All I gotta say is: WOW. Adjectives, exaltations, exhortations, interjections and run-of-the-mill adverbs all fail to do justice to the show we saw last night: Muse at US Airways Center in Phoenix.

Here’s what I knew about Muse going into the show:

1) We had free tickets in the skybox seats directly across from the stage… with a full bar and semi-private restrooms, plus nice comfy armchairs and a fully catered meal.

2) Um, I think some of their songs are used in those commercials… and didn’t they have that song in that Tom Cruise movie? And aren’t they the theme song for the NCAA basketball tournament. Something madness? I was only passingly familiar with them since I spend the majority of my radio time with NPR (and it’s a news / jazz channel)

3) Muse is one of my nephew’s favorite bands, and in our efforts to reach out to the young people and try new things, I figured I should be adventurous and broaden my horizons.

For those keeping score at home: Muse 4,827 – Horizons, shattered.

Best concert I’ve ever seen – but more than seen: Experienced. They had lasers, people. Lasers.

After the show, the single most telling utterance came from Pat when he wondered what the electricity bill for that concert was. Surely, APS had to divert some hertz from other parts of the grid for Muse to put that show on. I imagine that when they hit particular low notes – spine-compressing, kidney-rocking, bowel-shaking low notes that can only be heard by dogs – people in the surrounding neighborhood experienced a brown-out.

In order of appearance, my thoughts on the show:

1) The seats did not suck. We’ve been to our fair share of concerts and normally, I’m standing off to the side wondering if the floral print I’ve selected for the evening is going to piss off the notoriously diva-riffic lead singer (He prefers all friends and family to be wearing black or dark neutrals). We don’t sit at those shows, and frankly, we don’t go to very many concerts: We rely on the nephew and other friends to keep us informed of new auditory developments (see NPR above). I preferred the skybox to the floor because it gave me a greater perspective on everything that was going on around the stage and in the sky (they had video screens that descended like a spaceship). There are no bad seats in the house at a Muse show, but I wish I’d had my trusty binoculars (note for future shows). Lagniappe: Semi-private bathrooms (no lines!) and Lucia took good care of us so we didn’t have to get up from our plush recliners to get our drinks. They do not have this amenity backstage.

2) They have that song in those commercials… Yeah, I was familiar with their music in its various commercial applications. I’d stumbled upon the ever-repeating two-or-three hits on the Top 40 outlets when I was trying to avoid the latest developments in Syria on NPR, but the hits don’t really capture the depth of Muse’s music. No car stereo has the capacity to evoke how awesome that show sounded last night – and very few home stereos that don’t cost as much as a car could do it justice. It was a sound engineer’s wet dream. I could hear every single one of the drums – best drum sound I’ve ever heard in a concert, and this is while they’re simultaneously producing bass notes that might have registered on the Richter scale. I heard influences ranging from Pink Floyd to Queen to Hendrix and they even played the opening to Led Zeppelin’s Heartbreaker, making it sound modern and fresh but just as loud and big. I get annoyed at all of the dub-step production I hear on television commercials these days – but if this is what dub-step is supposed to sound like, I get it … and everyone else is just a poser. I felt like Muse fully executed what U2 was trying to do back in the late 90s (and maybe still today) when they took off on that techno / disco tangent and never came back. Muse just proves you can play with technology and use engineering to create an enhanced experience of sound, while still boasting the fundamental musical talent and composition chops (this, coming from a person who can’t carry a tune in a bag). Either way, the live show was SO GOOD, that we seriously debated getting in the car this morning and driving to Vegas to see them tonight. Suffice it to say, the road-trip rule is in effect: If Muse is within 500 miles (a six-hour car trip) of your home, go see them. You can sleep in your car on the way back, but you probably won’t be able to sleep because your mind will be spinning with images like this:

3) Muse is one of my nephew’s favorite bands. He’s never steered us wrong before. Alter Bridge, Tenacious D, Tremonti Project, planking, Party Shark, The Walking Dead: I have him to thank for all of these wonderful additions to my life. Don’t tell him, but before the show, Pat decided to listen to some Muse tunes and he was less than impressed. Again: Coming through the speaker on your Mac, it sounds a little flat and manufactured. Seeing it live rocks your world, melts your face off, bleeds out your ears, blows your mind, makes you wish you were high (which is a state of affairs that has never happened to me, but last night, I distinctly thought, “This is why people get high when they go to concerts. I wish I was high.”) Call it peer pressure at 4,000 decibels. Muse: It’s a gateway drug to good music.

The moral of this story: Don’t doubt the nephew. Enjoy the Skybox. Roadtrip rule for Muse.