Photos and Videos: YYNot at Arcada Theater

I took a trip to meet my brother and see YYNot, a Rush cover/tribute band, at the Arcada Theater in St. Charles, IL, just west of Chicago. That’s “Arcada”…not “Arcadia” or “Arcade,” like I constantly want to type or say.

Here’s a photo of the Fox River from bridge on Main Street, facing north-northwest. The second picture is right off the the side of the river, looking at the St. Charles Municipal Center.

I wanted to get more photos of things, especially the theater, but there was a big fall festival-type event that night and and I didn’t think of it from all the distractions. I did get a photo of the nice marquee but the letters were all jacked up from an electrical issue.

There was a large mirror in the lobby that survived the Great Chicago Fire. It had a plaque that said “Chicago Fire, 1927,” but the fire happened in 1871. The theater was built in 1926, so I’m wondering if the “1927” referred to the year the mirror was installed. I should’ve asked one of the workers there, though I noticed only the mirror when things were a little too busy. I did get a photo of it but it turned out terrible.

There was a Rush pinball machine in the lobby, amongst other like games:

The band. They were really good, despite some technical hurdles with the sound, and they had really interesting original songs that I need to hear the recorded versions of. This first one is part of “Freewill.” The singer, Adi Argelazi, had good energy throughout, but thankfully she didn’t have protagonist syndrome, which would ruin this kind of music. Notice how she stands off to the side during the instrumental part:

Playing the song their name is based off of, “YYZ”:

“Natural Science”:

There was one spot when they played “Tom Sawyer,” where the drummer entered into the next part too early during the guitar solo. I wish I caught it on video because it’s a little hard to explain, but they recovered nicely from it. If you’re not familiar with the song, you wouldn’t have noticed.

I realized a lot of the bands I really like have that understatedly complex sound to them. There’s bands, usually of the metal variety, that are on the opposite end of the progressive rock music spectrum, where things are fast and “noodly,” with atypical song structures, and then you have Rush or a potentially radio-friendly band like that, where the complexity isn’t quite so overwrought. It’s like Necrophagist or Between the Buried and Me, the former kind, versus Candiria or Damiera (their first album, at least), the latter kind. It’s more based on a trick of timing and time signatures, syncopation, and theme (musical, not literary) development.