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

Pork-A-Palooza 12/23/95

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This concert was a showcase of about six or so local bands. My buddy Cliff was in a band that played so that was cool and we discovered a band called Hang Dog but the real draw was the Ladybird Unition. They were hands down the best band on the local Tri-Cities scene. This event was not the first or the last time I saw them (they eventually broke up and reformed many years later). The significance of this concert is not what the event was or who played but what had happened in my personal life right before this event occurred; I moved out of my parent’s house. I believe it was a Monday and it had snowed so much that school was cancelled. My friends and I had partied a little at the house the weekend before because my dad permitted it at night when my mom was at work. At some point in the fun my dad’s $5 thrift store painting was knocked off the wall and the frame broke. Since it was a snow day my friends and I were plotting a trip to Canyon Lakes Golf Course to go sledding. As I was on the phone to one of the friends asking to come pick me up, my dad said “your friends aren’t allowed to come over until they replace the broken frame.” He seemed like he had already been drinking at this point in the morning and followed up with “and I want you to get your car out of the backyard.” You see, I had purchased a 1981 Pontiac Firebird without his blessing the previous summer. It started to overheat and I didn’t yet have the money to fix it. I went to the neighbor’s house next door, explained that my dad was being an asshole, and asked if they would let me temporarily store my car in their driveway. They not only said yes but helped me push the car over to their house, but not before my dad tried to block us with his car! As I was at their house talking with them about the timeframe in which I expected to remove the car I heard the screen door at my house slam and some undecipherable mumbles from my dad, followed by another loud noise. I walked over to the trees that divided the houses and saw my entire CD collection all over the snow covered grass. I snapped. I went inside the house and picked up the phone to call 911. I intended to say “you better get over here because if you don’t something bad is going to happen” but my dad had picked up another phone in the house so the call wouldn’t dial out. I didn’t know he had picked up the phone until he said “who are you calling?” This infuriated me even more and I slammed the phone down on the end table next to the couch my mom was sleeping on so hard that the table collapsed to the ground. My mom awoke startled and said “what’s going on?” I replied “don’t worry about it, I’m moving out.” The thought hadn’t crossed my mind until I said the words. I didn’t know where to go but I knew it couldn’t be any worse that where I was. Within two hours I had my stuff packed and out. My sister was really upset and I felt bad for leaving her there alone but I had to go. I got a hold of my friend John and he agreed to let me stay in his garage for the time being. I had a job now at Super Lube changing oil but not making nearly enough money part time to afford an apartment, let alone other living expenses. A week later my cousin Earl returned to Kennewick to live with his dad (my uncle Darryl) after living with his mom in Montana. I ran into him at school and he said, “I heard what happened so I talked to my dad and he said you can stay in the extra bedroom of the house we’re staying in.” Earl was a savior and more of the brother I never had because he’s only 2 years younger and we hung out all the time before he moved to Montana when he was in 6th grade.

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Live 5/13/95

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What a strange name for a band. I went to see Live live! Pete Droge opened for Live and I remember thinking he sounded very Tom Petty-ish. Live was on tour for their breakthrough album Throwing Copper when they decided to roll through town. They rocked and at one point in the show while Ed Kowalczyk was singing, he disappeared and all of a sudden reappeared out in the stands where people were sitting. I had first heard Live through my Uncle Darryl, who owned their first album Mental Jewelry. This concert happened as my Junior year in high school was winding down. This was the year that I started skipping school with my friends. Sometimes to go cliff jumping, sometimes for no particular reason other than to skip school. It was never really a problem because my grades didn’t suffer as a result but I did finally get into trouble for writing my own absence notes because I was unaware of the fact that my dad knew the assistant principal somehow…

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Alice In Chains 9/17/93

sc000015b201My birthdate is March 18th in the year of nineteen hundred and seventy-eight. At the date of this concert I was a 15 year old rock and roll loving male in Kennewick, WA. I was about 225 miles Southeast of the “Grunge” music scene going on in the famed Seattle, WA. The first song I heard from Alice in Chains that really caught my attention was “Would?” I don’t know if I heard it on the radio or saw it on MTV back when they used to play videos. Once I did see the video with Layne Staley looking like a complete badass I was done. I got into the album Dirt first and then went back and explored Facelift. They are both amazing albums but I think Dirt took it up another level. This was the album they were touring for at this point and I couldn’t believe they were coming to my town! We did have a thriving local music scene going on in our area and that is how I first became hooked on seeing live music. We had great shows out at the fairgrounds including bands such as Small, Black Happy, and even Green Day before the world knew who Green Day was. There were also various shows held at people’s houses, the Hoedown, and Shane’s barn. Pretty memorable times, but Alice In Chains was to be my first major rock concert. Everyone in the “wrong” crowd I was hanging out with liked Alice In Chains too but the concert happened to fall on the same night as the homecoming football game for our high school. They chose the game and have regretted it ever since. For me it was never a choice. I talked my neighbor Craig into going to the show with me. He was about 2 years younger than me and we had become friends when I moved in a few houses down about 3 years before this. The Tri-Cities Coliseum was the biggest place to play in town.

What I do remember is the moment Alice In Chains took the stage. There was a cargo net much like the one you used to climb in elementary school that ran the whole distance of the front of the stage. What an entrance and what a setlist! The only other distinct things I remember about the show is that when they played “Godsmack” Layne Stayley kept putting his face in the cargo net while he was singing and this was the first concert I had ever crowd surfed at. They worked their way through the setlist with a fury and I feel lucky to have witnessed this magical event, especially now that Layne Staley is no longer with us. In fact this was their last major tour even though they released two EP’s and another album after this. The saddest part about Layne Staley is that it didn’t seem to surprise many people when he passed away because of his known struggles with heavy drugs. The super ironic part is that that his estimated death was April 5th, 2002, which is exactly 8 years after the estimated death of Kurt Cobain. The irony for me is that this was my first major concert and my next wouldn’t be until after Kurt was found dead. This was a particularly traumatic event for the world of music and me since Nirvana was my favorite band. I never had the opportunity to see Nirvana because at this point in my teenage years my friends and I didn’t really have cars or our driver’s licenses yet. It made me realize that I better see every band that I have the opportunity to see because you never know when one of the band members may die or if the band will break up. In short, life is short and this is the event that I can credit for making me first realize this.

SETLIST – Rooster, Godsmack, Junkhead, Angry Chair, Man in the Box, Hate to Feel, Bleed the Freak, It Ain’t Like That, Dirt, A Little Bitter, We Die Young, Dam That River, Them Bones, Would?, Sickman

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