Filter/Orgy 5/19/16

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So this show had been on my radar largely because Orgy was opening up for Filter. I had only seen Orgy once (see Big Stink 4 8/8/99) and just missed them play a headlining show at the end of January. I was on the fence for this show since it was on a “school night” but decided against going once I learned that the only original member of Orgy was the singer Jay Gordon. I guess if you’re going to have only one original member the singer is the best person to have because the voice/emotion is not as easy to replicate as guitar tones. Ultimately I was just scared of tarnishing the memory of the first time I saw Orgy since it was so great. That is until I won four tickets on a lark from entering a contest from a Facebook ad. I never win anything so that was pretty cool. I got Tom and Bob on board but Tom flaked out at the last minute. I ended up selling one of the tickets for $10 to a guy that met us at the venue. There were two other bands (Death Valley High and Vampires Everywhere) but Orgy was already playing when we walked in. We got to see them play “Octagon,” “Fiction (Dreams in Digital),” “Suckerface,” “Stitches,” “Blue Monday” and a few new songs that did not sound bad. It was fantastic. Not as good as the first time I saw them but still fantastic (though apparently they could not afford to buy their own backdrop (see picture). For “Blue Monday” Jay walked around the floor and was going up to people having them sing verses of the song.

Filter headlined the show and were touring for their new album Crazy Eyes. I love Filter and saw them about five times prior to this but I have just not been able to get into any of the albums after The Amalgamat. Lucky for me roughly half the songs they played were from the first three albums including “(Can’t You) Trip Like I Do,” “You Walk Away,” “Jurassitol,” “Take A Picture,” “Welcome to the Fold,” “American Cliche’,” “The Best Things,” and “Hey Man Nice Shot.” Richard Patrick had an entirely new touring band that seemed to click a little better than the last time I saw Filter open up for Chevelle and Bush. Rich bore a slight resemblance to Hitler partially because of the lighting, partially because of my beer consumption and mostly because of his haircut. If he decided to grow that stupid little mustache he could get cast for the role of Hitler no problem. My faith has been restored in seeing Filter live. Now I just need to get into albums four through seven…

I would be remiss if I did not share the story about the Uber we caught after the show. Guy picks us up I say how’s it going? He says alright but my transmission is shitty. I say “you know what’s good for a shitty transmission? Pantera.” He says I don’t have that but fuck yeah! Then he puts on Metallica’s And Justice for All album (my favorite Metallica album) at full volume and we proceed to rock the fuck out the entire drive home but halfway through the ride he reaches for his glovebox and says “You guys wanna smoke some weed?” Best. Uber. Ever.

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Aftershock 9/15/13

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This day started off with some NFL action at Buffalo Wild Wings. After the wings weren’t the only things that were sauced we headed over to the park for Marvin to pull his ticket shenanigans and get in for only $20. I was not really interested in anyone on this day except for Volbeat since I had not seen them before. Filter was scheduled to play but cancelled at the last minute and who can blame them since they were slated to play the dreaded third stage. Then again after witnessing the version of Filter that opened for Bush and Chevelle just a couple years before this it was not hard to understand why they were scheduled for the third stage.

After checking out god knows which bands that did not impress me at all Volbeat finally played. They were good but not great.

Somehow it was Avenged Sevenfold that closed out the entire festival. I seriously just don’t get what the appeal is to this band. They suck big hairy balls. At least we had beer and each other to keep us occupied!

 

Chevelle 9/27/11

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Three bands that you like for the price of one is always cool, even if it hard to understand how these particular three bands ended up sharing the same bill. Bob and Tom felt the same way so they came along for the ride.

Since the time I had last seen Filter about three and a half years before this at the Casbah they had released two new albums: Anthems for the Damned and The Trouble with Angels. These albums are decent and have grown on me over time but to me just do not hold a candle to the first three Filter albums. Unfortunately I feel that Filter’s performance also fell into the “decent” category for this show. The posturing shirtless bassist was distracting but even outside of that something was just not clicking the way I had seen Filter click in the past.

I had not seen Bush for almost 12 years so this was interesting. Since that time they had only released two albums including the newest album The Sea of Memories that had just been released two weeks before this show. I had not really kept up with Bush over the years or heard anything from the two newest albums. This made it that much better when they came out and rocked the fuck out of the place. At one point Gavin came out into the crowd and got on top of the side bar like he was auditioning to work at Coyote Ugly.

SETLIST: The Mirror of the Signs, Little Things, I Believe In You, Greedy Fly, The Sound of Winter, Everything Zen, The Chemicals Between Us, The Heart of the Matter, The People That We Love, All Night Doctors, Swallowed, The Afterlife, Machinehead, Come Together, Glycerine, Comedown

Apparently without realizing it I got on the every two year plan for Chevelle as I literally saw them every two years since 2003 with the last time being the drunken debacle at the House of Blues in 2009. These guys are road warriors. Despite being a little over two months before the release of Hats Off to the Bull we got to hear “Face to the Floor” for the first time. The highlight of the show and one of the coolest things I have ever seen at a concert was when a speaker house left literally caught fire and burned for a good 45 seconds before being extinguished. Fittingly enough this happened when they were playing “An Evening With El Diablo” but the best part is that they just kept playing without missing a beat. To be fair they may not have known the speaker caught fire but I like to at least pretend they did and just kept going.

SETLIST: Family System, Jars, Get Some, Letter From a Thief, Vitamin R (Leading Us Along), Face to the Floor, Sleep Apnea, Send the Pain Below, An Evening With El Diablo, The Red, The Clincher, I Get It

 

Filter 3/2/08

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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.

Army of Anyone 3/4/07

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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.

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Snowball 12/8/99

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Apparently Filter and Bush played but I only really remember the Foo Fighters because I had never seen them before. I became an immediate fan simply based on Dave Grohl being in Nirvana but actually liked the music too. Dave Grohl is a badass and he kicked a lot of ass that night. They were on tour for the recently released There Is Nothing Left to Lose album. One memorable moment was when Dave said “I’m gonna sing this next song to Taylor” and played whatever song it was just facing Taylor Hawkins but the highlight was when Dave got behind the drum kit himself. He just went nuts and reminded everyone just how talented he is.

This was an interesting show for me because of my love life. I was hired on for the holiday season at a retail store called Meier & Frank. Working in a four level retail store at the mall was a wonderful way to meet women. The problem was that I was not interested in any of the girls that outwardly showed interest in me. I worked as a “floater,” which meant I didn’t know what department I was going to work in until I showed up for work. One day I was assigned to Men’s Sportswear and that’s when I saw her. An angelic, sweet, and innocent looking girl named Lucinda. I couldn’t stop looking at her but she wanted nothing to do with me. A day shortly after I was assigned to a department that was right next to Men’s Sportswear and I happened to work with a girl named Robin, who happened to be Lucinda’s best friend. Turns out Lucinda had a boyfriend. Not that long after she broke up with him and invited me to her birthday party. It was at Robin’s apartment, which happened to be in the same building as Lucinda’s apartment. You get where I’m going with this. I previously agreed to go to this concert with Rose but had since fallen for Lucinda harder than any girl I had ever fallen for. Rose’s friend Tyler worked at the Memorial Coliseum and I remember not really wanting him to see me there with another girl because I really wasn’t trying to be with Rose at that point.

SETLIST: Stacked Actors, My Poor Brain, Breakout, Learn to Fly, Up in Arms, Ain’t it the Life, Monkey Wrench, Alone + Easy Target, Everlong, Aurora, This is a Call, I’ll Stick Around

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The Family Values Tour 10/16/99

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I know there were other bands at this show but the only ones I remember or probably cared about were Staind, Primus, Filter and Limp Bizkit. They all performed great sets but I was especially stoked to see Filter for the third time because they had just released Title of Record a few months prior. It had also been a few years since I had seen Filter, as compared to the other bands that I saw earlier in the year. It was still a nice treat and good bang for the buck. The only person who went with me was Roscoe and this was one of the first concerts that I didn’t have to drive three hours to get to because on October 1st I decided to move to Portland, OR (even after I had promised myself years earlier I would not) with the assistance of my sister and Roscoe.

Portland was a funny choice for me because I knew people in Seattle and I was already a Washington resident. I didn’t know a soul in Portland, which was part of the appeal, and it was only an hour and a half to Corvallis where Rose was (we were still talking). I also got a callback from John Casablancas. They basically told me that I won a scholarship to attend 10 weeks of “modeling classes.” Looking back on it now makes me laugh my head off but I figured it was something in a place where I had nothing. I somehow fit all my stuff in a bedroom that I rented out of a house. The owner lived downstairs and rented out the entire upstairs that consisted of 4 bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. The problem was that the actual refrigerator portion of the fridge/freezer combo didn’t work and there was no oven or stove in the kitchen. This lead to me eat many a meal from the nearby Jack In The Box, which to this day I can’t eat very often. Beyond this the guy that I shared a wall with would buy a five pound bucket of pork chitterlings and boil them on a hotplate. I had never even heard of pork chitterlings but I now know that they have one of the most awful aromas I have ever smelled.

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White Zombie 3/16/96

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This was another one of those shows I couldn’t believe was coming to my town. Filter was the opening band for White Zombie and I was excited to see both bands again. I think I went to this show with Marvin and Earl. I remember Richard Patrick coming out onto the stage on crutches because of some kind of leg injury. He sat on the drum riser drinking a beer but sang his ass off. He could have been a prima donna and bowed out of the show but he powered through. It was going to be tough to compete with the last time I saw them anyways but I was excited nonetheless. White Zombie was still touring for the Astro Creep 2000 album and if memory serves me correctly I think they played just about the whole album. The stage setup was more elaborate this time than the previous show but something seemed wrong. It seemed like Rob Zombie was lip syncing. This compounded with the alcohol that was coursing through my veins made me extremely unhappy. I left the show so convinced it was a fake performance that I ripped my blacklight friendly White Zombie poster off of my wall. To this day I do not know if I was correct or not.WZ

Filter 9/9/95

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The now defunct DV8 was not a big place. Jack had got me into Filter after he had bought Short Bus based on liking “Hey Man Nice Shot.” I was excited because it was another chance to visit Seattle. Me, Marvin, Ryno, Jack, and Jason all went up and again stayed with our friend T-Bone. We had quite a few beers before going into this show and therefore were ready to be rowdy. Everclear opened up for Filter. This was to support their album Sparkle and Fade but the single “Santa Monica” that would propel them to heavy rotation hadn’t yet been released. They rocked very, very hard that night and the energy translation in a place that small was pretty incredible. After they were done with their set Art Alexakis was hanging out in the crowd and Ryno went up to him and was kind of an asshole. He presented his ticket stub to him and asked for an autograph but “on the back so the Filter guy can sign the front.” What a douche. Next up was Filter. If you are a Filter fan you can only imagine the delight of hearing most of the entire first album played to you live in a small place. A delight and reality for us.