We made it on time!

Dream Theater was the opener, which I had completely forgotten until the night of the show. A really pleasant surprise. They sounded great. They only played a few songs, but they were 10+ minutes each song so…
Drummer was just plain AWESOME. Not only are their rhythms incredibly complex, but he mixed in lots of drumstick play.

Setlist:

Edit this setlist | More Dream Theater setlists

Iron Maiden took a long while to come on stage after that. Granted, there was a lot of maneuvering needed to get Dream Theater’s massive drum kit out and Iron Maiden’s on. The set reminded me of a Star Wars outpost kind of feeling.
They took stage with the house lights up, which was also kinda weird, but the singer came out charging and leaping all around stage with incredible energy. I was getting tired just watching him – it was also probably 90 degrees inside MSG.
Anyhow, he would run around the upper level of the set, then drop down by the drummer, hurdle over speakers to the front, then jump the gaps going end to end across the front of the stage.

As you can see, we did not have a great view of the drummer. Unfortunate, because he’s a peculiar guy in their movie and I was interested to see his style. He was barefoot though – could see it when he was tossing drum sticks to the crowd at the end. Also, he frisbeed a drum head and it literally went to the other end of the arena.

The crowd was INSANELY into Iron Maiden. People would go up and down the aisles getting everyone to stand up, fist pump along, etc. One very drunk guy came up to me, punched me in the shoulder 3 times to get my attention and did an air guitar solo “in time” to the music. It was hilarious. We left during the last song and we literally did not see anyone else leaving. NOT ONE PERSON.

Iron Maiden – Iron Maiden with Giant Eddy on stage:

Iron Maiden – Number of the Beast

Setlist:

Edit this setlist | More Iron Maiden setlists

All pictures from the show here.

Last night Lethy, Ken and I headed out to Long Island to catch a Weird Al show.

Funky looking little venue. The place is quite small, I can’t imagine it seating more than 2,000 people. Circular stage (which rotated) and we were in row E.

Al and the band put on a great show. Lots of costume changes (almost every song) but the delays were mitigated somewhat by the use of the 4 video screens, showing clips from Al TV, UHF, and the Al “interviews.”

One woman in the front row got far more than she bargained for… and perhaps more than she wanted as Al serenaded her.

All 3 songs of the encore were accompanied by a geek fest of storm troopers and a Boba Fett:

Al and the band finished off the set with a really sharp a Capella sound / word jumble. It’s hard to explain, but it was really cool.

Ken has it on his youtube.

All my other pictures are in the gallery.

Setlist:

Edit this setlist | More “Weird Al” Yankovic setlists

Last night, Lethy, Ken and I went into Manhattan to catch Winger!

Yes, the Winger of 80s metal fame!

I forgot to put the battery back in the camera after I charged it so the picture is stolen from Ken.

His videos can be seen at www.youtube.com/Zawsum

A nice show, Kip Winger still hits all the right notes. Lots of interaction between members of the band. Reb (guitarist) is quite entertaining. Hard to tell if he’s really enjoying himself or in pain… just makes lots of funny faces while he plays.

Venue was nice. Pretty small, but a good layout. We got a booth pretty much as far as you can be from the stage and still had a great view.

Setlist:

1. Pull Me Under (Karma)
2. Blind Revolution Mad (Pull)
3. Easy Come Easy Go (In the Heart of the Young)
4. Stone Cold Killer (Karma)
5. Rainbow in the Rose (In the Heart of the Young)
6. Deal With The Devil (Karma)
7. Down Incognito (Pull)
8. John Roth guitar solo
9. Your Great Escape (IV)
10. Reb Beach guitar Solo
11. You Are the Saint, I Am the Sinner (In the Heart of the Young)
12. Rod Morgenstein drum Solo
13. Headed for a Heartbreak (Winger)
14. Can’t Get Enuff (In the Heart of the Young)
15. Seventeen (Winger)
Encores:
16. Miles Away (In the Heart of the Young)
17. Madalaine (Winger)
18. Helter Skelter (W/ Special Guest Fiona on Vocals)

UPDATE: Within an hour of posting, Kings of Leon have already had all my videos deleted from Youtube and a strike given to my Google account. It’s not like people watch videos on Youtube in lieu of going to shows or listen to bad recordings instead of downloading illegal MP3s. Way to alienate your client’s fans Vector Management.

Last night we made the drive up to Saratoga.

I have to say, the setting of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) is quite nice. It’s in a state park and everything is nicely kept, nestled nicely among the trees and the walkways to the parking areas taking you over bubbling creeks. Still, it’d need to be a can’t miss show for me to make the 3 hour drive each way again. But this was Lethy’s B-Day gift!

The opener was some band called The Whigs who had a very generic rock sound. Being an opener must suck!

The Whigs open for Kings of Leon @ SPAC

No one gave them much notice except for 2 middle-aged, insanely drunk guys in panama hats:

Drunk guys

Kings of Leon opened up with Crawl.

Kings of Leon

Their stage persona was a bit disappointing. Not a whole lot of interaction with the crowd beyond the occasional “We’re really happy to be here.” Musically they sounded good, although his voice did weaken as the night went on. He barely sang for much of “Sex on Fire” – not that he needed to. Crowd singalong was pretty strong.

As she often does, Lethy managed to score the Setlist. It’s inaccurate though. They adjusted as the night went on because of the singer’s voice.

2010.06.06 Kings of Leon @ SPAC Setlist

As always, full pictures are up on my gallery.

Video footage of one of the really drunk guys  is on my youtube channel.

Last night was a going away party before we head off to Venezuela for 10 days.

Pearl Jam was kind enough to cater an event for us at MSG!

Pearl Jam is one of the most hyped live acts to come out of the 90s (Phish being the one more hyped act I’ve heard about). We’d never seen them before and they did not disappoint!

I ran into some server issues at the end of the day and we missed both of the opening acts. Oh well, what else is new?

We got to our seats about 2 minutes before the lights dimmed, perfect timing!

I have never, ever seen a whole arena singing and fist pumping along more than I did last night for “Alive”. And that was with the house lights fully up… which usually makes people more self conscious.

Enough blabber… here are pics, video and lastly the setlist!

Eddie and his "I wanna be like Lordi" Mirror finish guitar!

Eddie did a few songs with 4 part strings accompaniment

Massive sing along - "Alive"