This stream celebrated the 20th anniversary of the album Break The Cycle by having the band play the entire album front to back from a soundstage somewhere. This was another produced stream that combined the performance with interviews to give some context on what was happening with the band when the album was made, giving the stream a mini-documentary feel. Staind has never disappointed me throughout the many times I have seen them live and this was no exception. Aaron Lewis’ relative lack of physical movement during his performances are always more than offset by the nuances of his vocal performances and not being surrounded by a bunch of screaming sweaty rockers just helped me appreciate those nuances even more. Mike Mushok’s flawless guitar tone and note for note reproduction of the songs was impressive as was the rhythm section of bassist Johnny April and drummer Sal Giancarelli. My favorites on the album “Can’t Believe,” “Suffer” and “For You” were my favorites to hear on the stream but perhaps my favorite moment of the stream was unexpectedly a beautifully acoustic version of “Epiphany” performed solo by Aaron Lewis. In a musical landscape where bands come and go so often it is nice to be 20 years on and have this band and these songs still holding their own.
Having previously always taken at least a year off between attending Aftershock festivals we had no intention of making 2019 our first back-to-back year… but then the lineup was released and it was too insanely good to pass up. Bob, Larry and I all flew in together and met up with Joe, who flew in from Portland within minutes of our flight landing. We then made our way over to the Embassy Suites where much to nobody’s surprise our room was not ready as this was only about 9:30 in the morning. We were not, however, too early to grab some beers at a nearby convenience store to go along with our omelet and potatoes that we snagged from the still open breakfast buffet at the Embassy Suites. A short while after refusing to pay $100 for a BS early check-in fee we were approached by the guy working the front desk who told us our room was suddenly ready. This is about the time Ken showed up to join in on the action so I am convinced management just did not want five degenerates sitting around getting wasted in their lobby at 10 am.
It is about this time that Larry started to question if he should stay the whole weekend because of surprise work that was doled out to him. He found out a massive project was going to be due Monday morning when he checked his email as soon as we landed in Sacramento. At first he thought he could slough it off but as the morning went on reality sunk in that he simply could not so he made the decision to stay only the first day and catch a plane back to San Diego on Saturday morning. It sucked that we were going to lose him for two of the three days but one less body was not completely unwelcome as our room turned out to have two double beds and a pull out couch instead of two queen beds as originally thought.
First up for the festival and the day was Philip H. Anselmo & The Illegals. It was announced that these lads would be opening on the final leg of Slayer’s farewell tour and playing nothing but Pantera songs so it seemed reasonable that we may get nothing but Pantera songs for this set as well. That turned out to be the case and jeezus it was awesome! They played eight choice songs that whipped everyone into a frenzy and left my voice raw from screaming along. Why the festival organizers put these guys on so early I will never know.
SETLIST: Mouth For War, Strength Beyond Strength, Becoming, Yesterday Don’t Mean Shit, I’m Broken, Walk, Domination/Hollow, Fucking Hostile
After climaxing so early in the day it was a welcome respite to have some time to burn before Clutch, which was the next band I really cared about. In the meantime we checked out Motionless in White, which I can only describe as Marilyn Manson Jr., and I Prevail, which basically followed the Linkin Park template but with far worse results.
While I am always pumped to see Clutch unfortunately they never play the old shit that I really want to hear, which is material from the first few albums. This occasion was no different but it was a solid overall set with newer staples “Earth Rocker” and “X-Ray Visions” as well as a couple songs from Blast Tyrant and one from Jam Room.
SETLIST: The Mob Goes Wild, X-Ray Visions, Evil, Cypress Grove, In Walks Barbarella, Earth Rocker, Gimme the Keys, Willie Nelson, Electric Worry, One Eye Dollar
A wildcard for the festival was Staind because they had been on hiatus off and on since about 2012 when Aaron Lewis decided to do a solo country thing. I had not personally seen them for 16 years but did get a chance to see them five times before this in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. They sounded great and Aaron Lewis was moving around much more than he used to back in the day. I am sure this was in no small part due to his diversion into country music.
SETLIST: Eyes Wide Open, Paper Jesus, Not Again, Fade, For You, Crawl, Right Here, Outside, So Far Away, Raw. It’s Been Awhile, Mudshovel
It is about this time I passed out the gummy rings I had brought to everyone but Larry because I wanted them to kick in right as the night’s headliner Slipknot was going on. Besides Philip H. Alselmo and the Illegals today was all about Slipknot for me. It had been three years since I last saw them and now they had a new album under their belt, the outstanding We Are Not Your Kind that was released two months prior to this show, which was just enough time to digest it before witnessing the juggernaut that is Slipknot. Less than an hour after eating the gummy rings everyone in our group got separated from each other and phones do not do a bit of good in densely packed situations such as this so unfortunately I found myself watching Slipknot by myself…unless you count the other 49,995 people that were there. No matter how many times I see Slipknot I am astounded by the energy projected from nine guys going crazy on a stage. It is almost like a giant fireball getting as close as it can to burning you without actually burning you. “Solway Firth” killed live and I was just about dead after they played “The Heretic Anthem” right after but this was only halfway through their set.
SETLIST: People = Shit, (sic), Get This, Unsainted, Before I Forget, Solway Firth, The Heretic Anthem, Psychosocial, The Devil In I, Prostetics, Vermillion, Wait and Bleed, Sulfur, All Out Life, Duality, Spit It Out, Surfacing
It does not surprise me that everyone got separated after the weed kicked in because we had been drinking since 10 am but it did surprise me that I found Larry before I left. We decided to avoid the craziness of catching an Uber and walked along the river all the way back to the hotel to find our compadres waiting for us with a cold one.
I know I went to this show with Jason but I cannot remember if Lucinda drove up with me from Portland for this or not. Endfest was an annual festival put on by the Seattle radio station 107.7 The End. I made to trek to see four bands. I ended up seeing three…Powerman 5000 was the first band playing that I wanted to see and they played the second stage. I had been a fan since the album Tonight the Stars Revolt! but never got the chance to see them until this concert, which was about a month after they released the album Transform. They played their set with a lot of enthusiasm and I remember thinking that they should have been playing the main stage but I guess that would have created too much of a challenge to change gear between each band. Cold was supposed to be the first band on the main stage but right before Powerman took the stage someone from the radio station informed us that Cold would not be playing because the bassist broke his hand. That meant the next band up was Staind. I had seen Staind four times prior to this but I was still excited to see them again because they had just released a new album called 14 Shades of Grey about a month earlier. Closing out the show with no shortage of pyrotechnics was Godsmack. They were touring for their album Faceless that had been released just a couple months prior to this show. Although I had seen Godsmack three times prior to this, it was the first time I saw them with their new drummer Shannon Larkin. This band was made for the big stage and took full advantage of their headlining slot, tearing through the hits and deeper cuts that I do not normally get much of at a show like this.
I had seen each of these bands before but Lucinda had not. It was just her and I at this show and we were able to get very good seats on the left side of the stage. Static-X had just released their second album Machine about six months before this show and had the material pretty polished by the time they rolled into Portland. Staind was touring behind their recently released album Break the Cycle. Staind is an interesting band to watch live because Aaron Lewis doesn’t move around the stage very quickly, no matter how heavy the song is. They did rock though. Linkin Park was also there still promoting their first album and played it almost in its entirety. Finally came the real reason we spent our Friday night at the concert, Stone Temple Pilots. They were touring for their severely underrated album Shangri-La Dee Da. Scott Weiland appeared to be drunk at this show but the band nonetheless put on a very great entertaining show. Scott thanked the people who had drinks with him at the strip club Mary’s the prior evening. During “Hollywood Bitch” they had a very slutty looking lady come dance around on stage only to reveal at the end of the song that it was actually a man. They had Chester from Linkin Park come sing a song with them at some point. The highlight was when Weiland started to rant about how rock n’ roll was stolen from all the black jazz musicians. He jumped out into the crowd and walked right through it to the very back of the arena all while ranting. The funny thing is that he didn’t have any security near him but nobody touched him. I think everyone was a little scared of the guy. The other thing that stands out in my mind is a moment when they left the stage. Moments later the whole stage revolved 180 degrees and there they were sitting on couches playing an acoustic version of the Beatles “Revolution.” Magical.
It turns out all the previous crap I dealt with in the past to try to see Korn had been rewarded back to me in the form of good karma. I received the Issues album a few days before it was in stores because I had won it off a radio contest on KUFO. Then I won tickets to the show and a meet and greet backstage off the radio when they came to town to support said album! I had never previously won anything before so I was pretty excited. I enlisted Roscoe to be my “date” since I knew he would be the person that would appreciate meeting Korn the most. I really didn’t know what to expect but I guess I figured that we would get to be in a room with the members, have a beer and be able to shoot the shit with them for a little bit. Quite the contrary. They lined up all 10 of us winners and guests of winners against a wall backstage and one by one the members appeared and went down the line to sign autographs and that was it. I’ve never been a fan of autographs because anyone can write someone’s name on a piece of paper and say so and so signed it. This being said I didn’t get their autographs. Instead I shook their hand and said, “thanks for rocking.” Fieldy seemed annoyed that I didn’t want his autograph, David was way shorter than I thought he was, and Munky was pretty funny. He said something to the effect of “I just woke up” and actually did stay and talk longer than anyone else. The show itself was blistering. Staind opened for them and during the interim “Spike & Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation” played on a few very large screens. As you can tell by the setlist Korn played for quite awhile on this night. I don’t think anyone in the building minded one bit.
SETLIST: Dead, Falling Away From Me, It’s On!, Got the Life, Ball Tongue/Lodi Dodi, Twist, A.D.I.D.A.S., Good God, Trash, Clown, It’s Gonna Go Away, Shoots and Ladders, Freak on a Leash, Let’s Get This Party Started, Make Me Bad, Dead Bodies Everywhere, Somebody Someone, Faget, Kill You, 4U, Blind
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.
By the time of this concert three pretty major things happened in my life: I graduated from Columbia Basin Community College with my AA, the transmission in my Mustang blew up, and Rose decided to move back to Corvallis for good, which ultimately made it an easier decision to end our relationship for good. After receiving my AA the plan was to pursue a Bachelor’s degree at one of the state schools in Washington, Oregon, or California. The problem was that I didn’t yet know what I wanted to pursue and didn’t want to waste time and money until I figured it out. This was probably the one thing I would change if I could go back in time. The only thing that I was remotely interested in was film school but for some reason convinced myself that it was not realistic. School would’ve pretty much been paid for by Financial Aid due to my mother being deceased and my father working under the table. Rose moved out in June and I was only working part time at UPS , which was not really enough to live on but I had saved a little money and used my credit card to get me through the summer. The place was a loft that was set up really well. After my Mustang blew up, my cousin helped me get a Geo Metro. It was the worst possible chick magnet and teal in color but was cheap, had low mileage, got good gas mileage, and was a 2-door.
Roscoe drove Earl and I to this show. The opener was Staind. We liked them a lot at the time based on their album Dysfunction, which is what they were on tour for. They rocked. Next up was Kid Rock who was touring for his breakthrough album Devil Without a Cause. I was never a fan of his but he does have some decent stuff in pieces and I respect him as a musician. He was on his first major tour and Jo C was with him. I remember thinking it was pretty funny to have this midget walking around the stage saying “show me ya titties!” in a funny voice. R.I.P. Then Limp Bizkit was up. Their star was on the rise due to the new album Significant Other. This was the second stop on this tour but the bass player Sam Rivers had already managed to mess up his hand in Seattle on opening night. He played through the pain and the show was great. They played all the songs I wanted to hear. The highlight though was a moment with Roscoe. He was wearing a neck brace and made his way to the front of the stage. Fred Durst said “and you with neckbrace, you need to get the fuck out of the mosh pit.” Classic.
