Casbah

Local H 5/6/15

IMG_3582

For my third time seeing Local H I had the distinct pleasure of being able to revisit the Casbah. This place is just barely bigger than the other two places I saw Local H but much more well known. They had just released the killer new album Hey, Killer (like what I did there?) three weeks before this, which was the first to feature new drummer Ryan Harding. In the words of Scott Lucas, “The goal with this record was to trim the fat and just pile on the hooks. All killer, no filler is how the saying goes.” They ended up playing all but three tracks off the album and left room in their set for some of the older fan favorites. I still cannot get over how much sound these two guys can make but I love it. I would have paid much more than the $15 I paid to do it all over again.

SETLIST: The Last Picture Show in Zion, Creature Comforted, All the Kids Are Right, Gig Bag Road, Another February, Fritz’s Corner, City of Knives, Freshly Fucked, Hands on the Bible, Leon and the Game of Skin, The One With ‘Kid’, Deep Cut, Mansplainer, California Songs, John the Baptist Blues, The Misanthrope, Bound for the Floor, That’s What They All Say, High-Fivin MF

H2

local-h-hey-killer

Filter 3/2/08

sc00022290

Concerts two nights in a row? Hell yeah. I saw Richard Patrick about a year before this with Army of Anyone but I hadn’t seen Filter since 1999 when their newest album was Title of Record. The tour for The Amalgumut was cancelled when Richard entered rehab and now here we were six years after that and still a couple months away from the release of Anthems for the Damned. I vaguely remember Marvin and myself buying tickets off some dude from Craigslist at the last minute and the meeting feeling like a sketchy drug deal. Apparently San Diego was the very first stop on this tour. The band was well rehearsed and the energy in such a small place was electric. It reminded me of the first time I saw them at DV8 in Seattle about six months after Short Bus came out.

Image

Helmet 9/13/07

6362162721_f6a2ec1c99_b

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…

Helmet 10/29/04

sc0003c96803

Helmet came onto my radar via the song “Unsung” from the album Meantime. My friends and I loved Helmet from that point on and picked up copies of both Betty and Aftertaste the day they came out. Needless to say this was a very exciting show for me. My first time seeing Helmet and my first time at the Casbah. It is a quintessential small rock palace that I would estimate holds about 200 people tops. I think it was Marvin, Dee and I. I cannot remember exactly what Helmet played but they had just released the album Size Matters about a month and a half before this show. I want to say they divided up the setlist pretty evenly amongst the five albums out up to this point but I was drinking and smoking and am pretty far removed from this day at the time of this entry so who knows. I do know they rocked.

Helmet