Archive for the ‘the metal files’ Category
Motörhead Concert Review March 8, 2011 – Motörhead Day!
We are Motörhead and we don’t have no class!
As many of my lovely readers may have heard from my previous post or via Blabbermouth, yesterday (March 8, 2011) was declared Motörhead Day in Austin, TX by our mayor. Read yesterday’s post to get the precursor for this one.
I got off work and rushed home to get things together for potentially meeting Motörhead before their show. I’m waiting on Dave and his son in front of Stubb’s and see awesome photog Jay West. I tell him what’s going on and said I’d try to get him back there with us to get a photo of those guys with the Motörhead Day Proclamation (click for photo). Dave and his son walk up and I send a message to my pal who works security for Motörhead. He finds us outside and escorts to the “backstage” area of Stubb’s where Lemmy, Mikkey and some of the crew were hanging out. This was right after their soundcheck.
Lemmy’s sitting at the door flipping through a food magazine and Mikkey stands up to greet us. Phil was nowhere to be found, unfortunately. Mikkey reads it then Dave tells me to give it to Lemmy for a read. I explained what it was and he sat and read the whole thing. He stood up and said something like, “This is neat. I love playing Austin. Thank you very much” We shake hands and Jay snaps a few quick photos. I mentioned to Lemmy about meeting him after the movie premier last year and mentioned my Another Perfect Day tattoo backpiece. He said, “Ah yes, I told you that you should have picked a better album, right?” haha. “Yes sir, you did.” Lemmy seemed tired and later that evening during the set, Phil mentioned on mic that he wasn’t feeling well, so Phil did much of the talking between songs. Also, if you’ve seen the movie, read interviews or ever met Lemmy, he’s pretty much indifferent about stuff like this, but it was great that he and Mikkey allowed us to come back for a few minutes and share our joy with them. Added bonus for me was getting Lemmy and Mikkey’s signatures in my book. FINALLY!
So that was that. Mikkey gave Dave’s son, Kameron, a can of Coca-Cola as we were leaving and he says, “I’m never opening this can…ever.” Awesome. I understand that sentiment as I still have an unopened bottle Heineken that Nicko McBrain signed for me in 1988.
Good times. All of us were elated after this. It was fun and glad that it all worked out for all of us. I ran the book home and went to dinner with some friends. I had no interest in seeing Valient Thorr again or in seeing Clutch. I got back to the venue with about 4 Clutch songs left. BORING. I hadn’t listened to them in years and remembered why last night. Oh well. It was Motörhead Day and all I cared about was seeing Lemmy and the boys tear it up like they always do.
They hit the stage right at 9PM. Lemmy opens by saying, “We’re Motörhead…and we play rock and roll.” Then they go
Photo by Jay West
right into a great version of We Are Motörhead. Great song to open with! The band was tight throughout the whole show. Phil was more animated than I had seen in the last few shows. Lemmy’s tone and playing were awesome. He’s very unique. If you’ve seen the Lemmy movie DVD there’s a bonus section in there about how he plays his bass. He’s usually playing power chords and it just gives his sound that much more grind. At 60+, the man can still kick ass. His voice sounded better than last year as well. Then there’s Mikkey. All you see is hair and hands and cymbals moving. He was awesome as always. Easily in my top 5 drummers of all time. Motörhead rules live, period.
The highlight of their set for me was I Got Mine. It’s from my favorite Motörhead album and it’s just a great song. Of course they closed the main part of their set with Ace of Spades and Overkill was the encore.
Metal Dave from 2Fast2Die said before they went on, “What a crusty looking crowd.” Definitely. Motörhead draws folks from a lot of different crowds. They are also one of the bands where it seems to be ok to wear their shirts when you go see them live. It’s always been stated (right or wrong, silly really) that you shouldn’t wear the shirt for the band you are going to see. Motörhead and Maiden seem to be exceptions to that rule. I saw some nice vintage shirts there as well.
It was a great show and I’m glad it sold out. Lem’s not getting any younger and no telling when his juice is going to run out…hopefully never! Go see this tour!
There was one major thing missing…Their front of house sound engineer Hobbs! Where was he? Talk about a crusty old bastard. He rules!
Setlist as I remember it and a bit out of order:
- We Are Motörhead
- Stay Clean
- Get Back In Line
- Metropolis
- I Got Mine
- Over The Top
- The Chase Is Better Than The Catch
- Rock Out
- I Know How to Die
- In The Name of Tragedy
- Just Cos You Got The Power
- Killed By Death
- Going To Brazil
- Ace of Spades
- Overkill
All photos below by Jay West Photography. Click to enlarge.
Kameron, Dave, Lemmy, me, Mikkey (holding Motorhead Day Proclamation)
Phil and Lemmy
Lemmy and his signature Rickenbacker 4004LK Bass.
Lemmy
Phil Campbell
Screaming Trees – Sweet Oblivion
So early in 1993 I was drumming in Epitaph, a band that consisted of some of my best friends. It was fun being in a band with those guys, especially since we always basically agreed on everything that we wanted to play. Good times had by
all. The only real problem I had was that I wanted to play out. Sure we did the occasional party here and there but I wanted to get into some clubs. We were certainly good enough but those guys didn’t have much interest in it and it wasn’t too big of a deal. I understood where they were coming from.
So one day I cruise over to Mark S’ house and hang out with him a while. I had known him for quite a while as we worked together at the grocery store in 1986 and there weren’t that many drummers in our small town, therefore we all knew each other. Mark was/is an incredible drummer, definitely someone I’d love to be drumming for me now (I can’t play anymore; I should blog about that sometime). So we’re in his garage and doing some drum tradeoff stuff. I was dazzling him with my double bass skills and he was dazzling me with his overall drum badassedness.
Anyway, to make a long story longer, he told me that he was playing in a band (I AM I from Virginia Beach, VA) but had to quit it for whatever reason and hooked me up with an audition. I got the gig and it was fun while it lasted (1993-1995). We played out a lot. It was what I would call a progressive rock band. It was tough to quantify as we all had such different influences. We had quite an array of songs, 4+ sets of material which were about 50/50 originals to covers.
One of the covers we did was Nearly Lost You by Screaming Trees. I had not heard this before but I liked it. I ultimately heard the song again in the soundtrack to the movie Singles (great film). Screaming Trees got pigeonholed as being a grunge band but personally I think they were heads and tails better than most of the bands that came from that NW rock scene and they were doing their thing for several years prior to that wave of music. They had a certain something that was very different. They were dark, depressing, heavy at times but not in a Nirvana kind of way. I ultimately bought the album Sweet Oblivion and instantly loved it. There was something in Mark Lanegan’s voice that just screamed that he was hurting deep down. It reminds me a little bit of Hank Williams, Sr. No matter how upbeat the song sounded, you could hear the pain in his voice.
This album has that front to back. Great hooks and melodies, Lanegan’s haunting vocals. It’s a perfect album in my opinion. Oddly enough for as much as I adore this album, I never delved into the rest of their catalogue. I remember hearing Uncle Anesthesia a few times when it first came out, but it didn’t stick with me, nor was I ever really trying to listen to it as it was always background music to something else. I heard some of Lanegan’s solo stuff and it’s very dark and moody. I briefly jammed with Drew from Unicorn Records in Portsmouth, VA and we did a few of Lanegan’s songs. I never got into his work with Queens of the Stoneage.
Sixburgh!
I considered going this year but decided to use my money a little rmoe wisely and pay off a credit card. Done!
When Super Bowl XXX was happening, I had a party at my house and I was married at the time. When O’Donnell threw the 2nd interception for a TD to the Cowboys I got a little pissed and kicked everyone out of the party. Yes, I take it a little too seriously sometimes.
This year’s game was pretty good. I had another party (3rd year in a row) and had about 12-15 people there throughout the course of the game. Lots of food and beer and great friends. I was pretty excited through the whole game until the 4th quarter when the Steelers got lax and let the cards start scoring. Typical Steelers football. Irritating.
Some things I noticed about the televised game and even more confirmed after speaking to a few folks who attended the game.
1. The cameras rarely panned the crowd. According to one friend who was there, he said it was easily 100:1 Steelers fans to cards fans. Not too surprising. NBC is a bunch of wussies trying to make it appear “fair” on TV.
2. The crowd noise seemed enhanced. When the Steelers made a big play, you heard cheers and such. But when the Cards made big plays, the volume seemed to double. I’d bet dime to a dollar NBC, again, was trying to make it seem like an even crowd.
But hey, whatever. The Steelers won and for that I am happy. There were awful calls on boths sides of the ball for both teams and a ton of no-calls. Harrison should have been ejected and I am not convinced that Warner’s fumble at the end was a fumble, no matter if the NFL claims they reviewed it in the booth.
Here’s the precursor to my party:
The Metal Files 
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