It was totally amazing to start the year by seeing one of my favourite bands playing live. It was fun when I realised that I am apparently developing a habit of seeing The Mono Jacks live every time I am at home in Romania. Not a bad habit, if I may say so. The first concert of the year came in Bucharest, at Hard Rock Cafe. I haven’t visited that place in over ten years, however, this concert was not to be missed. I’ve seen the band play live before, but all of the concerts I attended were unplugged. This time it was different to see and hear them play in full force.

In order to attend the concert we had to book a table, and the table where I was seated was right by the stage. When entering we also had to show proof of vaccination, and part of the audience and all Hard Rock Cafe staff were wearing masks. Trying to adapt to current times. And after ordering drinks and some enormous portions of food that were ignored until the concert ended, the music started.

The guys chose to kick off the concert with the title song of their latest album, Gloria. Then they went back in time by playing Imperfect from their previous album. The third song caught me completely off guard and it was something I always wanted to hear live. I wrote before that Doru Trăscău (the singer) used to play in a band that I used to listen to when I was in high school, AB4. Well, the third song was one from that band, Preferences, worth checking out. And this is the point where I am trying really hard to go back to writing about The Mono Jacks and not turn this post into one about AB4, which coincidently enough, was my go-to artist for these Winter holidays.

Snapping out of nostalgia and coming back from memory lane, the concert carried on with one song after the other, all played flawlessly and sprinkled with enough audience interaction to make it a concert to remember. We got well wishes for the New Year, name day greetings (the concert was on St John’s day), jokes, sing-alongs, clap-alongs, smiles, and after the concert the guys even came out and took photos with fans, and signed autographs. If it were for us, the ones in the audience, we would have probably stayed there to listen to them playing for as many more songs as possible. They skipped two songs from the setlist they planned for the evening, or maybe they simply chose not to play them. How do I know that the extra songs were on the list? Well, because I asked for it after the concert was over, and now I have a cool piece of paper with the band’s name and the list of songs in my collection. The live video below is for one of the songs they skipped, but even if it was not played during this concert, I am sharing it, just so you get an idea of how good these guys sound live. And it’s even better when you’re there!