I: The Chase, Sleeping Beauty, No Regret, Gravity > Flower Punk > Gravity, Fresh Cut, Hard Luck Harry > Dig, Help On The Way > Slipknot! > Doughboy, The Grand Scheme Of Things*, Sweet Leaf
* with Drum Solo.
thanks to Mamalakabubudaya for the setlist, (and aruny for the relay!).
ok, so after driving through that ridiculous rain and wind, mapquest stopped about five turns before we were actually there. which blew. and i know about google maps, so its my own damn fault. anyway, after walking around the campus in the crappy rain and wind (and blustering into the wrong concert hall) jill and i saw a freak flag in the distance. the backdrop was being lit from within and through the blustery night, the tie dye beckoned.
when we got in, there were just a few folks milling about. the opening band had just finished up, which we were thankful for cause we were determined to see every minute of the show come hell or high water! we ran into greg peeler and his friend jeff, found out we had enough time to run off to the car for beverage refills and stuff, so we did. once properly adjusted, we went back in and got ready. greg went to stage left, i went to stage right and we assumed our dance-ready poses. at first most of the other folks stayed sitting or standing along the sides, but by gravity several dudes had come up front and were being even bigger freaks than us. but more on those guys later.
after some relatively quick adjustments and tunings, The Chase began. now, i have a confession to make, i kept my eyes closed for most of this song, attuning myself to the music, getting the ears working. i noticed something sounded a little off with timmy, but honestly, not very much. after the show, he mentioned that he thought it\'d sound \'like an amateur\' when listening to the show on disc, but at the time, i didn\'t notice that he\'d broken his d string on the tele till about three quarters of the way through. even then it wasn\'t too bad, but because i\'d noticed it, it was more blatant to me. so, a slightly frustrated begining, but the rest of the band was sounding really good. that being said, jordan was really up front in the mix, and i thought he sounded like he was really getting into it. the rest of the show proved that he was!
while tim was switching to and tuning the sg, adrian started up sleeping beauty. ron and he locked in, and jordan stepped up, laying down laid back soundwash and really gott hings swirling. timmy was ready and joined in adding chord swells and loosening up the strings. by the time they finally dropped into sleeping beauty proper, i\'d floated away quite nicely. now that timmy had a full working guitar, of course, things really started to heat up. his sinewous lines through the blitzkrieg of percussion turned me into a maniacal timmy puppet, spasmadically twitching along to the notes, while my legs and ass were locked into the groove. once again, i noticed jordan was really sounding good, really grabbing his solo.
they crushed that to a halt, but it was more of a pause, as tim hit the first townsend like chords and they proceeded to rim out an anthemic no regret! short but huge, it wasn\'t hard to imagine the guys on, say, hampton coliseum\'s stage, shaking and rocking 15,000 screaming along fans!!!
by this point, even the locals were whoo hooo\'ing to the peaks and hollering between the songs. while they were all still behind me, it sounded like everybody there was having a complete blast. now, it was a college campus, so obviously there were no alcohol sales. however, it was also just a big room in some student union hall so its not like there was stringent security. as a result, everyone there had their own drinks. vodka and sprite in sprite bottle, beers out in plain sight, and then there were the guys drinking bourbon. khaki pants and blue oxford button ups aside, these guys were having a blast!
at some point during the begining of Gravity, i realized that there were four drunk fratish guys doing what i refer to as the white boy seizure dance (which i do a variation of, myself), and that two of them were even slow-motion kung fuing each other. like when you were a kid and you\'d kung fu in the pool, well, kinda like that, but drunkenly and with verve! they were lovin\' the breakfast and finally the guys were getting some rambunctious energy from the crowd. and boy-howdy did that combination work!!
lately, Gravity has simply failed to do anything but rage! the sandwiches are always fun (the gravity>rufus combos really don\'t suck!) but the song itself is such a large, tight piece that it really opens up that jam to explode into someplace else like it so frequently does. and here was another time when i really thought jordan shone. maybe its just because he was up front in the mix, maybe i was just paying better attention, but i really thought he had a great night. the local crowd was lovin\' it, those of us who knew the music were lovin\' it the band certainly sounded like they were lovin\' it.
i looked up because i thought i heard ron shift the bassline some into something familiar but dusty and saw timmy\'s big ol\' laughing smile, and they hit that Flower Punk, and i still couldn\'t remember the name, but damn if i didn\'t know the song, well, that about split my face with a grin! they were at the top of a jam, and just slid in this rager at full tilt! it was killer!! the hardfloor was bouncing with the stomps of hippies and med students. it was great!
then, after another peak or three, back into the end of Gravity and a quick catch your breathe pause. then Fresh Cut begins. i thought we got a really great Cut in nyc the other week, and that really opened me up to the song and it has since grown more and more on me. so, once i heard it get started, i was naturally happy. nor was i let down. keeping the energy high and sweat pouring out, they kept it fairly short (7-8 minutes, but you know what i mean) but just ripped through it. propulsive would be a good way to describe it, i suppose, because adrian was really keeping timmy on his toes, and since i was still in front of ron, i\'d been grooving along to him all night and really noticing how he keeps a bombastic bounce chugging along.
tim had been mentioning that each of the songs were on the new record, but this time he just said, \'here\'s an original. its called Hard Luck Harry.\' and thus began a twentyish minute odessy of badassery! Hard Luck came out but honestly, i\'m not overly familiar with it. i thought it was great, kept the energy up, and it gave me a chance to cool off a bit after the intensity of the last four or five songs. which i needed. so i tried to listen to the words and get familiarized with it better. but once Dig showed up, it was full tilt boogie time again!
again, the sheer biggness of their sound is what keeps impressing me. they play like they\'re in a packed arena even when they\'re playing in a multi-purpose room to the few folks who weren\'t afraid of a little rain and minor flooding. and its not just the intensity with which they play, its truly the size of their sound. adrian sounds like a meth-fueled bonham, ron like a runaway steed. and jordan was all over the place, not just filling the spaces with his washes and sounds, but injecting the music with energy life, his soloing melodically percussive. over that background, timmy can\'t help but excel. it must be so fun playing with those guys behind you. he\'s basically allowed the freedom to go as hard as he wants, to not have any limitations on what he can do, and with his talent and sheer ability you end up with an awesome monster.
now, i won\'t lie. i needed to pee. i needed something to drink and some water. and a cigarette wouldn\'t suck, either. now, i love Help On The Way, but i knew that if you timed it right, you could just miss the verses of Help while in the bathroom, and since the door was straight back from the stage, you could stand outside and still hear the jam well, then be back inside for the Slip>whatever. and i was right.
so back into the fray we go, this time heading over in front of jordan because i wanted to see his hands better. and because the wildly flailing locals had kinda amassed over where i had been. best to leave them plenty of thrashing room, i figured! let me make sure to mention that the Help was awesome. while i wasn\'t in front of it, i still heard it and it was a big, dark, psychedelically rocking version and the Slipknot just kept that up. the khaki guys apparently knew these tunes and were throwing themselves into them with abandon (not as much abandon as when the one guys leaped through the air and landed on his ass during sweet leaf, but close).
however, by the end of Doughboy, all four or five of them were literally on their knees bowing to timmy and the band. this was another tune that jordan\'s playing sticks out to me. he was really attacking his solo, but the highlight was timmy. he was feeding off the crowd\'s rabid energy and letting his true rockstar shine, hitting huge power chords, tapping, screaming bends, and headbanging. wickedly fast, he sped along to the band\'s driving force, while the crowd hooted and hollered along. we were not worthy!
now, i could be wrong, but i thought i saw timmy telling ron and adrian that he wanted to close with The Grand Scheme Of Things with a drum solo a few songs before. the reason i thought the drum solo was mentioned, was because when he told adrian, who then made a face said, \'oh.... shit... well, ok...\' i could be entirely making up what they were really saying though, but that\'s what i thought. of course when Scheme did show up, everyone was thrilled. after timmy introduced it (over the musical intro) as being on their new album, greg peeler said something like \'they just got around to recording this? this song\'s ancient! i thought it was on the first album!\' i couldn\'t help but laugh. i mean, he has a point... :lol
but don\'t let that make you think it detracted from us full on wailing to it! it kept building, alternatingly beautiful and rawking, uplifting and serious, the intensity bursting like a cracked dam. as it was my first Scheme, you can imagine the effect it had on me. i was almost too rapt to dance. i\'ve heard it, but i\'d never seen it and i wanted the complete experience. once again, jordan\'s soloing and rhthym playing were outstanding. they passed around the solo spot a bit and it landed on adrian, and my first instinct was to head to the john. no offense, just not a drum solo guy. what can i say? hell, i didn\'t even have to pee, just had the habit. so anyway, i caught myself and stayed put. and i\'ve gotta say that i was pretty stunned.
now, in my personal little universe, matt abts is the hieght of drumming these days. adrians solo lats night was easily on par with any i\'ve heard abts do. both his feet and hands are going so fast and hard, but not just pounding out rhthyms but with an organic jazz sensibility, speaking through his instrument. not just showing you he can keep the time, but showing you that he can synchopate like a madman! that was really an unexpected highlight for me. i mean, i know he\'s a freaking dervish on those things, but i was amazed at how much he had left to give even at the end of what had been a gargantuan show\'s worth of drumming already!
well, they got to the end, and everyone was whoopin\' it up. claps and chants while the band hid behind the bass cabinet and discussed the next song.
the sheer insanity and hilarity of Sweet Leaf will unfortunately be held only in the minds of those who were lucky enough to catch it in person. asuming rock god stance, timmy kick off the Leaf hamming it up but slamming those opening chords down. now, i\'d never seen or heard of Adrian singing before, but apparently thats just because i\'m a n00b.... nonetheless, it was great! timmy and ron were head and shoulders banging, jordan took his hair out of his ponytail and started banging, he and timmy were rocking at each other, jordan jumped up on his stool and was playing, throwing in some harmonic and eventually ending up on the dance floor playing his keyboards from there while timmy threw his guitar behind his head and played from there, all the while no one was missing a single beat and were just rawking out!!! devil horn aplenty were seen at the end of this one, folks, that\'s for damn sure!!!
laughter and rock. is there any better healer?!?!
so, i gotta say once again, thanks to the guys for letting us be apart of their fun and for giving us their all every single time!
(i know, i know... too long; didn\'t read...
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