Mikey Goralnik | Paint The Town Brown

Seeing as today is two days before the show that I'm writing about, I don't think I have to tell you that I haven't gone to this event. And here's the thing: I'm not going to. Seeing a decrepit Dan Aykroyd try to resurrect his Blues Brothers schtick that wasn't that cool in the first place isn't something I want to do while I still have all my hair and a normal height to weight ratio, and am still welcome at the sperm bank.
    While there are only a handful of activities I'd want to be doing less on a Saturday night than seeing the Blues Brothers, this may very well be the most important event that I write about all year. This show marks the official grand re-opening of Boston's very own House of Blues (HOB), the nationwide chain of concert hall/restaurants and the holder of the dubious trademarked motto "inspiration of music for the soul."
    Aside from its horribly trite trademark, people take issue with a great deal of the HOB operating model. HOB is owned and operated by the dreaded Live Nation, owners of more than 70 of the country's best venues and several of the world's highest-grossing musicians. Currently in a battle with Congress to merge with the leading ticketing business in the United States, Ticketmaster, many rightly claim that HOB is part of a greedy, profit-hungry monopoly more interested in ripping people off than putting on good shows.
    With the Boston-area return of HOB, whose flagship complex opened in Harvard Square in 1992, many fans expect to pay asinine ticketing fees and high prices at the bar, but will still attend shows. My roommates are all gearing up to stand in big, anonymous, alienating crowds to see Bloc Party, The National and Tom Jones in a faceless room, and I'm limbering up to wrestle the aggressive Cro-Magnon bouncers at The Disco Biscuits show later this month. In many ways, it objectively sucks that if we want to see our favorite bands in our home city, we're going to have to learn to negotiate HOB's pitfalls.
    Nonetheless, as a Bostonian concertgoer, I am ecstatic that HOB is coming to Lansdowne Street. Being a monopoly means having a lot of money, but HOB and Live Nation overall have a pretty impressive national record of investing their staggering profits in the production end of their venues — something which greatly benefits the consumer.
    While high prices, big, awkward crowds and 'roid-raging security personnel are part-and-parcel of the HOB empire, so too are some of the best sight lines and sound systems in the country. HOBs in places like Cleveland, Chicago and New Orleans consistently pull in rave reviews from people like me who hate supporting monopolies, who like the community of small crowds and who look forward to appropriately priced drinks at concerts.
    All of these things are important, and I wouldn't be writing a live music column if I didn't derive some pretty lofty metaphysical or phenomenological benefits from seeing shows in environments diametrically opposed to the corporate one that HOB epitomizes. Ultimately though, beyond the ethical concerns I have with supporting Live Nation and the House of Blues, as a fan of music, I want to be able to clearly see the band and I want them to sound as good as they possibly can. I haven't been to the Boston HOB yet, but based on the Cleveland, Chicago and NOLA incarnations, I'm confident that our newest venue will be able to meet these needs in ways that cozy, independent places like The Middle East can't. As long as I don't have to read their motto, color me excited.