Super-Killa-Fragilistic - ABK at the Muse

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
Anybody Killa, P.R.E.A.C.H.
The Muse, Nashville, TN
$12
See all the photos from this show here

Considering that I live in Nashville, I find it really strange that I've had two opportunities to see Anybody Killa (ABK) in concert here within the last five months. But hey, I'm definitely not complaining! His show last November at the Muse was my first Psychopathic show, and I really enjoyed it, so I was definitely not going to miss his return.

Work was nice enough to let me leave an hour and 15 minutes early, and when I arrived, there wasn't much going on just yet. After getting the best parking spot yet behind the Muse, I met Pamela in the parking lot on the way in. The first thing we heard were rumblings about Kung Fu Vampire being MIA, AMB not being able to play since one of the guys wasn't there, and now ABK was refusing to play. Knowing how incorrect info can spread like wildfire, we both chalked this up to being like the telephone game...someone said something, then someone overheard it and changed the story a little, then someone overheard that, and so on.

Since nothing was going on yet, we sat down outside and chatted, and mingled with the others waiting for the show. Eventually we heard that Kung Fu Vampire was definitely not going to be there, which was fine since I'd never really listened to them.



The first band, S.G.F., went on a little before 9:00 They were awesome though, with elaborate makeup and blood, and some great rhymes to go with it.


Chick in the tank top is not impressed



Near the end of the set, they stirred up a mosh put and a couple of the guys jumped right in, while a strobe light was making everything look like it was happening in slow motion. Wild! I would definitely head back out to see these guys again since they were VERY entertaining.



After a break, P.R.E.A.C.H. was the next artist to perform. I wasn't sure what to expect with him either, but he was fantastic. Great beats, great lyrics, and great interaction with the crowd.


Tank Top is also not impressed with P.R.E.A.C.H.


lulz She looks miniature in this picture

One of the guys he was with also handed out CDs and lighters that said P.R.E.A.C.H. on them, so I ended up with a nice yellow lighter too. I was very pleasantly surprised with his performance. It's so awesome to go to shows not expecting to find any new artists to pay attention to, then come out as a fan of one of the openers! (Happened last time too when Critical Bill opened for ABK, and I figured out that Critical Bill was exactly the style of music I enjoy!)



With the first two openers having been big hits, Bones from AMB came out on stage to announce that Otis had had a family emergency and had to fly home, so there wouldn't be an AMB performance that night. Not a biggie for me since I'm not a big fan of AMB. He then introduced local Juggalo rappers Lords of Chaos.



Poor guys...you can tell that they're new to performing since they seemed to struggle to remember their Juggalo-centric lyrics and did little more than just stand there and recite them into the microphone. They also had some song about "the dark side of 615" which pretty much painted Juggalos as gang members, which I really wasn't fond of. But whatever.


And she's totally not feeling Lords of Chaos either



Bones made another appearance and introduced a guy named FLOW who he said was new to their record label (it was news to me that AMB have their own record label now, but hey, I must not keep up with them well enough hahaha). FLOW was entertaining, though not because he was particularly good. He was all smiles the whole way through his set, and didn't seem to be rapping about anything too serious.


Tank Top had to resort to playing with her phone since she was so bored with FLOW's performance



By this point, given that neither Lords of Chaos nor FLOW were particularly good, the venue had almost completely emptied out. Too bad that the two best performers went first, since the next two acts completely sucked the life out of the venue. S.G.F. and P.R.E.A.C.H. definitely should have played just before ABK.

By the time that it was actually time for ABK to take the stage, people were slowly filtering back in, and chants of "ABK!" and "Fam-uh-ly" were starting to fill the room. Since this show was technically a part of the Medicine Bag tour (just like the last one was), I was expecting the backdrop to be the same Medicine Bag backdrop as last time. But instead, when they dropped the tarp, there were two large hatchetman banners on the sides, with some sort of tall riser in the middle that he was standing on, which was a much grander entrance that just walking out on stage!




Pamela with ABK in the background


Tank Top was actually enjoying this performance! I think she was even taking a photo with the phone and not playing with it.







Much like last time, the performance was great. He moved around the stage a lot, and made prolonged eye contact with lots of people numerous times throughout the set. At one point during "Ghost of my Ex," he stared me down and reached out his hand toward me. But dammit if I didn't have a dude standing right in front of me, and I couldn't reach back far enough to grab his hand haha Overall, again, another solid performance. Better than last time in my opinion since he seemed a little more energetic and was having a little more fun with it.

After the show, everyone made their way outside and hung around for a while. I'd met new friend Dennis "Lazy D" before the show, and he'd invited me and Pamela upstairs to the Undertones bar because he anticipated that ABK would head up there for a few drinks later. I'm certainly not one to pass up the opportunity to meet a celebrity, so after a while, we all headed upstairs. After a good 45 minutes of hanging around with no sign of ABK, Pamela and I decided to go downstairs just to make sure that his trailer was still parked beside the club, and that he hadn't slipped away unnoticed! It was still there, and after chatting with a security guard about how much we both loved Boondox, ABK came our way. We gave him a quick whoop whoop and he headed upstairs, with me and Pamela following behind. He ended up being such a Joe Average cool dude to hang out with...didn't draw attention to himself or act outrageous like you hear some musicians doing!


Yep, that's what ABK looks like without his paint!

Once ABK and almost everyone else snuck off to the back room for a while, Pamela and I stayed to chat with Dennis, who ended up being such an interesting guy! Everyone else came back into the main area of the bar at some point, and as it approached 3:00am, the subject of the Gummi Bears theme song came up. So eventually, we all ended up watching cartoon theme songs on YouTube over the big screen TV in the bar! Epic...totally epic hahaha

I've said it before and I'll say it again, that I am so glad that I chose to embrace this whole genre of music. The music is great, the concerts are awesome, and the other fans are so, so fun! Now all I need is for Boondox to come to the Muse and I'll have seen everyone on the label :-)

-Julie

Hinder and Saving Abel at the Cannery Ballroom

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
Hinder, Saving Abel
Cannery Ballroom, Nashville, TN
$30
See all the photos from this show here

Having been over a month since my last live show, I was really itching to get back out there and head to my first show at the Cannery Ballroom. I'm not a huge fan of either Hinder or Saving Abel, but I am moderately familiar with both, and have liked what I've heard. So I figured that it would be a pretty good show. I watched this venue all last year and never saw anyone play there that I really wanted to see, so I was honestly just as excited to check out the Cannery as a venue for a hard rock show as I was to see the show itself! I'd only been inside once for a volunteer event, which was nowhere near the same kind of vibe :-)

After leaving work late and grabbing some Taco Bell for dinner, I arrived after Saving Abel had already taken the stage. When I picked up my ticket at the Will Call window...it said the show was for Brad Paisley! Thanks Cannery, now I can't even scrapbook my pics from the night because my ticket stub is wrong! But oh well...it got me in to the show, so it's all good.

The first thing I noticed upon arrival was how very unenthusiastic the crowd was. Everyone seemed to have their own little bubble of personal space around them, which meant that I had to stand fairly far back from the stage. Had everyone just moved forward and filled in all the space like you should at a concert, I'd have easily been twice as close as I was. Ultimately I made my way in front of a few people and landed directly behind what had to be the tallest woman in the venue. She, like everyone else, had a good three feet between her and the person in front of her. I just didn't get it. And no one seemed to be having a good time. No one was dancing or pounding their fists or even bobbing their heads. It was so odd!

But irregardless of the cold fish attitude of the crowd, Saving Abel's performance was solid. Not the most energetic I've seen, but I was sufficiently entertained. They didn't do much moving around on stage, nor did they do a lot of audience interaction, but it was alright. There ended up being a lot of fog in the room during their set, and the band stayed almost continually bathed in red light, so the pics didn't come out all that well, but I did my best.







After their set, the stage was changed out in anticipation of Hinder's arrival. And as soon as Hinder took the stage, the mood, thankfully, improved dramatically. While the crowd didn't really compress at all, they did actually act like they were having a little fun. The performance was fun, and they did a fantastic job with the lighting. Not sure if I should attribute that to Hinder or the venue, but the lights were always doing fun stuff, which really gave an immersive feel to the performance.


Hinder takes the stage






Heeeey cute guitarist!







So yeah...overall, not bad. Not the best show I've been to, but I had a good time. The audience was definitely the low point of the experience, be it the excessive personal space, the girl who was wearing too much perfume or the fact that I stood next to the person who could whistle the loudest in the entire venue (isn't that always the way? There's that one DB that whistles at an ear splitting pitch just to show that they can, I guess). But the show was just lacking a little something.

My next show is coming up next month, where I will be back at the Muse to see ABK, AMB and Kung Fu Vampire, which should almost certainly provide a much more entertaining experience! Til next time!

-Julie

Full Devil Jacket, now with 100% more Jonathan Montoya!

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011
Full Devil Jacket, DeadSun, Halo Stereo, The Bald Ones
12th and Porter, Nashville, TN
$18
See all the photos from this show here

I'm a Saliva fan. Like, a BIG Saliva fan. And one of the things I have loved the most about Saliva is the intense, energetic live shows that they do. So needless to say that I was more than a little surprised this past fall when Saliva announced the swift and apparently involuntary departure of rhythm guitarist Jonathan Montoya. No doubt, he added a very unique and energetic element to the Saliva live shows with his colorful facial expressions, constant interaction with the audience and the endless plumes of water, beer and even Jagermeister that he would spray into the air. It just sort of left their entire fan base quietly saying "Huh?"

So shortly after that, I heard through the grapevine that Jonathan was reuniting with his former band mates in Full Devil Jacket to give it another go. While I was very happy to hear that the only hometown boy in Saliva was back to work, I'd honestly never heard of Full Devil Jacket (lets face it, their one and only full album was ten years ago, and ten years ago, I wasn't even close to paying attention to the local music scene). But I figured that if a musician went from one of my favorite bands directly to another band, it was probably going to be a band I would like.

At the beginning of the year, I spotted Full Devil Jacket on the 12th and Porter calendar for January 22nd, and decided that I had to go and check out Jonathan's new (old) project. And to make it even better, Halo Stereo was opening for them, who I absolutely loved when I saw them open for Saliva a couple of years ago.

When I arrived on the day, I was outfitted with two wristbands (one showing that I had paid, and one showing that I was over 21) and found my way into the venue. It was considerably smaller than I was anticipating, coming in at roughly only the same size as the Muse, though it was much wider and not as deep. I arrived when The Bald Ones were playing.


Beautiful bald eye candy

Anyone who knows me knows that I quite enjoy a gentleman with a bald head, so I didn't mind watching them at all :-)



Halo Stereo was up next, and their performance was great once again. Their lead singer is very expressive and engaging, and their bass player has great energy as well.


The lead singer again, looking intense as he sings and plays the keyboard


After Halo Stereo came DeadSun, who I had also never heard of. I was apparently the only person in the room who hadn't heard of them though, since almost everyone was singing along with their songs and getting VERY into their performance. They were great though, and I'll absolutely try to catch them again.

I also might as well add that this was the point where my camera battery decided to die unexpectedly, so I had to switch to using the camera on my phone. It's an ok camera, but not nearly as good as a regular camera, so bear with me here...

After some intermittent technical difficulties, it was finally time for Full Devil Jacket...



As soon as they took the stage, the crowd was VERY happy to see them! They all kept spotting people in the audience and giving them daps or handshakes, and everyone seemed to be so excited to see them performing together again!


Jonathan Montoya, back on stage in grand style


Jonathan, getting the audience involved


Probably my favorite pic of the night...I can only imagine how good it would have looked if my camera hadn't died!!


Johnny, rocking it hard from the floor

At the end of the show, the lead singer took a moment to sing a few songs with an acoustic guitar. By that point it was about 1:00am, and the show had been going on for almost five hours! I made it through the entire acoustic set, but I was beat by the time he was done. I ran into Jonathan on the way out and gave him my best wishes before heading out.

This show ended up being excellent, and you would never know that Full Devil Jacket had only rehearsed "three times in ten years" like the lead singer said. It was really great to see that Jonathan hadn't lost any of his onstage energy (though apparently he did lose the guyliner, at least for now!). Based on what I saw, I have no doubt that the entire band will rise to the occasion and create some great, powerful music, and will definitely be a band that I keep an eye on. Now the question becomes...what will my first Saliva show without Jonathan be like? It will be interesting to see just what they do to compensate for his absence.

-Julie

The Toasters, live at the Muse

January 21st, 2011
The Toasters, A.K.A. Rudy
The Muse, Nashville, TN
$10
See all the photos from this show here

About a week prior, my friend Diana invited me to go to the Muse with her and her husband Ian to see the Toasters. Now, I like to think that I am fairly well versed in music, but I had never heard of the Toasters, and knew basically nothing about the genre the fall into, which is Ska. But I decided to go anyway, trusting that her taste in music would provide an entertaining evening.

When I arrived, I was able to catch the last two songs by their opener, A.K.A. Rudy. The band had horn players as well as the standard guitar and drum players, and played what seemed to be a cross of rock and jazz. They weren't quite what I was expecting, but then again, I really had no idea what to expect anyway!

Once Diana and Ian arrived, we hung around and waited for the Toasters to take the stage. When they did, it was a completely new kind of concert experience for me! They also had trumpet and slide trombone players, and the audience went CRAZY for them when they started playing! Everyone, almost in unison, started to do this dance that involved kicking your feet in front of you while throwing your elbows back in almost a running in place sort of manner, which simultaneously looked fun, dangerous and exhausting!


The Toasters lead singer


Mr. Slide Trombone Guy


A crowd shot...the people watching was so great at this show!


Some crowd surfing going on. And the red haired girl..she danced almost continuously through the whole show! No wonder she's so thin!


Here we have striped shirt guy demonstrating the dance, which I later found out is called "Skanking."


Ahh, a bloody nosed casualty of all the skanking. Never fear, by the end of the show, he was right back out there skanking while holding his bloody paper towel to his face.


And finally, Diana and Ian enjoying the show, and doing a little dancing themselves

Really, I had a blast at this show, despite not being familiar with the band or even the genre of music. I can't say that I will be filling my iPod up with Ska music since most of it sounded very, very similar, but it was definitely fun to listen to. Through the show, I made extra sure that I was nowhere near the people who were dancing the most vigorously for fear that I was going to get elbowed right in the face. Diana got a real kick out of my saying that I'd much rather be caught in an ICP mosh pit than a Ska mosh pit! But for real, at the ICP show, people were just moving around and bouncing into each other with their entire body, which didn't hurt the people you were bumping into. But these people were tossing their elbows back with disregard for the people behind them, which resulted in quite a few people getting elbowed pretty hard! I'd much rather someone bump into me full-body than to have a swift, pointed elbow jab me in the face! haha

I really love experiencing new stuff like this, and I had a blast taking a little look into a kind of genre that I was only vaguely aware of before. The Muse is such a cool little venue...can't wait to see who else performs there this year!

-Julie

A truly INSANE evening! (with the Insane Clown Posse)

January 14th, 2011
Insane Clown Posse, Dayton Family
Expo Five, Louisville, KY
$32
See all the photos from this show here

Ok, I will be the first to admit that I know Insane Clown Posse (ICP) gets a bad rap for a lot of stuff. The media loves to make them out like they are gang leaders, or people who instigate violence. But simply put, none of that is true, and when you look just a little bit harder at what they have to say, they're actually really entertaining! I take their music with a grain of salt. I don't listen to them so I can pull some deep, heart felt meaning out of their music. I listen to them because they're fun...and funny...and on occasion, they do a great job of addressing social issues. I haven't been listening to them for their entire 20 year career (man, at this point, I haven't even been listening to them for an entire year!), but their longevity and icon status in the underground music scene is really something to be impressed by.

Back in 2001, I worked with a Juggalette (that's a female fan of underground music, with a male fan being a Juggalo) who always talked about how awesome ICP live shows were, and how I should go to one with her. But I always brushed it off since I had never listened to them, and really had no intention of listening to them. But knowing what I knew about their live shows, I decided that at some point in life, I was going to make it to an ICP concert, just for the experience if nothing else. Last year, something peeked my interested and I grabbed a few ICP albums, only to discover that I really enjoyed their music! So I decided that now was the time...time to mark "Go to an ICP concert" off of my bucket list!

I'd originally purchased a ticket for their October 19th, 2010 "Old Sh** Tour" show in Atlanta, but that show eventually got rescheduled to a date in December when I couldn't go. So when they announced a Louisville date for the middle of January, I decided that, come hell or high water (or snow, as the case was), I was going to be there! My friend Pamela also decided to join me, which was great since neither of us had to go alone. The days before the show were filled with many texts to the effect of "OMG I'm so excited!!" and when the day finally came, I swear it was the longest day I have ever spent at work! When 3:30 rolled around, I sprinted out to my car, and practically demolished everything in my way so I could get to Pamela's house quickly. When I arrived, she quickly jumped in, we started my "Best of ICP" playlist, and we were on our way to Louisville as fast as we could legally get there!



During a stop for gas just outside Louisville, Pamela and I decided to go ahead and get our face paint on so we could do it where it was light. I did a freehand-able version of Boondox paint...



...while she went with heavy black eyes and a black smile.

We had a little trouble finding the venue, Expo Five, since the street it was on didn't have a street sign, but we found it easily after stopping at a gas station for directions. It was COLD, and we had to park all the way at the back of the lot by a tree, so I decided to go ahead and wear my hoodie inside since I didn't want to walk all that way without it. Once at the front, we waited in line to get ID'ed, and met four people in front of us who were from Nashville as well. Once at the front, we discovered that anyone who was wearing face paint couldn't get a wristband to drink since the local police decided that people in face paint couldn't be accurately ID'ed. Just as well, since neither of us planned on drinking anyway.


This is my "OMG I'm so excited! I'm about to see ICP!!!" face


Pamela, sporting Xs on her hands. "First time my hand's been x'd in a million years!!"


Just before ICP took the stage

Well, once the show started, it was complete pandemonium! The entire audience was jostling, pushing, shoving, moshing...and everyone was crowding up toward the stage so they could get their share of the Faygo shower action! We both started off on the right hand side of the stage about halfway back, but as soon as ICP came on stage, we quickly lost track of each other. I was pushed up as far as maybe 5 or 6 deep from the stage, but was never able to stay in one place very long because of the pushing and shoving. For most of the show, I ended up slightly left of center, slightly forward of halfway back.

During the show, I managed to grab two two-liter bottles of Diet Faygo Cola. The first fell to the floor near me, so I grabbed it as a souvenir. The second came flying directly at me, so I picked that one right out of the air! Also, during "Santa's a Fat Bi***" there were clown Santas that came out and threw gifts out into the audience. One came flying right toward me, and when a dude in front of me went to grab it, it bounced off his hand and landed right in my hand. Sweet!! Of course, that meant that I needed to be even more careful than I was already being since I then had a gift and two two-liter bottles to hang onto!

A few pics from the show...


Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J, doing what they do best


Violent J


Shaggy and Violent J again


Violent J


Another Violent J (he stood still for longer than Shaggy did, so I got better pics of him)


Shaggy with lots of colorful lights


Violent J, once again


A very cool pic, if I do say so myself


You can't really tell what was going on here just by the photo, but this is Shaggy emptying an entire two-liter of Faygo over his head


And if this photo doesn't sum up the experience, I don't know what does

By the time the show was done, I was almost completely soaked in Faygo. During "Murder Go Round" some clowns had come out with Faygo sprayers that acted like giant super soakers, soaking people much farther back than the individual bottles that Violent J and Shaggy were spraying. And their finale...HOLY COW. The last song was "I'm Coming Home," at which point they brought out Corporal Robinson and 2 Tuff Tony, as well as all of the Dayton Family and all the clowns who had been spraying Faygo during the show...and they just started unloading all the remaining Faygo into the crowd! It felt like it went on forever, and I just kept getting more and more and more soaked! At one point, I closed my eyes to wipe the Faygo out of them, and a mostly full two-liter came barreling right at me and beaned me in the shoulder! Ouch! But Pamela said that a guy near her got smacked in the face with one and started bleeding, so I was very glad that it had only hit my shoulder!


The aftermath



Oh yuck! I am SO not cute in that photo, but as you can see, I had a blast, and the only part of me that was dry was a little bit on my legs. Before leaving, I opened the gift I'd caught, and it was a 3X Gathering t-shirt from last year's Gathering. How awesome! But since I knew I wouldn't wear 3X regularly, I jumped back inside and bought a t-shirt to commemorate the event.


Pamela, also soaked, looking only slightly worse for the wear


That's two happy chicks right there. You'd never know that we were shivering when this was taken!

The walk back to the car was excruciatingly cold. It had to have been well below freezing, and there I was, soaked in soda! After putting some plastic on my car seats, we started back toward Nashville, and made a stop at a truck stop a few exits down the road so we could change and rinse our hair out. Not surprisingly, we were not the only people there who had just come from the show! We made it back to Nashville around 2:30am, which was pretty good, all told.

I really can't say enough about how AWESOME this experience was! It was a complete mad house from start to finish, with people packed in and jostling around like I've never experienced before. Really, when I saw Twiztid last November, I thought *that* was a crazy show, but boy was I wrong! It didn't hold a candle to ICP. I am very, very glad that I put forth the effort to see them during this tour, and every mile we drove was absolutely worth it. It's times like these that make me so glad to be alive, and to be able to have experiences that I will remember forever. And it's nice to find out sometimes that I really am younger than my age says I am :-)

-Julie