Placebo Roxy Boston 20061108

When we decided to go see Placebo at the Roxy, we were looking a November as being a sparse wasteland with no concerts coming up. Now in retrospect we have 8 concerts in November with two concerts at the very tail end of October. This works out to 4 concerts last week, two this week and three next - hardly a wasteland.
So I admit to being only tangentially knowledgeable of Placebo and dismissive of She Wants Revenge. However I always do my musical homework and for the past two to three weeks I have been submerging myself in Placebo and she wants Revenge. So thats my excuse when I barely now any track names in the following screed.
Originally this gig had been touted as 'She Wants Revenge' headlining with Placebo as support. This was changed last week and Placebo set to close the show. Whether this was because of Boston specific murmurs or general tour experience is unclear but this show would have been a wasteland for She Wants Revenge if they had closed.
when SWR eventually came on about 8:40 they played a good fifty minutes to a loud if lukewarm audience. Coming from LA, their set reminded me of a second rate Interpol who guess what really didnt know how to use the stage and had little stage prescence.
Tee audience was largely static but did applaud and shout when songs finished. They are technically fine, I feel the songs can blur into each other with similar musical themes which dont jump out as seperate entities. Tear you apart was their closer and got at least some audience movement. As support bands go I thought they ranked somewhere between 6 and 7, decent performance decent music but not enough to warrant a myspace add or even to consider seeing them as a separate entity if they came to Boston without a pull of a Placebo headliner. But shitty emo as I had previously thought - I change my mind and applaud their efforts as solid in their genre.
Placebo came on stage, and the Placebo true fans are going to kiss my ass but I was just so surprised to see how small and pixie like Brian Molko is. They kicked off with Infra-Red, playing into Meds and kept going with many songs I knew but can't put a name to. They did play Special Needs plus many others. Brian did make a couple of political anti- war anti-government statements- WOO-HOO totally with you Brian!
So synopsis about an hour of playing less interaction than I would prefer, decent music even though some of the songs did tend to blur into each other. VERY weird audience which are not too accepting of other music. Interesting but I am probably on the fence about whether this would be a repeat occurrence.