Music

Infected Mushroom just lied to my face, and made me walk out. I just paid $50 to watch people pretend to make music. It was insulting to the audience, and I can only hope they feel like complete frauds, though I doubt it.

This past weekend the feds conducted raids in three states targeting the Hutaree militia group. These guys are Christian survivalist extremists, "Preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive". They believe the Anti-Christ walks among us, that kind of thing. Nevermind that as I understand it, if the Anti-Christ is walking among us, that means the rapture has already happened, which means "You Lose".

-- Update: Seeing the reaction this has generated is driving me to demand one of these for all upcoming concerts, get ready Natalie.

Last week we got to see George Clinton at the House of Blues. Thanks to HoB policy of a rectal exam for every male customer, I have no photos of this event, which is why Natalie whipped out the following illustration:

An evening with the Anti-Edge

I've seen The Edge from U2 saying that notes are sacred, and that they should not be wasted, and he certainly takes that philosophy to the hoop. J Mascis takes the contrary view. Prior to tonight's show, people were telling me it will be the loudest thing I've ever been to. Definitely not, but it is up there. My boots are still tied though, and that was in the same room, standing in the same place in front of the same stack of loudspeakers...

[music | Leonard Cohen - Don't Go Home With Your Hardon]

Yep, Alice in Chains (!) at the Paradise (!!)

I can't believe how incredibly lucky we were with this show! I'll get to the show, the luck actually started earlier. We rolled down Comm. Ave around 6:10 or so, and apparently, seems like this was move-in weekend at BU, at least, there was lots of "moving in" looking activity. AND there was a show at the Agganis Arena as well. Luckily they opened up the lot to general parking for the low low price of $25 (generally street parking is pretty easy to find, but with this triple hit, it wasn't to be).

So we slid into Brown Sugar for some of the fastest Thai food ever. Love that place, needs to be hotter :-)

We ended up making it in line just before doors, but wow was it a line. We didn't get in until 7:30, and by that time I thought I was fucked, with no good photo spots left available. Getting inside, that looked like the case, until we went all the way stage-left where there were some road cases and not much else. They had taken over the whole area at stage right for mixing desk and guitar tech stuff, so you couldn't reach the balcony from there, it was a bit of an odd setup. This is when I noticed there was also a barrier 3' out from the stage, which was unexpected. Maybe this was the better spot after all? I remembered from the Lupo's show a few years ago that Jerry was at stage-left for that one, so that's why I wanted to angle that way to begin with.

Turned out I was in the absolute perfect spot to shoot from tonight. The sound was fantastic, the crowd was perfect. Way better than most any Boston audience you get I guess. I've never lived anywhere else, but from what I understand, artists roll through Boston and the audiences are all too jaded and hanging around and not seeming into shows. Not tonight, not even a little. Everyone sang every word to every song, it was great.

At one point, Jerry Cantrell tried to hand a pick to someone and took a mean header off the stage into the 3' gated security area dealy. Got back up, miraculously, found a mike, and just said "Bitch cursed us this morning" (it might have been Duvall that said this, I don't think so). Evidently Mistress Carrie (Mistress Yoko?) jinxed the band by asking them if they'd fallen off stage in an interview this morning, they said it hadn't happened in some time, now BAM. Har.

I have to say I enjoyed this even more than the Lupo's show, if that's even possible, probably just due to my proximity. I got more energy from the band, and crowd, than I have in a long time.

Toward the end, the road cases I was camped out on became stage runway, so suddenly I was gathering up my stuff and joining the staff in holding the cases tight for Jerry and William so no one else took a spill. They were incredibly interactive with the audience and it was great to see how happy a band can look when they seem to be really having fun.

Here's the setlist as it was handed to me, looks totally accurate:

Rain When I Die
Again
Check My Brain
Them Bones
Dam That River
A Looking In View
We Die Young
Nutshell
Down in a Hole
God Am
Acid Bubble
Angry Chair
Man in the Box
Would?

Encores:
Sludge Factory
No Excuses
Rooster

And here's some of my favorites out of the dozens and dozens of pictures I got. Many more at Flickr, many more than that on my machine. Clicky Biggy:

PICTURES!