Posts Tagged ‘skinnies records’
Meeting Sepultura 1994
Sepultura was on the Chaos AD tour with Fear Factory, Clutch and Fudge Tunnel in 1993/94. I get a call on 
the day of the show from my friend Steve who owns Skinnies Records in Norfolk, VA and he says he’s guestlisted +1 and offers it to me. Hell yeah! I didn’t really care for the Chaos AD album that much but not having seen Sepultura before, I was definitely interested. The other bands on the bill were not even mildly interesting to me.
I pick Steve up and it’s a cold rainy night in early March 1994. We get to the Boathouse (I miss that place!) and go to the will-call window. The girl hands Steve and envelope and tells one of the employees to see us inside. I don’t recall getting a ticket for this one as it’s not in my ticket stub collection anywhere. Steve put the envelope in his jacket and we go in.
The 3 opening bands were pretty dull. I think Fear Factory was on right before Sepultura and Steve pulls the envelope out and opens it. Two Sepultura after show backstage passes! Score! We were both excited and I remember Steve saying, “Damn, glad I decided to look in the envelope!” Me too!
Sepultura comes on and they were great. They mostly played stuff from Chaos AD and Arise but threw in Mass Hypnosis, Policia, My Inner Self and Beneath The Remains. Score! They were tight and entertaining.
After the show, we just hang out as people were leaving. Several of our friends stopped to say hello and we both kept the passes under wraps until most everyone had left. We then went to the backstage door with our passes displayed and got ushered in. Saw some folks we knew back there and talked it up a bit.
My favorite memory was hearing someone in a thick yet higher-pitched Brazilian accent ask, “Does anybody want a beer?” I turn around and right behind me is Max Cavalera holding 3 or 4 bottles of Beck’s beer. I jokingly said, “Hey man, you sound like a girl!” He laughed, handed me a beer and said, “Drink up!”
We chatted with him and the rest of the guys for a few minutes and I got them to sign the envelope that the passes came in. They were very amiable and joked around with everyone a lot. Steve and I were pretty worn out and left.
I’ve been pretty lucky meeting bands over the years. And this was definitely another great experience. Sepultura was very gracious and seemed to love playing in the States.
So, thanks to Steve and Sepultura for a great night of metal comradeship!
Sepultura backstage pass, Beck's bottle cap and autographs (click to enlarge)
Concrete Blonde – Concert Review – 061910
CONCRETE BLONDE
LIVE AT EMO’S, AUSTIN, TEXAS
JUNE 19, 2010
So let’s go back to 1990/91. I was working part time at an independent record store in Norfolk, VA called The Music Man. Pretty legendary place for a store that was in a mall. Between them, Skinnie’s Records and Unicorn Records, there were none better in the area as far as indie stores went. Skinnie’s is the only one to still be alive. Awesome!
At The Music Man there was a girl named Teresa that worked there. Tall, dark hair, black leather jacket, seemingly pissed off at the world and would likely kick your ass. We weren’t friends by any means but were amicable. Concrete Blonde’s Bloodletting had come out and any night that we were working together, she spun it in the store. I neither liked nor disliked it, but I became very familiar with it. She was a Concrete Blonde fanatic. So for the year or so that I worked there, the album was force-fed to me.
A month or 2 ago it was announced that they were going to tour for the 20th anniversary of Bloodletting and were coming to Austin on the tour. I figured what the hell, never seen them, liked some of the stuff I remembered by them, so why not go? As I am apt to do, I bought 2 tickets. I mentioned the show to my stunningly gorgeous friend, Christine, and she accepted. This is the same Christine that went to Iron Maiden with us last weekend.
So I pick her up, we go eat some awesome sushi at Mushashino, grab a margarita at my favorite bar in Austin which shall remain unnamed) and head downtown. Jason McMaster’s Killa Maul was playing early at Red Eyed Fly and we wanted to catch some of their set. Killa Maul is Jason’s Metallica tribute band which plays only the Kill ’em All album. It’s a fun show to watch, mainly because you can see him having so much fun with it. We only caught 2 or 3 songs and had to head to Emo’s for the Concrete Blonde show. They were playing the outside stage and it was hot and muggy and slightly uncomfortable with such a large crowd. It seemed that no matter where we stood, some dude wanted to take his shirt off right in front of us. We ran into my friends Sean and Jen and found a decent spot to catch the show.
An announcement came on before the band took the stage dictating that there is to be no filming of the show and no flash photography. So, sorry…I have no photos or video to share.
The band took the stage which was purposely poorly lit on Johnette’s side. They opened with Bloodletting (Vampire Song). Her voice sounded good and really got better as the night progressed. Next song was their hit “Joey”. They botched the intro and I noticed on a vid or 2 on YouTube that they had done this a time or 2 already on the tour. Hey…it happens. We’re musicians, we’re not always perfect! ha
Overall they sounded really good. I was quite impressed with their guitar player. He had a cool style, switching between using a pick and just fingers and sometimes a combo of the 2. Drummer was solid. Towards the end of the set, Johnette really belted out some lyrics.
Overall it was a good show and my friend seemed to enjoy it as well. The one thing I could have done without was the cover of Little Wing. I’m not a Hendrix fan in the least. That being said, not too many people can do his stuff justice. Their version wasn’t bad, but, well…ugh. Hendrix. ’nuff said. I would have rather heard their version of Thin Lizzy’s It’s Only Money. That would have been bad ass. But alas, no. I knew the Hendrix cover was in the set thanks to the interwebz, so it was expected.
Instead of doing encores, they just played through to the end of their set. Four of the last 5 songs were done with no bass. Just vocals, acoustic guitar and drums. Sounded pretty cool. They closed with Still In Hollywood.
As expected, this was a mostly “older” crowd and it’s obvious that some of these people don’t get out much these days. It was great people watching for sure. I was a little surprised to not see much of the goth crowd there.
In the end, nice job to Concrete Blonde. We had a great time and they sounded really good.
This setlist may be a little jumbled up. I’ll fix it later if I can find the correct order.
1. Bloodletting
2. Joey
3. I Don’t Need a Hero
4. Days and Days
5. Lullabye
6. Scene of the Perfect Crime
7. Ghost of a Texas Ladies Man
8. Someday
9. Everybody Knows (Leonard Cohen cover)
10. Caroline
11. When I Was a Fool
12. God Is a Bullet
13. Run Run Run
14. Little Wing (Jimi Hendrix cover)
15. Heal It Up
16. Your Haunted Head
17. Mexican Moon
18. Happy Birthday
19. True
20. Tomorrow, Wendy
21. Still in Hollywood
Pat Travers – Putting It Straight
When I was still collecting vinyl, Iron Maiden was my #1 interest. As you probably know they released a ton of stuff and I had a good selection of it
thanks to Unicorn Records, Skinnies Records, Electric Smiles, Fantasy, eBay and trading through some pen pal type things from the backs of magazines. Oddly enough there were never any problems with the traders. I never got ripped off once. Honest lot those metalheads! As a subset to collecting Maiden stuff, I also was trying to collect everything that Nicko McBrain had played on. Not an easy task as there were some pretty obscure British things out there.
So my former supervisor and I were good friends and he told me about his record collection that had been sitting in his closet for 15 years. Knowing Mark like I did, I knew these were in near perfect condition. The guy was meticulous about everything. So I randomly stopped by Mark’s house one day (1993ish?) when I was in the neighborhood and we were just hanging out and catching up a bit as we hadn’t seen each other in a while. After a while I asked if he still had his records. He said he still had them and wanted to sell them. I wasn’t in the market to buy the collection but I surely wanted to peruse his crates. So he pulls out these 3 huge crates of records and I start flipping through one by one. Tons of 70s rock. You know, BOC, Zeppelin, Stones, Bob Seeger, Poco, America, etc etc. Nothing too obscure and surely nothing that a record collector would have paid more than 3-4 dollars each for.
There near the end of perusal, there it was. It was one of those heavenly “ahhhhhh” moments where it seemed like the clouds parted and the sun shone down on this box of records. Pat Travers’ Putting It Straight with Nicko on drums! Mark still claims to this day that I was shaking when I was holding it. I don’t doubt that I was. I was pretty excited. I said, “How much?” He responded, “Not for sale.” What a douche! But he did tell me to take it with me until I found my own copy. It was in pristine shape. PERFECT even. Shortly thereafter I found another vinyl copy at Skinnies and a year or 2 later he had the original and rare Jap pressing of the CD which I also bought.
I adore this album. It’s got Nicko’s signature drum licks written all over it. My favorites are Life In London, Offbeat Ride, Gettin’ Betta and It Ain’t What It Seems. The album as a whole is good and I highly recommend it if you’re into 70s hard rock.
Around 1994-1995 Pat came to town to play Wicker’s in Portsmouth, VA. I did my usual “show-up-to-the-gig-super-early” routine to hopefully meet the band. I lucked out as they were all inside getting ready to eat. I walked up to Pat and asked him to sign a few things for me and he was really cool. He signed my vinyl copy of this album and my CD cover. I asked him to talk about how it was to play with Nicko and he didn’t have many nice things to say. “Good drummer but a complete asshole after that whole Iron Maiden thing.” Apparently after Nicko joined Maiden, he landed his helicopter in Pat’s yard and bragged about his success. Who knows? I wouldn’t be that surprised if it was true. Not important to me either way. The guy that was sitting with us while we were talking about Nicko was Aynsley Dunbar. Of course I didn’t know that at the time. Had I known he was drumming for Pat, I would have brought my Jefferson Airplane and Journey stuff!
Nicko also played on Makin’ Magic which is also worth tracking down.
The Metal Files 
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