Have you ever noticed some bands just feel too big to listen too indoors? There's something about their sound, or their energy, that makes you feel you need to have open space around you when play their music because the walls of the building you're sitting in are somehow or other too confining for you to appreciate what they are doing. This doesn't mean the band is necessarily loud, but they are intense.

I guess a live venue where there's lots of room would be good too, but these aren't the types of bands you want to see in a fixed seat venue, or in a confined space like a small club or bar. Someone in Toronto, Canada made the mistake of booking the Clash into a fixed seat venue on their first tour here and it resulted in the first two rows of bolted seats being ripped out of the concrete floor so the audience could dance.

The next day there were headlines about a rock and roll crowd rioting. Yet, as those of you who ever saw The Clash know their concerts were so intense that if there wasn't a way supplied for people to expend the energy generated, they would invariably find a way on their own to do so. It wasn't an example of "Punk" violence, as the sensationalist press would have had people believe, it was about what happens when people tap into real emotional energy and are denied a means of releasing it.

Now I'm not condoning vandalizing a concert venue or saying that bands should aspire to inspiring violence in their fans (anyone who knew the Clash knows that they wouldn't have condoned stupid violence either) but at the same time concert promoters really ought to know enough about the acts they book to realize who is appropriate to what venue. For example, I would never take a group like State Radio and try and contain them and their energy in a place which doesn't at the least give their audience an opportunity to flail about.

Led by former Dispatch vocalist/guitarist Chad Stokes (nee Urmston), the three person renewable energy source known as State Radio also includes Chuck Fay on bass and a drummer named Mad Dog. Following the same pattern as Dispatch, State Radio is fiercely independent and eschews any contact or contracts with major labels. Their first disc Us Against The Crown was released in 2006 and just this past February 5th they released the follow up Year Of The Crow.