Slayer 11/30/19

Slayer farewell ticket

It’s funny how life sometimes comes full circle. I saw the very first date of Slayer’s farewell tour in San Diego and here I was a year and a half later at the very last date of Slayer’s farewell tour in Los Angeles. Not just the last date of their tour but the last Slayer show EVER…or so they claim. I actually believe that these guys are done but time will tell. I was not sold on Slayer alone but when they announced Philip H. Anselmo & The Illegals doing a set of only Pantera songs, Ministry and Primus as the openers on a Saturday that made for a pretty easy decision. I got Bob, Kyle and Larry interested but the problem as always was getting tickets so we ended up with shitty seats but when all was said and done we did not sit in our actual seats even once.

Ticketmaster BS Slayer

Usually the openers suck, which gives us time to suck down more beers at the hotel room but when the opener is Philip Anselmo & the Illegals playing an entire set of Pantera songs you get your ass to the venue. I had just seen them a month and a half earlier in Sacramento but this is the closest I am ever going to get to seeing Pantera again so better to strike while the iron is hot. They did play three songs that they did not play at Aftershock so that was the cherry on top, including “This Love” with a brief Jason Momoa appearance. This is about the time I started getting lit so it is not surprising that I have no pictures from this point forward in the night.

SETLIST: Mouth for War, Becoming, I’m Broken, Goddamn Electric, Strength Beyond Strength, Fucking Hostile, This Love, A New Level

Wait, there’s more after that kick in the nuts and the next band up is Ministry? Fuck yeah! This was the first time I got to see Ministry with ex-original Tool bassist Paul D’Amour and their choice of setlist was absolutely perfect. It was heavy as fuck and the songs seemed to have their edge back. Only much later did I find out that Joey Jordison was drumming for Ministry and now it all makes perfect sense.

SETLIST: The Missing, Deity, Stigmata, Supernaut, Just One Fix, N.W.O., Thieves, Jesus Built My Hotrod

Primus seemed slightly out of place in this lineup but then again Primus are kind of always out of place next to any other bands. Les and company brought it as usual and I especially enjoyed the songs they played from Sailing the Seas of Cheese and Pork Soda.

SETLIST: Those Damned Blue-Collared Tweekers, Too Many Puppies, Sgt. Baker, The Seven, Cygnus X-1, Southbound Pachyderm, Mr. Krinkle, Welcome To This World, Professor Nutbutter’s House of Treats, My Name Is Mud, Jerry Was A Race Car Driver

Ironically Slayer was the band I was least excited to see at this show but the crescendo was finally here and being Los Angeles it was a star-studded event. Slayer did not have any guest appearances during their set but the likes of Kirk Hammett, Robert Truillo, Post Mallone, King Diamond and others were sighted milling about. Slayer played a monster 20 song set and then after they were done a very emotional Tom Araya stood on the stage afterwards for quite awhile to soak it all in and thank everyone for being a part of his life. It was a very tender moment from someone who made such non-tender music and it was perfect.

SETLIST: South of Heaven, Repentless, Postmortem, World Painted Blood, Hate Worldwide, War Ensemble, Stain of Mind, Disciple, When the Stillness Comes, Born of Fire, Payback, Seasons in the Abyss, Jesus Saves, Chemical Warfare, Hell Awaits, Dead Skin Mask, Show No Mercy, Raining Blood, Mandatory Suicide, Angel of Death

Metal Injection Writeup

Blabbermouth Writeup

Bring Me the Horizon 2/13/19

BMTH Ticket

Bring Me the Who? is the question I asked Bob when he proposed going to this sold out show. The name sounded familiar but in reality I had no idea what their music sounded like or anything about them. They were touring for their newest album called Amo released just a month before this show but did not schedule a San Diego show. Bob wanted to go so bad that he offered to drive, buy my ticket and pay for a hotel if I would join him. If I didn’t know Bob as well as I do this would sound an awful lot like an attempt to get in my pants. All jokes aside I am always down for an adventure, hanging out with Bob and possible amazing musical experience so I agreed to go back to beautiful Inglewood for the second time in less than three weeks.

Our story begins with a stop at BevMo in Huntington Beach to load up on beers. Right as we were about to walk in a homeless fellow that we did not previously see rolled up on us with his bike. I turned just because I sensed someone close to us and once I saw him just turned back around to walk in. This is when he said “Fuck you you white BITCH!” My brain could not process what was happening so we just continued walking in and he left. I could not stop laughing or saying “you white bitch” the rest of the day.

We arrived at the same hotel that doubles as a hostel that we stayed at for Temple of the Dog at 2 pm but they were strict about not letting us check in until 3 pm. This lead to the commencement of drinking said beers procured from BevMo. So 3 o’clock rolled around, we were assigned a room and learned that our room keys did not work once we showed up. By the way it was cold, windy and starting to rain and the rooms are the kind you enter from the outside. After multiple attempts a woman surprised us by opening the door and saying “this is my room.” Back to the front desk! After we finally got an actual room we sat around and drank some fairly stout beers which made us lose track of time which lead to me skipping dinner which lead to your everyday shitshow. I would like to tell you that I remember all or even most of the show but that would be a lie.

Remember those glasses that have built in cameras to record that I thought of while at the Forum watching Elton John a few weeks earlier? I bought some and used this show as my guinea pig show. Had I figured out how they worked maybe I could have reviewed the footage to have a better idea of what happened. What I do know is we were in the general admission floor section, we lost each other multiple times and we kept drinking. I remember a little of Thrice and I remember that Bring Me the Horizon was good. They have a wide range of musical styles from atmospheric to downright heavy. Yes this post is more about what happened leading up to the show than the actual show. Sue me.

Elton John 2/1/19

EltonJohn

Back in December of 2017 one of my work friends let me know tickets for Elton John’s farewell tour were going on sale through the fan club she was a part of and asked me if I wanted in. Stupidly I said no because the concert was not going to be for over a year and just thought I would figure it out when the show got closer. Well it turns out Elton John’s last tour ever was a bigger deal than I gave it credit for. The San Diego show sold out and the cheapest tickets on the secondary market were going for $400 each! Yikes! I like Elton John but I don’t like Elton John that much. Once I saw that he was playing two shows at the Forum in L.A. as well as a handful of shows at Staples Center and coming back to Anaheim in September I began to dutifully look at those options, reasoning that I could probably find two tickets and a hotel room for the price of one ticket in San Diego. Fortunately I was right. After much back and forth we finally decided to pull the trigger on the February 1st show at the Forum. This allowed us to get loose since it was on a Friday and as an added bonus we discovered that we had a free hotel night to use from hotels.com.

We left at 11:30 am to avoid the dreaded L.A. traffic and much to our surprise ended up getting to Inglewood in a record hour and 45 minutes. Inglewood is not a nice area…yet. I say yet because the brand new stadium being built next to the Forum for the Rams is a monstrosity and looks to be coming along nicely. With this I assume will come higher rents that will drive out some of the lower rent tenants.

After a short Uber ride we loaded up on $15 beers and found our seats which were off to the side of the stage. With all the shows I have been to I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that cheap seats to the side of the stage are way better than cheap seats that are dead center but at the back of the arena. Not only are you closer so you can see better but it also still sounds freaking amazing.

The familiar opening piano chords of “Benny and the Jets” kicked this party off and for the next three plus hours Elton John was damn near flawless. I was astounded and impressed at how amazing his voice sounded. He did not just sound great “for a 71 year old;” he sounded great period. His voice was powerful and he is the only “aged” vocalist I have seen maybe ever that did not have any dedicated backup singers. After some guy behind us kept yelling “sit down” even though nearly everyone else was standing up (it’s a concert not your living room!) Ingrid and I decided to simply move to the aisle end of our row instead of fight with this idiot the entire concert. That worked out well until the proper owners of the seats arrived and looked thoroughly dumbfounded. I could tell that they were bothered but when you are in the “cheaper” seats who really gives a fuck? They must not have been bothered enough because they never actually said anything to us other than what they said to us with their body language.

I would consider myself a casual Elton John fan but there are at least a solid 10-15 songs of his that I love and he played nearly every one of them. Beyond his piano moving around the stage on a motorized track at certain points and confetti falling from the sky for the grand finale of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” there was not a lot of “glitz” to his show but the band just crushed it. Elton was very chatty and shared sincere, historical and funny anecdotes with the crowd throughout. This concert reaffirmed why I love going to concerts in the first place. There is something magical/primitive/otherworldly when you witness the naked power of just a guy and his piano wailing away. You hear the sounds with your ears but you also hear them in your soul. I am beyond ecstatic that I did not squander the opportunity given to me to see this living legend while I still had the chance.

SETLIST: Bennie and the Jets, All the Girls Love Alice, I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues, Border Song, Tiny Dancer, Philadelphia Freedom, Indian Sunset, Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to be a Long, Long Time), Take Me to the Pilot, Someone Saved My Life Tonight, Levon, Candle in the Wind, Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, Burn Down the Mission, Believe, Sad Songs (Say So Much), Daniel, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me, The Bitch is Back, I’m Still Standing, Crocodile Rock, Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting, Your Song, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Temple of the Dog 11/14/16

temple-of-the-dog

The one and only Temple of the Dog album was made 25 years before this and because they never toured for the album they thought it would be cool to do a five city/seven date “tour.” Seven dates!!! Well one of them was L.A. so this was one of those rare moments that you would look back on and either say “I was there” or “I wish I would have gone.” I thought I would end up in the latter category when I tried to buy tickets only to find they were “sold out”…even though I was online right when the presale started. Bob to the rescue. I’m not sure whose balls he tickled to get tickets but he got two and I was the lucky recipient of ticket #2. The show was on a Monday but I guess you can’t have everything go your way.

After making the drive from San Diego, checking into our hotel and walking a short distance from a local bar we were once again at the Forum (see Epicenter 3/14/15). We immediately hit up the atrocious drink line and of course right as we were near the front of the line we started hearing the piano intro of “Man of Golden Words,” the Mother Love Bone song that the name “Temple of the Dog” was lifted from. Just as we escaped the drink line and began to find our way to our seats we were bathed in the familiar sounds of the arpeggio riff that opens “Say Hello 2 Heaven.” After that we were treated to all other nine songs from the eponymous album along with 15 cover songs, five of which were Mother Love Bone songs. The stage setup was simple and stark without so much as a backdrop. It was clear that the band wanted to focus on the music and pay tribute to their friend Andrew Wood. They succeeded in spades and ended up paying tribute to what were surely some of the band members’ favorite artists as well. It is not often that I get to see a band from my teenage years for the first time 25 years later. This was worth the wait.

SETLIST: Say Hello 2 Heaven, Wooden Jesus, Call Me a Dog, Your Saviour, Stardog Champion (Mother Love Bone), Stargazer (Mother Love Bone), Seasons (Chris Cornell), Jump Into the Fire (Harry Nilsson), Four Walled World, I’m a Mover (Free), Pushin Forward Back, Hunger Strike, Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)-(Jimi Hendrix), Heartshine (Mother Love Bone), River of Deceit (Mad Season), Holy Roller (Mother Love Bone), Reach Down, Man of Golden Words (Mother Love Bone), Baby Lemonade (Syd Barrett), Times of Trouble, Achilles Last Stand (Led Zeppelin), Holy Holy (David Bowie), Fascination Street (The Cure), War Pigs (Black Sabbath), All Night Thing