiden within its walls before (and probably learned its lesson for future reference).  The small crowd left exhausted, satisfied, and more than a little sore–a feeling more befitting a packed underground punk venue than a cavernous Christian club.

The sound onstage was naturally not what it would be from the audience’s usual perspective, but with so much physically happening it wasn’t as noticeable.  It seems the band is still adjusting to the loss of their second guitarist, and with Wil taking on rhythm guitar duties, the richness of the band’s sound is diminished, as is Wil’s usual in-your-face connection with the audience.  Again, though, the unique situation made that less of an issue, as no member of the onstage audience was more than a few feet from the band.

After the show, I was told that the band is writing for their next album, which will be more of the “old Aiden” aggressive sound, but with the band’s more mature lyrical themes.  Writing as a four-piece will also certainly give the band a leaner sound.  The guys in Aiden are evolving at a blistering pace, and their prolific music output reflects that.

Aiden haven’t lost the scrappy nonconformist attitude that got them started, but it has been tempered by the experience and wisdom gained from a pressure cooker that spawned four albums in as many years–with non-stop touring in between.  That night in Joplin, they took a situation that was wrong for them and their audience in every way and turned it into a memorable experience for all concerned.

Click the jump for a mini-gallery of the very intimate Aiden performance.

Kill Hannah Bus Fire Video

While speeding along on a lovely fall Swiss morning, en route to gay Paree for the next show of the Hope for the Hopeless Tour, something went terribly wrong.  Minutes later, everyone on the double-decker tour bus was on the side of the road, neither fully dressed nor awake, watching all their personal possessions go down in flames.  Anyone who has followed the fortunes of Kill Hannah for any amount of time will have one of two reactions:  Well, it’s about par for the course… or, Why, on top of everything else they’ve had to go through, now this?

Why, indeed?  It’s only natural to ask that question when something goes wrong.  Why me, why them, why now?

I’ve come to believe there is no answer to that question.  Some things just are–without reason–and tragedy is one of them.  Nobody points the fickle finger of fate at you and declares it time to pay your dues.  I think life is one cascading domino effect after another, with causes and effects that at any one particular moment are impossible to discern.  Sure, the things that go wrong have very specific reasons and causes, though they may have nothing to do with us individually.  There is a definite cause of Kill Hannah’s bus fire.  Did they have anything to do with it personally?  Likely not.  Even if so, the tragic events aren’t a referendum on their qualities as people, the way they live their lives, their choice of tour bus company, etc.

Nobody ever deserves tragedy.  Nobody.  Can people bring tragic events upon themselves?  Of course.  Can those tragic consequences sometimes give others a sense of gratification when it feels like poetic justice for wrongs committed?  Of course.  But in the end, events themselves are just that: events.  They bear no quality of “right” or “wrong,” “deserved” or “undeserved.”  They just are.

Toni Morrison said, “The purpose of evil is to overcome it.”  The way a person reacts when tragedy befalls them speaks far more to their character than the nature of the tragedy itself.  Nobody can escape bad things.  However, not everyone can learn from those things and move past them a changed and better person.  There, if anything, is the purpose of suffering through tragedy.

Thankfully, the boys in Kill Hannah (along with the other bands and people on the bus) escaped the fire unscathed.  You can check out Kill Hannah’s myspace profile to see the damage to the bus, and see them standing stocking-footed and dazed while the bus burns, then sifting through what’s left to try to salvage what they can.  It takes a certain amount of bravery to put your vulnerability and shock out there for the world to share with you, and the fact that the guys have tried to laugh about this as best they can, then get back on the road to finish their tour as soon as possible speaks volumes about them.  They are hardworking, earnest, creative, driven men who are the epitome of Nietzsche’s declaration, “That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.”