Seattle

MoPOP Founders Award 2020 Honoring Alice In Chains Livestream 12/1/20

This was a star studded free livestream to honor the career of Alice In Chains and raise money for the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, also known locally as EMP or Experience Music Project as it was originally named. After 10 minutes of messing around with trying to get the feed it finally kicked on with Alice In Chains in the middle of performing “Your Decision.” Observations from the two and a half hour event:

  • Jerry Cantrell reprised his role as Nona from back in the day when they did the Nona Tapes! This was awesome because I had the original home video on VHS back in the day.
  • Mike McCready made a brief appearance doing the opening riff of “It Ain’t Like That” that made me want to hear the whole song but no dice.
  • Ann Wilson sang “Rooster” spliced with old Alice In Chains footage with Layne. She has an amazing voice but I just wasn’t feeling her version.
  • Corey Taylor, Dave Navarro and Taylor Hawkins did a performance of “Man In the Box” with current Jane’s Addiction bass player Chris Chaney. Some might say Corey was making the song his own with the vocals but to me it sounded like he was just struggling to imitate Layne. This is coming from a guy that loves Corey Taylor so no disrespect to him but after hearing two great singers do Alice In Chains songs it just made me appreciate how incredibly unique and talented Layne was even more.  At this point I realized I was in for a long night.
  • Duff McKagan and Shooter Jennings did a pretty rad version of  “Down In a Hole” with Duff impressively playing all the instruments except lead guitar. This is such a powerful song and they captured the overall mood perfectly.
  • Korn did an admirable job covering “Would?” but cover songs are a strange beast to me. I love Korn but feel like you either need to absolutely fucking nail it, make it way different or make it better in some way and this did not do any of those things for me.
  • Mark Lanegan and his backing band of misfits including Nancy Wilson covered “Brother” and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just got done reading Lanegan’s book and I could tell he was giving an inspired performance for his fallen friend.
  • Fishbone did a cover of “Them Bones” with horns and all and it was awesome. They definitely made this song their own but kept the bones of the song intact (pun intended).
  • MoPOP has a contest for local talent called Sound Off and at this point the program featured a handful of gifted artists doing various bits of Alice In Chains songs. 
  • An artist named Liv Warfield did a cover of “Put You Down” that was respectable. It is always nice to hear women in rock.
  • Mastodon covered “Again” and the music part was on point but again I just was not digging the vocals.
  • Kim Thayil made an appearance with a group of people I did not recognize doing a full-length version of “It Ain’t Like That,” which finally quieted my brain after the teaser Mike McCready threw out at the top of the program.
  • Kim Thayil and Krist Novoselic doing “Drone” with two female singers was right up there as the highlight of the whole thing for me. It simply sounded great.
  • Weirdo extraordinaire Les Claypool made a cameo doing a crazy partial bass solo version of “Man In the Box” that was pretty cool.
  • Lily Cornell Silver (daughter of Chris Cornell and Susan Silver) made her professional music performance debut playing piano and singing the beautifully haunting “Black Gives Way to Blue” with Queensryche’s Chris DeGarmo accompanying her on acoustic guitar and she killed it. I guess it does not hurt to have great genes.
  • Mark Lanegan made a second appearance doing “Nutshell,” which I did not enjoy as much as his first act but still liked nonetheless.
  • Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd did “Angry Chair” with Tad Doyle singing and it stirred the same emotions in me as the Mastodon cover did: musically it was great but Tad’s vocals just were not doing it for me. Mike McCready showed up again during this just long enough to lay down a scorching one-two punch solo with Kim.
  • Billy Corgan did a stark rendition of “Check My Brain” alone with an acoustic guitar. I love Billy but if you have read this far then you know his voice was definitely out of its element here.
  • Metallica was one of the most anticipated performances of the night but when they finally appeared doing a partial acoustic version of “Would?” (that had already been done by Korn) it was a little disappointing.
  • The grand finale was Alice In Chains doing “No Excuses” and it was a nice ending to a really magnificent evening.

It is noteworthy that it was free to watch the event but money was being raised through donations. While this was nice it was also disheartening to see the tally of money raised at a paltry amount even as we neared the end of the broadcast. They could have raised way more money if they had just charged something in the first place. Since most of the other streams I have been watching average $15 for a ticket I made a donation in that amount because music is important and MoPOP is doing good work for the community and the arts in general.

Deftones 10/24/03

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This was my eighth time seeing Deftones but first time since the release of their self-titled album that had come out in May of this year. I think they toured every day of the year and just kept coming back to the Pacific Northwest because they ran out of places to play otherwise…I believe this was also only my second time to the famed Paramount Theatre, a fantastic intimate venue in the heart of Seattle. Lucinda and I drove up to meet Marvin and somehow missed Clutch opening up the show. I had seen them twice before so I got over it, especially since Deftones ended up playing for a solid two hours. We had seats on the balcony, which meant we left the show dry unlike all the people down in the pit (not that it mattered because I am sure it was raining in Seattle). I was a little jealous of the people below because the selection of songs made me want to move more than I was able to with a seat behind me. I remember when they came back out for the “encore” Chino commented how they had made the album Adrenaline down the street and then they proceeded to tear through nearly the whole damn thing. Overall one of the more polished times I have seen Deftones.

SETLIST: Minerva, Bloody Cape, Be Quiet and Drive, MX, My Own Summer (Shove It), Feiticeira, Bored, Needles and Pins, Korea, Digital Bath, Battle-Axe, Mascara, Around the Fur, Hexagram, Headup, Change (In the House of Flies), 7 Words, Fireal, Engine No. 9, Nosebleed, Root, Lifter, Minus Blindfold, Knife Party

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Ministry 8/20/99

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I started liking Ministry thanks to Claude because of the album Psalm 69. We made the trip to Seattle again to see Ministry for the first time. This was also my first experience at the Paramount Theatre. We stayed with T-Bone and I remember that Claude and I got super stoned and were running a little late and then halfway to the venue Claude realized he forgot his ticket! All worked out well and we rocked the fuck out in the floor section of the Paramount. Ministry was on tour for Dark Side of the Spoon, which had come out just a few months prior.

Besides this show I still couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do with myself. I had missed the deadline to get into any school for the fall and since I still couldn’t get a full time job in the Tri-Cities I decided to move. I didn’t know where I wanted to move but knew that I had to leave the Tri-Cities. I was a big fish in a little pond and it was just too conservative for me. About the time of this show I had all but decided to sell everything I own and move to NYC and then got a little freaked out at the last minute about the possibility of being that far away from everything I’d ever known without a cent to my name. The idea was that the modeling agency was going to put me up in an apartment with other guys working for the agency. All I had to do was get there and presumably work. Ultimately I decided against it mostly because the agency had only been around for about six months and the risk/reward equation didn’t seem to add up. About a year later I ended up finding out that the agency went out of business shortly after this but it’s still fun to pose the question “what if?”

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God Lives Underwater 4/24/98

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I learned of God Lives Underwater the night of my Senior Prom. This type of event wasn’t my thing but a girl asked me so I decided to go in a tux with combat boots. Tara (my date) and her friend picked me up and went to get her date, who was a singer in a local band. He was playing for people in his house that night. Before they went on we got really, really stoned and were listening to this incredible music I had never heard before. It turns out it was God Lives Underwater. The singer decided he was too cool to go to a high school prom so I ended being stoned out of my mind and showing up with two dates. Who was the cool guy now? I bought the self-titled EP and Empty and loved them both. I went to this show with Marvin. They were on tour for the album Life in the So-Called Space Age. I remember that many parts on the album that were keyboards or synthesizers were turned into guitar parts for the live show, which made the music heavier and translated better for such a small venue. The highlight of this was “The Rush is Loud.” This was the last time I ever saw a show at the RKCNDY. R.I.P. David Reilly.

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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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311 11/5/97

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Less than two months later and my whole world was about to be rocked. Roscoe and I decided to make a trip to Seattle to see two consecutive nights worth of concerts. The first of these concerts was this 311 concert. I believe we stayed with my friend T-Bone. The first opening band was a then little known band called Incubus. They were touring for their second full length album S.C.I.E.N.C.E. Brandon Boyd had long dreadlocks and beat the hell out of a hand drum on “New Skin.” I remember thinking they were pretty good but then forgot about them until after Make Yourself came out. Next up was Sugar Ray. They were enjoying the success of the song “Fly” from the album Floored. I thought they were alright but the singer, Mark McGrath, was pretty funny because he was so sarcastic. Then came 311. They just flat out rocked. They were on tour for Transistor but I had got into them via Rose right after the self-titled album came out. Some short random girl asked me to put her on my shoulders, which was cool because she was cute, but that got old fast.

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.

White Zombie 6/26/95

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Summer 95’. It was the summer before my senior year in high school. I had gotten fired from Dairy Queen early in the summer for being me. When I first started working there I had an earring and apparently guys were not allowed to wear them but the ladies were. The first time I met the owner he said, “next time you come to work you might want to take that out.” I didn’t because I knew he couldn’t do anything about it and I was a 17 year old male with an attitude problem. Besides this I stole sundae coins that were good for one free sundae so my friends and I could go to a different Dairy Queen across town after we were stoned to get about 3 or 4 sundaes each. I also ate a pretty good deal of their food when I worked there and never paid for it even though I was supposed to. Other than that I was a great employee but the problem was that I just didn’t give a fuck. I lived with my parents and therefore didn’t actually need to have a job. Getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was able to have one last freeloader summer before having to become a man. My friends and I definitely took advantage. I got turned on to White Zombie when my friend Claude had bought the La Sexorcisto album. Marvin, Jason, James and I drove up to Seattle and stayed with our friend T-Bone. This concert was pretty memorable because of our seats. We used to have to go to the Rite Aid to get our concert tickets because the internet wasn’t really a factor yet. The tickets were in groups of 2 seats each and not together but the clerk assured us that the show was general admission. We trusted him and when we got there we found out that not only were we not allowed onto the floor section but that me and Marvin wouldn’t even be able to sit with Jason or James. This of course made us a little angry. Not only because we were lied to but also because every concert will have people that naturally want to sit in seats instead of standing on the floor. Why not let people choose once they get to the event? Anyways we sat apart and the openers were the Melvins and Babes in Toyland. They rocked but it was hard to enjoy them because I was so mad at having to sit in a seat. All I could think about was how I was going to get onto the floor. Right before Babes in Toyland were about to go off I looked to my left and there was a wave of people taking over one of the security guards. There was basically one security guard for each aisle so if one were to leave their post then the wave would have started in the vacant aisle. Without hesitation Marvin and I jumped up and were over the rail running into the mosh pit, where we knew we would be safe. The best part was that we ran into Jason and James on the floor because they were able to do the same thing. White Zombie were on tour for the recently released Astro Creep 2000 album that we had the pleasure of buying on the day it came out. They had a pretty elaborate stage setup and played their ass off that night. Or was it just the adrenaline of jumping over the rail?

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