This show after the horse races at the Del Mar Fairgrounds was included with the price of admission, which means I got to see Alice In Chains for about $6. Jerry Cantrell recruited William DuVall to take over lead vocal duties for Layne Staley and started to tour. It would be a full three years before this incarnation would put out their first Alice In Chains album Black Gives Way to Blue so they stuck to playing all the songs we knew and loved. Layne left some big shoes to fill and there is nobody out there that quite sings like he did but DuVall did a good job. It was great to hear the songs live again. I don’t think Jerry Cantrell felt quite the same as I did about this show as some disrespectful motherfucker threw a shoe at him during their encore and hit him square in the face. He threw down his guitar and walked off the stage as the rest of the band, not realizing what just happened, kept playing. Once they did realize they too walked off the stage and disappeared into the night never to be heard from again.
This was the second year in a row that Street Scene was held in the Qualcomm Stadium parking lot. It also happened to be the same time I was scheduled to spend a week in the Pacific Northwest for my Mom’s wedding and my 10-year high school reunion. Sometime after I booked my flight to go to Oregon/Washington it was announced that Tool would be headlining Street Scene. I was never all that pumped about going to the high school reunion so ultimately I decided I would rather see four dudes that I had not seen for almost five years (Tool) rather than see a bunch of people that I had not seen for 10 years. Street Scene was Friday the 4th and Saturday the 5th but I came back just for Saturday.
I remember coming home to a dead battery in my car since it had been parked for a week. After I convinced my then roommate Macy to drop me off I got to the concert with just enough time to find my friends Marvin and Bob, have a beer with them and get over to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They were touring in support of their new album Show Your Bones that was released about four and a half months earlier. This was my second time seeing them, with the first time being about two years earlier right after I first moved to San Diego. They were as great as they were the first time but now had another album of songs to choose from.
SETLIST: Gold Lion, Fancy, Phenomena, Mysteries, Honeybear, The Sweets, Maps, Y Control, Date With the Night
It was convenient that Tool played the same stage as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs since we were already in good position at that stage. This was my fifth time seeing Tool but as stated earlier I had not seen them for about five years and now they had a new album in 10,000 Days that was released just about three months prior to this. Everything started off well but then all hell broke loose with the crowd near the end of their second song “The Pot.” People were being trampled near the front to the point where Maynard was telling people to move back during the song and then they ended up stopping the show for about 10 minutes until people moved back. Apparently 15 people ending up getting seriously hurt. I think if Maynard would not have stopped the show that count would have been much higher. I got separated from Marvin and Bob but apparently Bob ended up having sex in the audience. I am not sure how that is possible with people on all sides of you but the crowd was very raucous and Bob is not known to be a lying braggart.
I am obviously a fan of The White Stripes and got lucky enough to see them about a year before this show, but then Jack White took a left turn and made an album with some old friends. They formed a more traditional rock lineup and called themselves The Raconteurs. The resulting album is Broken Boy Soldiers that was released only two months before this show. I used to date a girl that had Rhapsody, which was my first exposure to streaming music. It was over at her place that I heard “Steady, As She Goes” for the first time and I got really excited once I identified the voice to be Jack White’s. Once I learned they were coming to San Diego I started bugging Marvin to go with me. For whatever reason he kept pussyfooting and I did not want to buy the tickets until he gave me the thumbs up. Long story short I was almost certain the show would sell out so I bought two tickets, of which I used one and sold one since Marvin flaked. Nowadays he just beats himself up over it kind of like he does for the time he decided to not see Alice In Chains with me back in 1993 but I digress… seeing these guys in a place as small as SOMA right after they released their debut album was a concert lover’s wet dream. Jack White was able to play a little looser since he had another guitar, bass, drums and Brendan Benson’s voice backing him up. They stretched out some of the songs but definitely played every song on the album mixed in with some covers.
Full disclosure: This show definitely falls into the “fuzzy” category of memories. Not because I was blacked out or anything, just because this was my fifth time seeing Disturbed and my fifth time seeing SOAD and this show does not stick out in my mind for any particular reason. I did not really care about or maybe even watch the other bands on the bill (no Ozzy did not play this date). Here’s what I do know: I was there, I had not been to Ozzfest since 2003 and both the bands that I came to see rocked. I had not seen Disturbed for about three years and they were touring for the album Ten Thousand Fists that was released the prior September. For some reason I did not buy/get acquainted with this album until sometime after this show. I had just seen System of a Down a little less than a year before but they had since released Hypnotize, the second half of the amazing Mesmerize/Hypnotize double album. I found a decently shitty video clip of Disturbed from this show on YouTube but all the clips of SOAD are from other dates of Ozzfest 2006…
Pearl Jam was touring for their eponymous album aka The Avocado Album that was released in May of this year. Growing up in Washington State I cannot believe that this was my first time seeing Pearl Jam…and it almost didn’t happen. I again for whatever reason did not have a ticket so I decided to scour Craigslist at the last minute. I came across a peculiar ad titled “Free Pearl Jam Ticket.” First I thought it was total bullshit but decided to click anyway. It said something to the effect of “My buddy bailed on me so I have an extra ticket. Just buy me a couple beers and the ticket is yours. First come, first served.” The ad had been posted about 40 minutes before my eyes laid upon it so I thought even if it was legit someone else would have already beat me to the punch but I called the number just to make sure. Guy (sorry I’m bad with names) answered the phone and I said “I know you’ve probably already gotten a million calls for the Pearl Jam ticket…” He said, “Actually you’re the first.” I shot the shit with guy for a couple minutes and we decided upon a meeting place. I was still super skeptical right up to the minute I met him but much to my pleasant surprise the guy met me exactly where and when he said he would. The only thing about the ticket was that it was in the section behind the stage but beggars can’t be choosers. We were looking at the back of the band a lot of the time but to their credit the band paid us a fair amount of attention. This was my first experience of seeing Eddie downing red wine throughout the show which was pretty entertaining. The band was every bit as great as I expected them to be, drawing from all their albums fairly evenly. Pearl Jam fans are a different breed and thankfully so because I was able to locate a YouTube video of “Yellow Ledbetter” from this show and a soundboard quality audio of the entire show. Enjoy!
SETLIST: Oceans, Severed Hand, Corduroy, Brain of J, World Wide Suicide, Love Boat Captain, Gone, Even Flow, Unemployable, Wasted Reprise, Better Man, Satan’s Bed, Not for You, You Are, Inside Job, Life Wasted, Rearviewmirror, Long Road, Come Back, Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town, Crazy Mary (Victoria Williams), Crown of Thorns (Mother Love Bone), Alive, Last Kiss (Wayne Cochran) Comatose, Leash, Big Wave, Rockin’ in the Free World (Neil Young), Yellow Ledbetter
The Embarcadero is a unique venue situated on the San Diego Bay to the rear of the Convention Center. Radiohead had not released an album since Hail to the Thief about three years before this show and this was the second night of a two night stand. For some reason I did not learn about this show until the tickets were all sold out. Much to my dismay even Craigslist did not have any listings for tickets so Marvin and I just decided to cruise down to see if we could snag a ticket from a scalper or someone else milling about selling tickets. No dice. Apparently if you buy a ticket to Radiohead you are actually going to the concert. What a novel concept. Instead of being totally defeated once we realized there was no way to sneak in, we realized there was an area “house-right” near the water’s edge just outside of the fence that was put up where we could not only hear but from the right rock see the stage as well. There were a handful of people doing this with us and even some crafty people in canoes/kayaks that were watching from the water. Free Radiohead concert? Not bad for my first time seeing them. Instead of giving you my spiel on how awesome they were you can watch for yourself because I found a video of the full show on YouTube that was posted by someone who was standing much closer to the stage than I. Enjoy.
SETLIST: Airbag, The National Anthem, Where I End and You Begin, 15 Step, Exit Music (for a Film), Bodysnatchers, My Iron Lung, Go Slowly, Videotape, I Might Be Wrong, Climbing Up the Walls, All I Need, Pyramid Song, Spooks, Idioteque, Myxomatosis, Bangers + Mash, Bones, Like Spinning Plates, A Wolf at the Door, Down Is the New Up, Fake Plastic Trees, Nude, Everything in Its Right Place
I had not seen Seether since the first time I saw them about three and a half years earlier at the Roseland in Portland. They had released their second (technically Disclaimer II was an album even though it is essentially a remixed version of their first album Disclaimer) and third albums by this time and were touring for the latter, Karma and Effect, that was released almost exactly one year before this show. Lucinda and I were still talking so she went with Marvin and I. A guy that branded himself as a “Heavy Metal Taxi” picked us up from Lucy’s in OB and definitely lived up to the branding. He had one of those old cop car taxis but decked it out with a top-notch sound system and BLASTED heavy metal at top volume the entire way to the House of Blues. Usually I have to request/convince the driver to do that…As for the show itself of course they rocked. Apparently we caught them at just the right time because it was announced 10 days after this show that lead guitarist Patrick Callahan had left the band and Shaun had checked himself into rehab for alcoholism about two months after this show.
