Earlier this week, I went to see 54-40 play. They were pretty good!

It was at kind of an annoying venue, a pretty long ways outside of the city so an expensive fare if you are not inclined to drive. But my bigger pet peeve is that it was an assigned-seating sort of deal, but it was not like a proper theatre-seating deal.

I think of a rock show with assigned seating as kind of an old-fogey kind of concert, which I guess if I'm going to see 54-40 in 2026, it's kind of hard to argue otherwise.¹
Rock shows should have a general admission floor. If you're in an arena or whatever, then some assigned seating in the back or balconies, sure. Reserve some seating for accessibility needs, etc. But like, everyone in the entire venue sitting down? If it's not some intimate acoustic deal, then pfft.

Here's the thing. People stand. It's a rock show! Of course people want to stand or dance or whatever.

But it's assigned seating! If the person in front of you is super tall or super wide, then too bad! In a proper theatre, this isn't so much of a problem because of the incline, but at this venue, blah.

What's worse is that, like, nobody else was standing up. It was just three or four of them. At least if like, the whole room stands you can kind of lean or whatever. Instead, now we have to stand up and contribute to the problem ourselves.

A few days later, by coincidence, I'm back at the same venue to see a different band. This time, everyone stands up. This, I can live with. But then, after a while, a bunch of people sit back down. Got tired, I guess. Like I said, old-fogey concert.

Eventually, we are pretty much the only ones left standing. I sneak a glance, the people behind me, also standing. Shrug.

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1. 54-40 are a classic "Canadiana" band, is what I would usually say. A great band of the 80s and 90s benefitting from cancon laws and the actual existence of Much Music and the relevance of radio. Kind of like The Tragically Hip², they flirted with success in the US but I don't think it ever clicked, though Hootie and the Blowfish covered that one song and that probably got them some solid royalties (just compare the view counts). ↩

2. Hot Canadiana take: while Gord Downie probably wrote better lyrics, for me, track for track, the four-album 54-40 run from Dear Dear to Since When is better than any given similar stretch of time in The Tragically Hip discography³. ↩

3. Not that I'm a petty iconoclast; I'm not out here trying to claim that the Hip don't rule. Just, more of singles band for me. ↩