Queensryche

The Queensryche show tonight kicked ass. They played both albums, Operation Mindcrime I and II in their entirety, as well as a two song encore. A wee bit over three hours. I will update this whenever the hell I wake up tommorow. I got about four hours of sleep last night, so I am pretty damn wiped out.

UPDATE finally. – I woke up about an hour ago. Just getting some coffee in my system. I have to go out and pick up a computer to fix from someone I know, as well as go to the hated wal-mart to pick up the SO’s prescriptions.

The show last night was awesome. The Tabernacle seats something like 2500, there were probably 2000, maybe less, in attendance. I like shows that are in small venues much better than seeing them at the Lakewood Amphiteatre (or whatever it’s fucking called now). No matter where you sit, you have a good seat. The sound quality usually isn’t the best, but who cares. If you want sound quality, buy the CD, don’t go to live shows.

We took Chris, which was interesting, as it was his first concert.

The band played all 32 songs from both albums. Damn, it was a long show. Stephanie thinks that Geoff Tate was lip-syncing in some of it, but I don’t think so. There is always stuff on the albums that is pre-recorded and inserted in the show, perhaps that is what was heard. I could be wrong though. Don’t really care either way. They did a pretty good job. One thing I noticed is that even though they have been playing the stuff longer (20 years), they did not seem to have quite as smooth a time with the material from OM I as they did from the second one. Maybe it is just the difference between the music. Most of their stuff is pretty complicated to play live, with lots of intertwined (sp?) melodies. They just seemed alot more in sync with each other with the new stuff.

This is the second time that I have seen the OM I show, the first being about 20 years ago. I must say that I really enjoyed it.

I enjoyed checking out the people too. Damn, time has not been kind to some of these fucking people. I loves me some heavy metal, but at some point in my life I realized that I couldn’t walk around looking and acting like Beavis and Butthead. I guess that lightbulb just doesn’t click for everyone. At one point I had to tell Chris “some of these chicks were probably hot 20 years ago”.

There were some younger people too. Some with parents, some by themselves, but mostly it was folks in their late 20’s to early 50’s. Damn, I used to laugh at all of the people that would attend concerts of bands that I considered “out of date”. Guess I am one of them now.

If you haven’t heard anything by QR, you should check them out. They were always considered the “thinking man’s heavy metal band”. Geoff Tate has one of the best voices around, even after 25 years. Even if you are not a metal head, you might be pleasantly surprised by Queensryche.