Friday night The Pageant was near capacity for the USO of MO, Inc. Red Rock and Blue benefit concert presented by The Point featuring Blue October and New Dialogue.

The first time I heard Blue October was back in 2000 when a now defunct
radio station 93x played ‘James’ off their second album ‘Consent to Treatment’. I picked up a copy soon after and have been following the band ever since.

When the band took the stage the crowd erupted with applause.
Bathed in dark blue lights and backlit with white spotlights they kicked things off with ‘Coal Makes Diamonds’ off 2016s ‘Home’. The night mostly consisted of newer songs but around midway into the set Justin Furstenfeld said they were going to play some older stuff that way people couldn’t say that they don’t play their older stuff anymore, but it was going to be stripped down. The two stripped down songs were ‘The Quiet Mind’ and ‘Ugly Side’ off of their third album ‘History for Sale’. These two songs were not the oldest songs of the night though, that would have been ‘James’.
The song really took me back to when I had first discovered the band and brought back memories of the first time seeing them at Mississippi Nights on the ‘Foiled’ tour back in 2006.

During ‘I Want It’ Justin waded into the crowd singing and climbed up on a ledge and walked around on it like a makeshift stage shaking hands as he went by. The band closed the main set with ‘Hate Me’ and then came back for a four song encore ending it all with ‘I Hope Your Happy’.