Girl in a Coma Mini Concert Review

Girl in a Coma performed at the HEB Plus on Potranco road today and I went, here's a mini review of a mini concert.

First things first I had never been to this particular HEB or any HEB PLUS before so walking into it caused me to suffer a mini heart attack (lot's of "mini's" in this article). It is HUGE, it looks like you are walking into an Airport it's so big, I swear they could hold a couple cargo planes in this thing with room to spare. However the section of the store (the electronics section) which is where GIAC performed was literally no bigger than 10 x 10 feet. They were scheduled to perform at 6pm with the intention of having whoever wanted to to follow them downtown where they would play another more traditional concert at a bar on the riverwalk, I did not go.
Naturally my girlfriend and I arrived an hour early just to be safe, there was no telling how many people were going to show up and space is limited.
GIAC arrived fashionably late about 20 min after 6, where they promptly set up their equipment in the small area. They didn't even come in a back way, they literally just said "excuse me" and walked through where the crowd was beginning to form. While facing the "stage" my girlfriend tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to see that the bassist Jenn Alva was standing behind me with a microphone stand and needed to get through.

The crowd totaled around 30-40 people all huddled together in between racks of DVD's and bargain bins. The singer Nina Diaz apparently was sick as she had a minor cough but as far as I could tell it didn't seem to effect her singing at all, in fact all the songs sounded just as good or better than the studio versions. The crowd was mostly younger teenagers most of which had their moms in tow. I was actually surprised by how many Parental Figures stayed to watch the show as they could have easily been shopping instead. Now if you have heard any Girl in a Coma songs you know that they aren't the kind that the older generations tend to appreciate, not to mention the heavily tattooed and pierced girls that make up the band, however all the songs are clean and contain no bad language or imagery.

The girls played a total of 5 songs, the fifth being an encore, and as they played the crowd grew even bigger as shoppers who probably didn't even know there was going to be an instore performance that day or even who GIAC was for that matter stopped by to listen. Most of these newcomers had their children with them and I was surprised by how close they got and how long they stayed considering that the songs were very loud, but the children seemed to being enjoying it as well, this probably being their first concert, whether they knew it or not.

During the 4th song the HEB intercom kept going off calling for clean ups on aisle 5 which made Nina break out laughing for a majority of the song, she even altered one of the lyrics to "There's a big Sale!"

After this 4th song the audience pleaded for more to which Jenn (bassist) asked Phanie D. (drummer) if she wanted to play another song. She responded with a "Whatever." and a shrug of her shoulders, and then began to play.

GIAC tried out one of their new songs in Spanish which Nina is trying to learn but is not yet fluent in, which makes me excited for their next album release which I'm sure will be even better than the first.

Overall it was a great performance and afterwards the girls happily signed autographs for the fans, also each of their album Both Before I'm Gone came with a poster which the girls autographed.

The girls themselves seemed to be having a good time and an added bonus for me was how singer Nina D's mascara began to run making it look like she was crying (even though it was probably sweat). I'm glad I got to see them and glad that they aren't too big yet to still play in the electronics section of a local grocery store.

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