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Helmet 9/13/07

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Screen Shot 2015-10-08 at 7.10.04 PMJust a typical spontaneous moment. I’m thumbing through the San Diego weekly Reader and see that Helmet is playing tomorrow night at the Casbah. This is funny because I have only visited the Casbah once in my life and the other time was when I watched Helmet for the first time. I called Marvin and asked if he would like to go with me via voicemail. He texts me back at three in the morning (he works in a restaurant) with an enthusiastic “Helmet deep.” It’s 7 p.m. the night of the show now and I’m on my way to pick up Marvin and fucking hungry. We decide to eat at Gordon Bierch but find that there is a wait for a table when we arrive. “Fuck this.” We strolled over to Bev Mo across the parking lot and each picked up a 22 of Stone. Then we continued to IN N OUT to eat delicious hamburgers and wash them down with our Bev Mo purchases in my topless Jeep in the parking lot. We arrive at the venue about 9 pm only to find out Helmet will not be coming on until 11:30. Nothing left to do but start drinking (more). I wanted to have “a drink” at the nearby Airport Lounge because my ex-coworker Kristin was going to be there supporting her friend’s event. The doors were locked so we continued on to The Waterfront (a bar). We proceeded to drink two pitchers of beer before Donna arrived. Then we drank one more. It was now 11 and I was paranoid that the door guy at the Casbah didn’t know what he was talking about so we parted ways with Donna and walked back over to the Casbah. Turns out the door guy was right. This gave us enough time to try to hit up Airport Lounge again. This time we were in and I saw Kristin. She had just been laid off that day but was in good spirits (severance package). One beer and back to the Casbah, but not before stopping by the Jeep to take a hit from my sneak-a-toke. We walked in and Helmet was on stage but were still setting up. They didn’t start playing for about 10 minutes but when they did it was amazing. They started off with “Pure” from Aftertaste and did not let up from that album until they had played the first six songs consecutively in sequence. This blew my mind because I had never seen any band play in that fashion. Page Hamilton’s supporting lineup this time was completely different than the last time I had seen Helmet. The next two songs were “Street Crab” from Betty and “Repetition” from Strap It On. I was pretty sauced by this point since Marvin had bought me two more tall beers upon our arrival and I was still tripping out about them playing the first six songs from Aftertaste in sequence when all of a sudden they bust out “In the Meantime” from Meantime. They did it again only this time with Meantime! They played the first seven songs on that album IN SEQUENCE! They followed with “Bad Mood” and then a song from the newest album Monochrome. It turned out being the only song played from their two most recent albums. Cool with me because I had only heard Monochrome once and Size Matters was definitely not one of my favorite Helmet albums. They closed their set with two more from Betty: “Wilma’s Rainbow” and “Milquetoast.” We shook Page’s hand and went home. I probably should have not been driving but everything turned out fine. I thought my night was over but when I got home I found that Donna had started something without me but was happy to have me finish what she started…

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