Hopefully to no one’s surprised I’m back at it. Tonight I am going with another recollection. One of the reasons for that is it is still fresh in my head LITERALLY. Specifically I am talking about a concert some friends and I attended a few weeks ago sponsored by 105X, the local hard rockish yet still playing Nickelback crap station. They were holding their annual Spring Fling Concert which typically is a multi-band mashup. They had a decent lineup this year consisting of two bands I really like (Papa Roach and Sick Puppies), a band I wanted to see (Stone Sour) and two bands that intrigued me enough to consider seeing (In This Moment and All That Remains). Not a bad night of entertainment and more importantly, the price was right at $42. Ironically, I’m at a point financially where I can afford concert prices but old enough to not appreciate being gouged by greedy promoters and bands – think Rolling Stones if you need an example.
The first band of the night was All That Remains. There are no pictures to show you being that my arrival came in the middle of their set and the remaining of their two songs was spent trying to figure out who they were and being very unimpressed. This could have been due to some distractions having to kick some people out of our seats. The others were still on their way but since I was already dealing with my seat went ahead and told the squaters in those seats to find another place. They responded with annoyed faces but honestly was beyond caring – we purposely chose seats so we did not have to deal with the general admission crowd… definitely getting old(er). There was one noted band observation – they had a female bassist.
Once they were done, the roadies took to the stage and started building an elaborate set. Out came a bag of skulls, a pikes full of skulls, a platform, a large fan, some dumb looking trellises that looked like wedding props and a few more knickknacks scattered about. Eventually they uncovered the drum which had a barely readable In This Moment logo. Ah, time for the screacher! Based on a few samplings it was apparent they had a front woman that could belt it out. Turns out she was pretty pleasing to the eyes no small part due to the fact she came out in a one piece number giving proper attention to her assets. Of course, for some strange reason, she chose to stand in the middle of a dry ice jet stream which made it difficult to see her most of the time. No stranger to a stripper pole, she gyrated her way through her incredibly long FOUR or FIVE song set accented by her walking off stage after each song and attempting to add some form of dramatic flair to her re-entrance. Summary – she can indeed belt out some notes and at least one of her songs was halfway decent, but her constant gesturing to have the fog blower fiddled with degraded the overall impression – you are trying to watch the “artist” perform yet constantly having to be distracted by a roadie continually coming on stage to jerk around with the fan to fine tune a gimmick that wasn’t adding any real value.
With those two bands out of the way it was time to get into the part I really paid the money for. Sick Puppies came out and to my surprise it was only a three person band. Drummer, guitarist singer and surprise surprise another female bassist. 3 for 3 with women as an integral part of the band (translated.. not simply eye candy as witnessed in the past Crue concerts). The puppies did not let me down. They played with a lot of energy, interacted with the crowd and most importantly played all the songs I came to hear. Kudos to the female bassist pounding away on the strings. They bring a LOT of bass to their songs which is why she surprised me at first, but looked like she had an interesting claw like style which delivered a lot of power. Additionally, there is new found appreciation for their singer’s ability to hold his old against the power voices in the industry. If you have not heard of this band before I highly recommend checking out Long Time Coming – could be my all time favorite bass beat.
Hit the jump to read about the rest of the bands that night.
