Marilyn Manson was touring for Eat Me, Drink Me that had just been released less than three months before this show. I went with Donna, a girl I had been seeing since the beginning of the year with a white contact in one of my eyes leftover from my previous year’s vampire Halloween costume. I remember this show being General Admission (my favorite) because we sat in a seat for Slayer and went down to the floor for Marilyn Manson. Tim Skold had moved from bass to take over lead guitar duties for this tour. It was not the same as seeing Twiggy and John 5 but was an upgrade from the last time I had seen Marilyn Manson in L.A.
This was apparently a time period where Marilyn Manson was especially taken with Lewis Carroll. He reportedly began to make a movie called Phantasmagoria: The Visons of Lewis Carroll where he was to play Mr. Carroll around this time but scrapped it due to the emotional drain it was having on his psyche. The Alice In Wonderland influence on the album/show was evident throughout this show, especially when they played “Are You the Rabbit?” (my favorite song on the new album) and brought a giant chair out onstage. Unrelated but this may have also been the first time I saw the “knife microphone.”
SETLIST: If I Was Your Vampire, Disposable Teens, mOBSCENE, Are You the Rabbit?, Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)/Lunchbox, Just a Car Crash Away, Heart-Shaped Glasses, Rock Is Dead, The Dope Show, Putting Holes in Happiness, The Fight Song, The Reflecting God, Antichrist Superstar, The Beautiful People
The memories I have of this show are just as much about the trip as they are the show itself as this was my first time ever visiting San Francisco. I already had a reason to visit because my sister had recently moved to the Bay Area, but once Rage Against the Machine announced they would be reuniting from a seven-year hiatus to only play this show and a handful of others the trip became a double win.
Bob drove Marvin and I from San Diego through night to avoid traffic and we eventually arrived sometime Friday morning. My sister let us into her place and we immediately crashed for several hours. Once we got up we made our way into the city proper for some shenanigans with my sister, her roommate Eve, Eve’s boyfriend Sam and Marvin’s friend Email who had joined up at my sister’s place during our “nap.”
Numerous drinks later + two more ladies + one more dude and somehow my three friends got separated from the group and were not reachable by phone. One strip club, one limo ride, one street fire alarm box pulled (I thought it was a joke) and one chance meeting with Flavor Flav and we found ourselves at a party he told us about in one of the craziest houses I have ever been in. It was a multi-level house that was set up like a club with each room being a different theme. The room where literally everything in it was white and fuzzy is the one I remember the most. Long story short the house was so big that after several more drinks I became convinced that everyone had left me there because I could not find anyone I knew. After finding out the hard way that BART shut down at midnight I ended up taking a $75 taxi back to my sister’s place and making a makeshift bed on her front porch with the boxes she had recently unpacked but not yet disposed of.
The next morning I spoke to my lost friends who had somehow made their way down by the airport and got a hotel room for the night. Once they finally made it back to my sister’s after a long hung-over BART ride they cleaned up and we were out the door again for a little pre-funking closer to where we would end up for the concert, McCovey Cove Parking Lot next to AT&T Park where the San Francisco Giants play.
Rock the Bells was originally an annual hip-hop festival only held in Southern California but had spread to other cities since the inception in 2004. The event started at noon but we essentially treated the show as a Rage Against the Machine concert with lots of hip-hop opening acts. We finally went into the show just as Wu-Tang Clan hit the stage. There were a lot of hands in the air waving from side to side, a lot of herb being smoked and like Slipknot, a lot of dudes onstage. They were entertaining but I was there to see Rage.
The only other time I had seen Rage was when I saw them at the Gorge almost exactly 10 years before this show so I was pretty excited to see them again. Since that show Rage had put out The Battle of Los Angeles and Renegades. From the first note of “Testify” to the last note of “Killing in the Name” Rage was every bit as fierce and relevant as they were when they first hit the scene. They flat out crushed it. We had a decent view of the stage because being taller than six feet is definitely advantageous in these situations. The crowd was no comparison to the Gorge show where the entire audience was pogo-ing up and down but to be fair no show is quite like a Gorge show.
SETLIST: Testify, People of the Sun, Bombtrack, Know Your Enemy, Vietnow, Bullet in the Head, Renegades of Funk, Guerrilla Radio, Calm Like A Bomb, Sleep Now in the Fire, Bulls on Parade, Wake Up, Freedom, Township Rebellion, Killing in the Name
If you’re keeping track this was my 10th time seeing Deftones but my first since they released their fifth album Saturday Night Wrist the prior Halloween. This was also my first concert at Viejas, a casino out in East County San Diego. The casino has an outlet mall on their property, presumably to take the money that people won in the casino right back from them. It is here in a relatively small lawn area that a stage was constructed to house this concert. Their set was a nice ebb and flow of heavy/soft dynamics mixed from all albums. I was especially happy they played one of my favorite songs from the new album, “Beware” and one of my favorite songs from the previous album, “Needles and Pins.” Never gets old.
SETLIST: Passenger, My Own Summer (Shove It), Ihabia, Beware, Root, Nosebleed, Around the Fur, Rickets, Head Up, Knife Party, Digital Bath, Bored, Engine No. 9, Needles and Pins, Hole in the Earth, Xerces, Rats! Rats! Rats!, Cherry Waves, Change (In the House of Flies), Back to School, 7 Words
I did not originally set out to see Tool two nights in a row but quickly changed my mind after seeing such a juggernaut performance the night before and realizing that these opportunities do not come along very often. Besides that Macy’s boyfriend Jake had never seen Tool so it was perfect excuse to go again. I remember struggling to find tickets the day of on Craigslist so I think we just went to the venue in search of a scalper and almost immediately scored tickets once we parked and started walking around. Our tickets were a little closer than the night before but off to Justin’s side of the stage. I am fairly sure they did not sell alcohol like they did the night before. Other than that the setlist was the same except they replaced “Rosetta Stoned” and “Right In Two” for “Pushit,” which as told by Maynard was something they had not done in awhile. Don’t take my word for how badass this show was; you can listen/watch it thanks to someone else that was at the show who recorded and uploaded it to YouTube.
SETLIST: Jambi, Stinkfist, Forty-Six & 2, Schism, Pushit, Wings for Marie (Pt. 1), 10,000 Days (Wings, Pt. 2), Lateralus, Vicarious, Aenema
This show was originally supposed to be on March 20th but got rescheduled due to drummer Danny Carey tearing a bicep while “picking up his dog at home.” Danny Carey is six foot five so he must have a giant fucking dog! All joking aside this show’s audience was a little more under control than when I saw them at Street Scene about nine months prior because there were actual seats. Everyone had assigned seats even on the floor and ushers were walking around with flashlights to ensure people stayed in their seats. I am lucky that I have perfect eyesight because my seat was at the back of the arena but the silver lining was that it was behind the mixing board so the sound was excellent. The visual aspect of Tool’s performance intensified every time I had seen them and this my sixth time seeing them was off the charts. The floor of the stage was completely white and they used this previously untapped resource to project things onto the floor. Even the stage crew got in on the action by wearing white lab coats.
Since this was the official tour for 10,000 Days we got to hear some songs they did not play at Street Scene: “Rosetta Stoned,” “Right In Two,” and “Wings” Parts 1 & 2. I remember Maynard commenting something to the effect of how polite it was to drink beer and holler during a song that was written about his mother who passed away when they did “Wings.” Danny’s bicep must have healed up nicely because he put on an absolute drumming clinic during “Right in Two.” Phenomenal show.
SETLIST: Jambi, Stinkfist, Forty-Six & 2, Schism, Lost Keys (Blame Hofmann), Rosetta Stoned, Right in Two, Wings for Marie (Pt. 1), 10,000 Days (Wings, Pt. 2), Lateralus, Vicarious, Aenema
My cousin Earl gave me a copy of Stone Sour’s eponymous album not long after it came out in 2002. I knew about them because I had seen Slipknot three times by this point, but I did not really get into Stone Sour until I came around to Slipknot once they released Volume 3: The Subliminal Verses. This made me revisit Stone Sour’s debut album but they didn’t really get their hooks in me until I heard “30/30-150” from the album Come What(ever) May that was released in August of 2006. I loved the soft/heavy balance they struck versus the straight brutality of Slipknot. Needless to say I remember being particularly excited about this show since I had never seen them before. I cannot remember everything that was played but I did know all the songs forwards and backwards which generally makes a great concert that much better. This was the first time I had seen Corey Taylor “unmasked” and I remember him being a giant ham that seemed to be truly enjoying himself. The massive crowd response he got when he took off his shirt surely did not hurt. I was very impressed when he came out by himself with an acoustic guitar and played a medley of songs that included a solid version of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game.”
Army of Anyone was essentially a “supergroup” consisting of Richard Patrick from Filter, the DeLeo brothers from Stone Temple Pilots and Ray Luzier from David Lee Roth’s old band that made one eponymous album that was released the prior November. I was skeptical because of another “supergroup” the DeLeo brothers had put together called Talk Show about 10 years earlier that fell a little short of what I had hoped BUT I love Filter and I love Stone Temple Pilots so I decided to give the album a whirl. It has it’s moments so I decided to go check them out because A.) I was jonesing to go see a concert and B.) I figured they would sprinkle in some Filter and STP songs to fill out their set. I was right. The songs from the album generally sounded even better live and who can resist a good old fashioned sing along to classic songs.
