A Tale of Two Cities.

Scenes From Saturday Night's Sum 41 Show at Trees and Hooka Hey's Show at Dada.

On Saturday night, Canadian punk rockers Sum 41, somehow, pulled a sell-out crowd from the 'burbs into Trees. At the same time, just across the street, Parisian band Hooka Hey was plying their craft for just a couple of dozen folks at Dada.

Par for course in Dallas, perhaps. We know what we like here, and we like big names.

Sum 41, of course, has been around for years. As such, their show was predictable — but not necessarily in a bad way. If you bought a ticket, you came to see the band you know, playing the songs you know. And that's exactly what you got.

An energetic crowd packed the venue, crowd surfers were passed to the front, and a handful of patrons too drunk or stupid to behave and got their butts passed all the way out to the street.

Out in the crowd at Trees, The Phuss' Josh Fleming impatiently watched Sum 41's set while awaiting the show at Dada to get started. He'd discovered Hooka Hey on the Internet, and was eager to see the band from Paris play their set. He was especially committed to their show, actually; when he saw that the band would be coming from Paris to Dallas, he offered up his apartment to the band for the night, and they accepted.

That Dada show was a free one. A bad sign, perhaps? Not at all. It was a calm show, for sure, the kind of night where you could talk to people at the bar, whether you wanted to or not. Hooka Hey, to their credit, played a great set. After, the band told me about how this was their first trip to the States. Somewhat surprisingly, they'd never heard of Paris, Texas.

All and all, it was a good night. I don't blame Dallas for overfilling Trees to see Sum 41. Trees is a great venue and Sum 41, for some, remains a big name. It is a little sad, though, that so few of us ever walk down the street and take a flier on something new, though.