Posts tagged with "concerts"

Concert: Dreamtheater '04

Thumbnail: Music hall

When tak­ing a sam­ple of pro­gres­sive met­al fans, one will find that the sub­set is almost entire­ly com­prised of males, most of which are much taller than the aver­age Asian guy. This makes it extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for the aver­age Asian guy to see the band dur­ing pro­gres­sive met­al con­certs, which was the case dur­ing the Dreamtheater show on Wednesday. As can be seen from the pic­ture, I went up to most of the oth­er peo­ples necks. Although there was the chance to go straight up front since there was no mosh pit (cause who can mosh to music that changes time sig­na­tures every oth­er bar?), the area was too dense­ly packed to get any­where.

At first I thought that the crowd was most­ly made up of the same “type” of peo­ple, but Trolley point­ed out that he’s nev­er been to a show that was more diverse. All I saw were lots of blond, Caucasian males, but he only saw lots of dif­fer­ent­ly aged peo­ple. And it was true…while there were an extreme­ly lim­it­ed num­ber of females in atten­dance (although I’m sure that Anj was there), there were also peo­ple from my age to twice my age. It was odd to see a lot of guys old enough to be my father at the same con­cert as me.

There was no open­er because their set went for almost three hours. They first per­formed for an hour and a half, and came back for three encores. One of the encores was the entire 45 minute long track on their Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulance album with no paus­es. I’ve also nev­er seen a band mea­sure time like they do when per­form­ing live: some­how they man­age to count their rests with per­fect tim­ing when the lights go out. Even though this is done on the album ver­sion of Endless Sacrifice, the impres­sive thing is that they have dif­fer­ent tem­pos for their shows. Most oth­er bands need a cym­bol hit to keep time (like what Manson does dur­ing Antichrist Superstar at the Hartford show), and it’s always a dis­s­a­point­ment to find out that a band can’t count notes in their heads.

Portnoy’s drum­set owned half the fuck­ing stage.

There’s a run­ning joke between the mem­bers of DT, where they replace lyrics of their songs with “you can eat my ass and balls”. I first found out from the Metropolis 2000 DVD, when they all jok­ing­ly sing it instead of “there can be no peace of mind” dur­ing behind-the-scenes the com­men­tary. At one point dur­ing the Wednesday’s con­cert, LaBrie replaces “take me as I am” with “eat my ass and balls” and I had to burst out laugh­ing. Then I noticed that no one else was laugh­ing.

Concert: Death From Above '04

Thumbnail: Zaphods
Thumbnail: Lighting at Zaphods
Thumbnail: Jesse Fucking Keeler

Went to a Death From Above show at Zaphod’s. I actu­al­ly rec­og­nized Jesse F. Keeler (the F stands for Fucking) out­side when Aaron, Trolley, Jesse, and I were wait­ing for Jen. Both Keeler (the bassist) and Sebastien Grainger (the vocalist/drummer) have sim­i­lar­ly lithe bod­ies and unkempt facial hair so they aren’t hard to spot, but are easy to mix up. The set went just like the last time I saw them: they start off with an intro song as a warm-up, then Grainger takes off his shirt for the real show. They also end­ed with Do It!, when Grainger kicks down his mic stand and goes crazy on his set.

The word is ener­gy.

Concert: Billy Talent, Crowned King, Death From Above

The Billy Talent con­cert was pret­ty decent. There were quite a few peo­ple who seemed out of place there such as 10 year old girls and women beyond the cougar idiom, I’m guess­ing because BT is more of a main­stream band, but I’m not sure. I did­n’t real­ly know any­thing about them besides the fact that they have four mem­bers and that they have a sin­gle out (even though I know the entire album like the back of my hand). I’ve nev­er even seen one of their videos so actu­al­ly see­ing what they looked like, to put a few faces with the music, was pret­ty inter­est­ing. They played about half the songs from the album, and Benjamin was able to work the crowd up pret­ty well.

A band called Crowned King opened first and they had a fun ska derived sound with a lot of well com­posed har­monies, but the lyrics that I heard were a turn-off.

The best part of the show, how­ev­er, was the sec­ond open­ing act by a band called Death From Above, who used to be on the Sound-Virus label and are now on the Ache Records label (which also hap­pens to be the label for Hot Hot Heat). It’s a band with just a drum­mer (the vocal­ist) and a bassist, but the sound is extreme­ly full and well round­ed. It’s extreme­ly blood pump­ing, adren­a­line rush­ing, great sound­ing music and I would have bought an album at the con­cert if it was avail­able. They’re com­plete­ly a no-bull­shit band who tried to start shit with secu­ri­ty for kick­ing some peo­ple out dur­ing their set. They start­ed talk­ing about how much of a big­ot Glen Danzig is, and then mak­ing fun of the crowd for hav­ing no fuck­ing clue about who Glen Danzig is after cheer­ing from a men­tion of the Misfits. Just goes to show how many peo­ple at con­certs are com­plete poseurs. I’ll def­i­nite­ly be look­ing into Death From Above because I believe that they’re Canadian as well.

AFI Concert, Future Concerts, Etc.

I got back from the AFI con­cert about an hour ago, after see­ing Aaron and Wheaties off, and grab­bing a relax­ing show­er. The con­cert was decent, but that’s in com­par­i­son to see­ing my favourite band live. The light­ing was amaz­ing­ly done, with the cor­rect colours and spot­lights to match the music. Davey Havok was singing almost a semi-tone flat through most of the con­cert, so he must have been pret­ty tired. I only enjoy their last album, Sing the Sorrow, but at one point dur­ing the sum­mer I was lis­ten­ing to it to no end. Dina asked me if I thought there were any pret­ty girls walk­ing around between sets and all I could answer was “lots”.

There aren’t too many bands I feel as if I need to expe­ri­ence live. I’ve seen Tool, the Dwarves, and the Misfits live already, and those are the only bands I feel that I enjoy enough for me to attend. I would go to anoth­er Tool con­cert if they came around again, and def­i­nite­ly a Portishead show if they were ever doing one. I would be up for an Ellen Ten Damme con­cert with Darren, but unfor­tu­nate­ly she seems to only play in Europe and the UK with a few Japanese tour dates. I could go for a Dreamtheater con­cert, but I have the live DVD, so a per­son­al view­ing isn’t quite as imper­a­tive. The Dears is a pos­si­bil­i­ty, but I’d have to get more into their music before going.

I bought The Frozen Throne expan­sion for Warcraft III, and I’m impressed with it’s depth. It’s basi­cal­ly a com­plete­ly new game now, with dif­fer­ent units, heroes, and build­ings. I find that it’s much more strat­e­gy based and less focused on micro. Since I’m unem­ployed, I’ve been play­ing quite a bit with Artfag, and since she’s unem­ployed as well, there’s nev­er a chance to guilt the oth­er into look­ing for a job, which is some­thing that I’m find­ing hard to get moti­vat­ed about.

Speaking of which, I spent the last week send­ing out résumés to var­i­ous com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions. I have a résumé that I’m pret­ty proud of right now, after Pat helped me fix it up. No phone calls so far.

The Dwarves Come To Town

Before head­ing over to Babylon for the Dwarves con­cert, Iain and I stopped into Record Runner to see if there were any albums worth buy­ing. I found the Dreamtheater con­cert DVD for $26 and was about to pur­chase it before real­iz­ing that I’d have no place to put it dur­ing the con­cert. I also found out that The Dears have a new album out which I must con­sid­er pur­chas­ing. I lat­er dis­cov­ered that they will be per­form­ing in two days at the same place, anoth­er thing need­ing con­sid­er­a­tion.

The con­cert was great. I did­n’t know any of the open­ing acts (Sack Lunch, Maximum R&R, and the Riptides), but they weren’t very good any­way. I nev­er knew how tiny Babylon is and was sur­prised to find air­plane seats and couch­es scat­tered around the large room. The size made for an inti­mate atmos­phere and com­fort­able view­ing, even for ver­ti­cal­ly chal­lenged peo­ple such as myself.

While Iain and I wait­ed for things to get set up, we pon­dered the things that would look odd at a punk show. Being Asian was the first thing that we came up with, although I did see one Asian girl and one per­son of African decent there in a crush of Caucasian faces. We agreed that some­one with an iPod or record­able MiniDisc play­er would stand out from super­fluity alone. One thing we could­n’t fig­ure out was the poplu­ta­tion of gay punks com­pared to gay non-punks. I joked about whether the more dom­i­nant male punk would make fun of his effem­i­nate, emo lis­ten­ing boyfriend.

There were some Dwarves shirts and CDs avail­able for pur­chase, but noth­ing I would con­sid­er wear­ing. Two thongs with the skull and cross bon­ers logo were spread out on the table in a rather embar­rass­ing way. Even a Blood Guts & Pussy shirt was there, and we were sur­prised to find that it lacked a sin­gle shirt pock­et.

When the Dwarves came on, there was no sign of HEWHOCANNOTBENAMED, much to our dis­ap­point­ment, although I sup­pose it was bet­ter for the crowd of all-ages. The drum­mer and two gui­tarists we did­n’t rec­og­nize, although one of them came on with sun­glass­es and a stock­ing over his head while the oth­er went skins. Blag entered with a sleeve­less “Slut.” shirt sans gloves or wig (come to think of it, I haven’t seen him ever wear­ing a shirt with sleeves).

Then there was Tazzie.

She came on wear­ing a dark pur­ple-blue dress shirt with a sequined nurs­es mask. Her dark brown hair cov­ered her entire face and at times she seemed like Cousin It play­ing bass. Partially through the set she took off her mask, unbut­toned her shirt half-way to reveal a lacy black demi, and flood­ed her hair behind her right ear when she got too hot.

It’s obvi­ous that every mem­ber of the band has a good time on stage. Blag body surfs and is gen­er­al­ly charged enough to keep the pit ener­gized, just as the leg­ends go. The gui­tarists all scream at the top of their lungs while hit­ting out the fast paced Dwarves tunes. Even the drum­mer is lost in a furi­ous fren­zy of adren­a­line. But Tazzy rocks the fuck out. She gets so into the music that she rarely looks up from her gui­tar, her eyes half-closed most of the time. She spas­mod­i­cal­ly bangs her head at each beat and each aggres­sive bass line. It’s almost as if she’s expe­ri­enc­ing an implo­sive surge of ener­gy while she has a look of qui­et con­cen­tra­tion on her face as the rest of the band wax­es chaot­ic around her. I’ve nev­er seen a more attrac­tive instru­men­tal­ist.

Plenty of great hair­styles were in the crowd, although some were rather shab­bi­ly done. The best one was some­one sport­ing a pink mohawk with a razor thin cen­ter strip extend­ing more than a foot out­wards.

The entire set last­ed more than thir­ty min­utes, which must be a Dwarves record, and sur­prised us since we were expect­ing any­thing from three to fif­teen min­utes. Now I’ll be look­ing for­ward to the upcom­ing AFI con­cert, and pos­si­ble Dears con­cert. Walking home on the bare city streets was nice and peace­ful, away from the con­stant stream of noise and peo­ple. It was a good way to end off a tir­ing evening.