COHEED & CAMBRIA 

w/dredg + Blood Bros

October, 2005, SLC    @  the Great  SALTAIR Palace 

[This show I've rated **** out of ****   5  out of  5   stars!]

~NIN venue was half empty.

~NIN was good, but somewhat lackluster (by contrast).

~Coheed & Cambria was SOLD OUT

~Coheed & Cambria was the funnest show I've been too in several many wicked moons, we were hoppin' like Mexican jumpin' beans on a hot tamale plate, I was dancin' with strangers, moshin' it up with all the geek kids, the energy was out of this world!  

    Claudio stood up in front of everyone with his frizzed out Pharoah's Hairdo, struttin' like a Godling among spastic munchkins... At one point during "3 Evils" (my favorite) I couldn't take it anymore... so I launched myself off the shoulders of midgets & they carried me along the top of the crowd surfing it up while Claudio sang "...On the wrong way out, on the causeway to neverwhere. . . .on the wrong way OUT, on the cause way to Never Way-He-Hair!", and by the time the entire crowd was chanting "PULL THE TRIGGER AND THE NIGHTMARE STOPS PULL THE TRIGGER AND THE NIGHTMARE STOPS PULL THE TRIGGER AND THE NIGHTMARE STOPS" 

    I was crowd-surfed to the front and the world spun around me as the earth rotated on its axis and my feet dropped to the concrete floor in front of the stage & I raced as fast as my little feets would carry me, back around to the side, only to plunge through the crowd in a hysterical fit of sheer hopping madness... the energy was sprayed in sweatin' droplets flinging everywhere, and get this (not kidding here):  

    At the NIN show I recently attended, my sensitive nostrils picked up mainly the scents of weed smoke, cigarettes, sweat, and cheap perfume. But at the Coheed show (this is the god's honest truth) I smelled something musky and familiar in the air as every chick there spazzed out and squealed their little triumphs, I mean to say the entire scene was well-oiled and ready for some slam-dancin', if you catch my drift. 

    In any case, I hadn't been to a show as energetic and straight-up sensational as this C&C show in quite awhile, so all I can say is, judge not until thine ears & eyes & noses have heard & seen & sniffed out for them pretty-little-selves Coheed & Cambria live, cuz they are

-Rush
-Pink Floyd
-Led Zeppelin

all combined into one super-amalgamated & hype-accelerated starburst nova-shot explosion of super- charged teen bravado...and also, the lyrics are good.

dredg

    But give it up for DREDG, daaaaaaaaamn, that was the best show of theirs yet, (my 7th), they kicked it open with Ode To The Sun and they were ON I tell ya, Dino slappin' them heavy sticks with his signature hi-liftin' style, stick way UP, *SLAP*, stick way UP, *POW!*, stick way UP, *BLAP*, the rhythm churned, respect was earned, the world did turn in its orbit, spinnin' underneath our feet & we generated our own Richter-scaled mini-quake as dredg channeled their own eloquent storm for us under the cooling heat of a late fall evening by the great salt lake with the breeze blowin' in from the east, and our ears ringing true to the audial feast, and then towards the end of dredg's set, I was up by the rail (to the drummer's left) and I swear by my right hand he saw me air drumming like a freak & suddenly, at the end of The Canyon Behind Her, Dino *fliPPed* his stick up directly at me & it sailed over my head & I instantly reacted with savage instinct & nearly did a back flip & dove for the floor in the general direction it went and there it was on the floor; I saw someone's shadow looming over for it but I was quicker than Rikki Tikki Tavi & Thorny here was ON IT, I grabbed that stick so quick by the middle of it as the "other guy" grabbed it by it's tippy-tip end, so with a snarl I twisted it out of his grip  & held it up in triumph. (Later I went out back and buried it in the sand like a good little doggie. That way I was able to be hands-free for the mosh pits & the Coheed euphoria soon to come.)

    the Blood Bros

By the way: The Blood Brothers are WHACK! 

        I did mightily enjoy the blood bros set... they've got twin lead singers (not that they're related by blood) while one looked like Chris Robinson's little bro', the other one was blond with messy hair and Jagger moves that looked a little groovy, and while he sang out with a sharpshooter's crack on vocals just like a spastic attack, his skinny-assed blood brother with the short black hair would double over & shriek like a raptor into the mic... soundin' like a howler monkey getting stabbed with hot darning needles... they traded vocal licks in a woven tapestry of screams... not a word was understood, but the feeling registered in the crowd & the band kicked it up a notch or three... PSYCHO-fukkers like a home made tornado of disparate styles a Mississippi Delta Danger Blues infused with a high-voltage Jazz Abuse, on a Hellbent time signature that twisted like a pack of Tasmanian Devils on the loose... and just when you thought "this can't get more whack", the music accelerated and lifted into a riot of tangled noize flowin' into various styles competing for supremacy, all the while the singers losin' it (this wasn't music this was an all out hype-accelerated invasion of decency!) and a storm-the-normals psYcho-fusion of shrapnel-induced cacophony of musical illusion shattering our perceptions and scattering them far and wide across the lost plateau of what was formerly known as "normal music" gripped us in a collective seizure & now that we were exposed to the BLOOD BROS VIRUS there was no turning back... their music's like crack... once you get a hit, you're addicted... it don't matter if you LIKE it or not... that shit is IN you now... & you've got no choice but to go with the flow so I did, and they proceeded to mass attack my ears and shriek into my soul... and the echoes are still fading... there:  we were violated and we liked it!   

     

~ A Show For The Ages ~