Deftones

Big Stink 4 8/8/99

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Remember that other rock station in Portland I told you about? This was their summer rock festival. This was my second concert at the Portland Meadows and Roscoe and I drove down from Kennewick. The first band that I wanted to see was Zebrahead. I liked them based on their album Waste of Mind. They played on the second stage and with a very high amount of energy. They touted themselves as “mutherfuckinzebraheadbitch” which was also pretty damn funny. I distinctly remember using the time that Blink 182 was on to get food and chill since I didn’t and still don’t give a shit about them.  After they left we were on to the highlight of the show for me, Orgy. They are the darkest band I have ever seen in the daylight. They just had a very powerful stage presence. They were on tour for their debut album Candyass and this turned out to be the only time I saw them which sucks because I like their unreleased-at-the-time next album Vapor Transmission even better. The next band I wanted to see was Oleander. I started liking them thanks to their song “Why I’m Here.” They were on tour for their first album February Son and they rocked. After they were done the next band up were hometown boys Everclear. This was the second time I saw them but the first since they became huge MTV staples. I think they put on an extra special show since they were in Portland or maybe the stars just aligned but they put on a great show. The headlining band was Deftones. This was the fourth time I saw them and they were only getting better every time I saw them. You have to give them credit for touring their ass off and they still were for Around the Fur.

An interesting sidenote of this show was that I was approached by John Casablancas’ people about modeling. I was semi-interested because at this point I did not know what the hell I was going to do with my life, I knew that the possibility of travel existed and getting paid for hanging around with attractive women didn’t sound that bad either. It’s not that I’m incredible to look at, it’s just that my body type fits the mold and I don’t look like everybody else. This summer I had taken pictures and sent them off to modeling agencies in New York and Los Angeles. I heard back from 2 of the agencies that I sent pictures to, one in NY and one in L.A.

Ozzfest 7/18/99

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Main Stage: Black Sabbath, Rob Zombie, Deftones, Slayer, Primus, Godsmack, System of a Down

Second Stage: Fear Factory, Static-X, Slipknot, Puya, Drain STH, hed (pe), Apartment 26, Flashpoint

This was the first Ozzfest that had come in my proximity. Ozzfest had been going since 1996 and kind of filled the summer void that Lollapalooza had left. I was pretty excited about this show because every band on the main stage was a band I wanted to see even though I had already seen some of the bands before. A girl in one of my classes named Tawni turned me onto System of a Down. I was lucky enough to sit next to her in my math class and we had similar musical musings. My cousin Earl really liked them too and gave me their first album on CD for my 21st birthday. They were the first band on the main stage and touring for their eponymous album. Claude strikes again though. Bless his soul but the guy’s just not all there sometimes and this time he didn’t quite comprehend the importance of leaving at a specified time. Long story short we arrived just in time to see the last 3 songs of System of a Down’s set. By we I mean Earl and I only because we ran all the way down to the floor from the moment we arrived inside the Pearly Gates. I believe Roscoe was also with us? The next band up was Godsmack who was also touring for their eponymous album. They were on it. They played pretty much their whole first album. Primus was next and let me just say that Les Claypool is a badass. They were still a few months away from releasing Antipop so they technically touring for their EP of cover songs Rhinoplasty. This is probably about the time in the show we started shifting from the first stage to the second stage all the way up on the hill. We saw Static-X up there, who was on tour for their new album Wisconsin Death Trip! We also saw Slipknot who had just unleashed their debut eponymous album on the world a few short weeks earlier. I wasn’t really into them at the time but did find it quite entertaining to see nine guys dressed up in fucked up masks rocking their ass off and just flat out going crazy onstage. Back to the mainstage was Slayer whose newest effort at the time was Diabolus in Musica. I love their fat ass guitar riffs but at the time just could not get with Tom Araya’s voice. Next up was Deftones. This was the third time I was lucky enough to see them and they were nothing short of amazing. Deftones are a hard act to follow but Rob Zombie somehow managed. It had only been three months since the last time I saw him but I think this performance was much better. Maybe it was just because I knew Korn wasn’t following him this time. The closing band was none other than Black Sabbath! I’m not talking about that shit with Dio, I’m talking about the real Black Sabbath with Ozzy. I was as excited about this as any other band of the day. Never in a million years did I think I would ever get the opportunity to see a band that was huge in the 1970’s. I really got into Black Sabbath when I was about 16. It started with the album Paranoid and then I bought the whole catalog one album at a time. They did not disappoint me. Ozzy was still as crazy as he was made out to be, Tony Iommi was razor sharp on his riffs, and the rhythm section was holding down the groove. Little did I know that this would not be the last time I would see them.

KUFO Rockfest 6/21/98

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Portland, OR had two big rock stations back in the day: KUFO and KNRK. Every year they both had a summer show with at least a few big bands. This was my first experience for KUFO’s Rockfest. I was increasingly starting to go to Portland because of Rose’s parents in Corvallis. Besides, Seattle and Portland are both pretty equidistant from Kennewick, WA. The Portland Meadows is a horse racing track in North Portland that was definitely not made for concerts. The area right in front of the stage was just loose dirt that whipped up into a dust storm whenever someone good was on stage. I was excited to see Clutch, Jimmie’s Chicken Shack, Deftones, and Creed. Clutch didn’t end up showing up for some reason so Jimmie’s Chicken Shack was the first band I wanted to see of the day. Roscoe turned me onto them somehow and they were exactly what I expected-they rocked. I only remember the singer/guitarist saying that he wrote the song “High” in his bedroom when he lived in Portland. The second time seeing Deftones was not as cool as the first but they rocked just as hard. I was cracking up with laughter when they decided to cover Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” and nailed it. I heard of Creed from Rose and am ashamed to admit it but got into their first album My Own Prison, which is what they were touring for at this point. This was before Scott Stapp turned into a Jesus-Christ-Pose little bitch. I do remember being very impressed with their guitar player Mark Tremonti, who fucking killed it that night.

 

Deftones 11/6/97

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This was the second of the two shows I went to see in Seattle. I had first heard Deftones on The Crow: City of Angels Soundtrack. Based on that song, “Teething,” I bought Adrenaline and was a full on fan by the time Marvin showed up at my house with Around the Fur about two months before the album was released! (His college roommate worked at the Central Washington State University radio station) So…when Deftones rolled into Seattle about a week and a half after the album was officially released we already knew all the songs. I remember being pretty drunk at this show because Roscoe and I were drinking out in the car prior to the show, which was nothing unusual for us. The RKCNDY is now defunct but back in the day it was a really small place to see a show and when a band like Deftones comes through there with only two albums worth of material to choose from you better bet your ass it was rockin’. Deftones have since matured into something otherworldly but back then they were at their heaviest.

Shortly after this is when my world really did get rocked. The day I left for Seattle I gave Jack my half of the rent because it was due that day. I didn’t think twice about it but then about two weeks later we were getting our apartment sprayed for bugs. They had left an instruction sheet with us on how to prepare the apartment but we had lost it. I went to the rental office to get another and the manager asked me which apartment I lived in. After I told her she said, “Oh, you’re the guys who haven’t paid the rent yet.” My jaw hit the floor. “No. You must be mistaken.” No mistake. I stormed back to my place and woke Jack by throwing his door open. I think I said something along the lines of “What the FUCK is going on?” He then explained to me that he had been fired and didn’t want to tell me because he knew I would give him shit. Jack was the kind of smooth guy that could get hired anywhere but then would get fired because he did not want to wake up after a hard night of partying, knowing he could just go get another job. This particular morning got a little sweeter when I demanded my half of the rent back. He informed me that part of the money was used to keep our electricity on, since he had not been paying his half of that either. Things just spiraled from there. I quit my job (the only job I have ever quit) because I needed to go straighten things out with the property management and my boss was being a dick. When I told the other supervisor I quit, he quit too. It was a very empowering feeling but then reality set in. I had no incoming money and a debt to settle. I had to worry about two full months rent because our lease was not up until December and I didn’t have any confidence that Jack was going to be contributing. He had already fucked up his credit by then but mine was perfect. The night I quit I went to a party to take my mind off everything and some girl ended up kissing me. When I told Rose (who had moved back by then) what happened, we broke up. Then my Veiled Chameleon that I had just gotten months prior was on his deathbed. Then my 1981 Pontiac Firebird got stolen and I had no insurance! I had put it up for sale thinking I could pay off the lease, get a cheaper car, kick Jack out, and get the money out of him later. I had also just signed up for Community College but now had no way to get there. This all topped off by the fact that it was a pretty cold winter. At that moment I decided that I would never go back to that situation again and I never have. I knew things could only get better from there and my new mantra was “it could always be worse.”

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