Franz Ferdinand

The radio station finally called me to let me know the Franz Ferdinand tickets were in a couple of weeks ago, and since I was one of the first people they actually got a hold of in person, they gave me the choice of going either Saturday or Sunday night. Carrie (whose turn it was to come with me) worked on Saturday but not Sunday, so we went today.
This was the first time I didn't win GA tickets, so we sat in the balcony, which gave us a very good view of the stage and I was able to check out the rest of the Paramout theatre, that I wasn't able to see the last time I was there.
The first opening band was a three-piece from Melbourne, Australia called Cut Copy. They are very interesting; I'd say a mixture of New Order, Beck and Soulwax. The drummer was the only one who stuck to his instrument, while the other two took turns playign bass, guitars, keyboards, singing and twisting various knobs to mess with pre-recorded sounds they used.
The second band was TV on the Radio, not sure where they're from. They are more of a rock band with blues-ish vocals. Not as impressive as Cut Copy, and really the only memorable thing about the band is that the bass player spends the entire set facing the back of the stage with his back to the audience.Franz Ferdinand were a lot of fun. They're a relatively new band for me, so I only know 3 of their songs and can't really sing along to any of them, but they are a very enjoyable bunch. More like the classical UK bands, in slacks and dress shirts with semi-Beatle-ish hair, they got teh crowd moving, had a very interesting lighting set-up, a revolving backdrop and for some reason kept picking on Bob, the bass player. They must be doing somethign right if they can play two nights in a row in Seattle (the 4th time in town since last year) and put on a great show on the second night!
The only thing that struck me as odd, and the merch lady agrees with me on this one, is that they didn't bring any music to sell, only t-shirts and posters?!

Audioslave

I got a call on Friday asking me if I could work today, unfortunately I was only able to work the out due to my day job and not being able to swap days with anyone, but I still got to listen to the show from backstage and do as much work as I could after the show. As a bonus, I managed to snag two of the four setlists on stage (all with the wrong date on them) and two of Tom Morello's picks of the floor. I'm keeping one of each and the other set is being sold on Ebay as we speak. I didn't get to actually see the band perform, but we could hear it all backstage and it sounded like a very good show.
As with the last time I saw them, they incorporated songs not only from their albums, but soem Rage songs, some Soundgarden and Temple of the dog. The set was pretty much the same as it was then, with the exception that they played "Hunger Strike" this time around whereas they didn't last time, so that made me very happy.
On another very fun and exciting note, as we were finishing up backstage, Tim Commerford (bass player for Audioslave) and one of the guys from Seether (one of the opening bands) were throwing a football around, winding down I guess, and almost tripped over some boxes, crashing into us. And then at the very end, while we were standing around waiting to sign out and get our crew t-shirts, the whole band walked past me (3 feet away!!!) and I'm sorry, but I'm still a fan and as professional as I conduct myself, inside I as very excited!

Apocalyptica

Tonight marked the second concert I've paid for since I've been in Seattle. When we found out that Apocalyptica were coming, we just had to go!
We were all set to go and ready to get in when I was made to take off my wallet chain because it could be used as a weapon. Then again, so could my car keys, but I could keep those. So even though spending $15 to go and beat the shit out of someone with a walletchain, is an extremely retarded concept, it did seem nontheless plausible to teh "security" people at the club so we all had to deal with our wallets being more susceptible to theft. That wasn;t as horribly hypocritical and annoying as them denying me entrance to the club with my digital camera because it has recording capabilities. Recording capabilities which consist of 15 second badly lit mpgs with no sound. At the same time others took their more advanced cameras in and a good 30% of teh crowd posessed cellphones with video and sound recording capabilities far superior to that of most digital cameras, let alone my 2 megapixel piece of crap. I stood there and watched al least 3 seperate people recording the entire concert on their cellphones.
Ok, enough ranting, the "security" people at El Corazon will get theirs, in due time!
The show was awesome! I don't know who the opening band was, but they were a little too metal for Amanda, so we sat in the bar until it was time for Apocalyptica to take the stage. It's been 6 years since I've seen them (Dynamo Open Air '99 - in front of 80 000 people, opening up for Metallica) and they've gone through a couple of lineup changes and have added a drummer, but in essence it's still four guys with cellos paying their own brand of heavy metal. They played a lot of their new material, which isn't available in the US yet, interspersed with their Metallica covers which made them famous (Amanda, and I dare say a lot of the other people there, were very amused at the fact that the whole crowd sings along as if they were at a Metallica concert). The evening was mostly Apocalyptica original compositions though, which was very enjoyable, watchign four grown men with no shirts on play cellos while headbanging. They finished their show with a bow before coming back on for a quick encore consisting of "Enter Sandman" and "Hall of the Mountain King".

Crosby, Stills & Nash

I got up nice and early this morning and drove out to Maryhill for day 5 of concertwork, Crosby, Stills & Nash. Collectively I know who they are but can't name a single song to save my life, and as the show went on, that was true, it was ok music, again nothing I would've paid for, but as a freebie definately enjoyable and entertaining. I got showcall for this show too, so in the past week I've worked close to 50 hours now. I only wish I coul ddo this all year round. Come to find out though, it has happened before, that a road crew were so impressed with a stagehand that they've asked him to grab his shit and come along, so who knows, that might happen one day?!





As far as CSN goes, it was interesting seeing their cases with ancient stickers (Lick Bush '88) on them and even more so that they had Savannah, GA and Hilton Head Island, SC stickers, since that's where I came from...
During the show I got to do live backline, which meant that for 3 songs, Frank and I got to carry a keyboard to the front of the stage, plug it in, wit for the song to be over, unplug it and carry it back to the back. So we got to spend the majority of the show on the stage, off to the side, and from there we saw a fight break out in the front rows during the third song. Not really the place I'd expect a fistfight to break out, but it happened and security had to drag 4 people off the premises kicking and screaming. All in all this was a very good weekend, and I got myself a bunch of picks and some setlists.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers/the Black Crowes day 2

Today started off so good! We had a show last night we didn't have to break down, just cover everything in case it rained. Today we didn't have to get up early, so we just hung out at the campsite, chatting, BBQing and being lazy until some of us had to go start work at 3pm. I use the term "work" very lightly as we just hung out backstage waiting for the show to start. We played some stickball next to the semis, broke our stick, made a new one, broke that and made a third.... some of the guys went for their multi-daily safety meeting and we spent our time people watching as the crowd gathered slowly in the sold out Gorge Ampitheatre.
The Black Crowes put on another great performance tonight, sans Kate Hudson...I will definitely have to see about getting a live album someday.
Tom Petty was a little disappointing as he played the exact same set he did last night (after finding an older setlist stuck to one of the cases it appears he doesn't change it at all) down to the exact same dialogue used to introduce the band at exactly the same point in the show.
I did find out that had this been an indoor show, their lighting setup would've been a lot more impressive than it already is, with a revolving array of video screens that feature members of both the band and the audience.
On the definite upside, I did further build my pick collection and got to grab some setlists while I was at it!
Unfortunately, the out took 3 1/2 hours, when it really didn't need to. We could've had them all out of there in 2 if it wasn't for the fact that this was Tom Petty's last show and they were in no big hurry, which resulted in the roadies not really paying attention to what was going on, and we were stuck listening to one of them up on stage, stinking drunk, gettign pissed off at us for not realizing that he had just changed his mind about what he wanted us to send down to the trucks next.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers/the Black Crowes day 1

I got showcall at the Gorge for the first time today, and since Tom Petty's playing here again tomorrow night, that means I get showcall again tomorrow too! This weekend will definately be a good weekend resulting in a very nice paycheck!
I didn't find out I was gettign showcall until I got cut for lunch at 1:30 (only showcall people get fed at the Gorge) so I ended up being on the clock from 8 am to 11 pm, when the show ended.
I didn't know the Black Crowes were opening until someone told me a couple of days ago, so this was definately a very nice surprise, especially since they were so good live. I don't know much of their stuff, but I definately have to say that I prefer their live stuff to studio recordings I have heard. As an added bonus, Kate Hudson is here. I knew she's married to the lead singer, but I wasn't expecting her to be here! Of course we're not allowed to approach the celebreties, and I didn't have my camera onme 'cause I actually didn't get a chance to run up to camp except to change into my showblacks, but we did all get to see her up close and personal, dressed, oddly enough, in a very nice red dress (all the other people backstage were dressed very casually, but she obviously dressed up for something!?) This might be because these two nights are the last two for the Crowes with Tom Petty, who is finished with this tour after the Gorge!?
I am actually quite amazed by just how many Tom Petty songs I actually know. I knew about "Free Falling" and "Don't come around here no more" but from his whole set, there were maybe 3 or 4 songs I hadn't heard before. all in all it was a pretty good show, and I got to stand at the top of the ramp and watch it from behind the band but it's still not something I would pay for. Their lighting set up was the nicest and most interesting I've seen all season, and several other stagehands agree with me on that one.

Pearl Jam

Tonight, Pearl Jam played the Gorge the first time in 12 years. Needless to say the concert sold out an hour after the tickets went on sale. 9 000 alone were sold in pre-sale and th epast few weeks, single tickets have been going for as much as $400 on Ebay. Hell, I'm being paid to go to this show, nothing gets better than that!
The show was amazing. It went on for 3 1/2 hours (with intermissions, so about 3 hours total music) and was divided thusly: they played a 45 minute semi-accoustic set followed by an 1 1/2 hour loud rocking set, a 30 minute encore, a 20 2nd minute encore and finally a 10 minute 3rd encore.
It was fun, Eddie Vedder announced that Tom Petty is staying in a hotel up the river and that he could hear us, so we shoudl do everything possible to keep him up. This included Eddie leading the crowd in several chants of "Hello Tom, come down Tom!" throughout the night.In fact, he started off the encore with the announcement that "Tom called and asked us to turn it down" which spawned another round of "Hello Tom, Come down Tom!"
During the second encore, he then screwed up in the middle of "Better Man", tried to rebound but couldn't, so he stopped and proclaimed "this would never happen to Tom Petty, he's a professional, he practices" before he resumed the song. During loud out I ended up finding one of Jeff Ament's bass picks (used from the show) and that started my collection for this weekend (Frank, one of the veteran stagehands here made off with a full set of drumheads they were gonna throw out) I am also very happy that instead of selling the bootlegs of the shows at the venues themselves this time around, Pearl Jam have decided that their fans can download the entire shows for $9.99 a pop at www.pearjam.com and can then burn them to cd as often as they want. If I can get the money together I might even get the whole Tour, who knows!? But for now I am definately downloading this show as soon as I get home next week!

Pearl Jam pre-production

We set up for Pearl Jam today, even though they're not playing until tomorrow. This is partially because tomorrow is the first big show of their tour (they played a small club in Missoula yesterday) and so a lot o fteh lighting and sound equipment is new and they all ahev to get the timing down and get used to everything. The other reason is because they are going to do some filming and want to do it the night before the show.
So after the load in, the majority of us just hung out in camp and kept ourselves busy, and as an added bonus we got to listen to Pearl Jam play for almost 2 hours, part soundcheck and part videorecording.

Dave Matthews Band, Day 3

Today I got back to the Gorge and actually went out into the crowd to watch Dave. Apparently he comes out to the Gorge for 3 days in a row every year (he even released a live DVD of one of the shows a couple of years ago) and he really enjoys himself while he's there. Tonights show was a completely different set than Fridays (and probably Saturdays too, I don't know) and he played for 3 hours and 15 minutes. He always rents out the winery next door for himself, his family and the band and pretty much sells out all his shows at the Gorge, he's big business for the people there, probably why they didn't want us staying and fucking it up for them. I just don't understand why now, seeing as though this is the first time they've pulled this crap, and as a result, we were short on bodies.

So short in fact that they pulled people out of the audience to help out, which ended in several people in flip-flops ( I still don't get this countrys unhealthy obsession with those things) "helping out", which consisted of them taking pictures and calling their friends telling them they were on the stage rather than working. This weekend definately pissed a lot of people off!!

Amy Grant

Woke up this morning, left my tent standing at the Gorge and drove to Maryhill to go work Amy Grant. I didn't have to be there until 10 so I could get up at a decent time and make my way down there. On the way in Yakima, I stopped to get some breakfast and found a McDonalds that looks like the buildings used to, with an arch on each side so that when you looked at it from a certain angle, it would look like an M. I didn't think those still existed!?

Amy Grant was very unimpressive, I must say. I knew I wasn't going to like her stuff when I signed up for the show, but I do have to say it was nothing special. I dare say the highlights of her show were when she stepped aside and let her bandmembers sing covertunes like "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Big Yellow Taxi".

After the show I didn't feel much like driving back, so I joined a couple of the others at a campground we've procured for ourselves and slept in my car. Luckily I carry my futon mattress with me and the back of my car becomes a very comfortable bed!

Dave Matthews Band, day 1

Today started a three day weekend of Dave Matthews Band shows out at the Gorge. Today also marked a big fuck-up in the Gorge's mangerial decisions, regarding their workforce.
After 80 + people drove up to 3 hours to work the Gorge this weekend, and after we set up the DMB stage, we were told that, unless we were working showcall (a total of about 6 people) we couldn't stay on the premises, and couldn't come back until 2 pm Sunday. Sunday we could then watch the show and we'd load out and that would be it.
Of course, people were pissed off and many said that if they left now, they wouldn't come back Sunday, because it just wouldn't be worth it.
Luckily, i am also on the crew for the Maryhill winery tomorrow, and we can spend the night, will be gone all day tomorrow anyway and then come back a little earlier on Sunday. So, I got to hang around the campsite all day,

watch somebody being interviewed right by our camp, and enjoy the show from backstage, where yo can't really see much, but the sound's just as good as if you were in front of the stage, and we can actually watch the crowd gather, and seeing 25 000 people fill the Gorge is fun.

Coldplay

Those who know me know how I feel about Coldplay, and it is a fair assumption to make that the only way I would ever go to a Coldplay concert is if I were paid. Well, that's exactly what happened!

ERM, the second company I work for that does concerts in the area called me up yesterday to ask if I could work the Coldplay concert today, it's money so I said yes!

The band did have the most elaborate lighting set-up I have ever seen, including huge spots that scissored down behind the band, creating silluettes.

I have come to the conclusion that Coldplay have 2 major problems:
1) Whoever decides which songs become singles should be fired because the non-single tracks they played were actually pretty good, where as their singles are all whiney and god-awful!
2) their live show is interesting, but their video department is entirely too over produced! Video walls at concerts are there for the people in the back to be able to get a closer look at the band, not for on-the-fly music video shooting!

All in all it was an ok day, but had I not gotten paid for it I would never have gone, and I definately wouldn't have paid to go see them.

On a very positive note though, at 2:30 in the morning, on my way back home from the gig, I called into the End and won 2 tickets to see Franz Ferdinand in Oktober!

B.B. King

After finishing the Jack Johnson load-out at 12:30 am this morning, I got into my car (I had luckily packed up my tent and everything earlier) and set out on the 2 ½ hour drive to the Maryhill Winery where I arrived at 3:45 am, laid down in the back of my car for about an hour and slept so that I could get up and be there for my 5:00 am call to start getting ready for the B.B. King show. If it wasn’t for the fact that I could come home and sleep all day the day after, this would not have been a smart thing to do, but I did manage to work all day on one hour’s sleep after having worked a concert the day before.
Luckily, the equipment arrived in waves and we did have a decent amount of downtime in between unloading trucks, so it was all do-able. Again, hammocks were hung up underneath the stage and a lot of naps were taken.
B.B. King took the stage at 7 pm, or at least his band did, he came on and strapped on Lucille at 7:15. I was on show-call so I didn’t get a chance to experience the show from in the audience, but I got to see a B.B. King show nonetheless (kinda from the side, backstage)I love this job, in one week I got paid to see two of Britain’s most important Heavy Metal bands, and a legendary Blues guitarist, you really can’t beat that (well, you can if you throw in meeting the artists, but that very rarely happens, and has yet to happen to me). Surprisingly, the Winery only sold about 2000 of the available 4000 tickets to the show, but the empty seats didn’t seem to bother B.B. at all, he played and talked and laughed with the crowd and for an almost 80 year old diabetic, put on one hell of a show.

Jack Johnson

Today brought me back to the Gorge for a Jack Johnson concert. For those who don’t know who Jack Johnson is, one of the crew put it best when asked that question saying “Jack Johnson is music that makes women wet, kinda like John Mayer, but more”. Now that made perfect sense to me, and although it is not true for every woman, I am sure that every guy that got dragged to that concert did get some that night. As for the music, It was good enough that I didn’t mind listening to it, but I definitely wouldn’t have paid to go see that. Songs like “I wanna lay you down” and “Do you like my pecs?” makes you really wonder about what’s happening to the world of music sometimes.
Johnson did contribute a very nice cover of Sublime’s “Bad Fish” to the recently released Sublime Tribute Album, and as part of his encore, I do have to say it was the strong point of his performance.The Gorge was sold out for his show though (23 000), and every one on the crew was amazed by this fact, saying that this was the best selling show all season (then again, Pearl Jam is coming up in a couple of weeks and I’ve heard that tickets are going for about $400 on Ebay right now)

Ozzfest 2005

I answered an ad online the other day regarding working shows as a stagehand. I figured it was probably the House of Blues again, since I keep finding those ads, but figured I’d apply anyway, just in case. Good thing I did. The company that ran the ad is ERM, they staff the White River Amphitheatre, a venue located on the Mukkelshoot Indian Reservation in Auburn, just South of Seattle. They were looking for people to work Ozzfest. Of course I was on board, now if only I can find some more of these companies, I’ll be set and make my living as a roadie, but for now it’s definitely a very nice addition.
The routine was pretty much the same as always, unload the semis, help set up the stage (equipment, backdrop & props, etc.) wait to be cut and told when to come back to pack everything back up. This was my first time with the company, so I didn’t get show call, which is where you’re part of the crew that performs set changes between acts and is on standby in case anything needs to be moved backstage. The difference between ERM and House of Blues is that I don’t have backstage access during the show if I’m not working, but I can enjoy the show for free. (It’s great, I get paid to attend a Black Sabbath/ Iron Maiden concert!)
To be quite honest, I wasn’t too impressed by the venue, but I did enjoy the show. Right as I was coming out onto the lawn, there were a bunch of people huddled around an Ozzy look-a-like who was posing for pictures and signing things (the sad this is that most of those people though it actually was Ozzy). I had to take a picture because from a distance, he really was quite convincing, if you ignore the fact that he had absolutely no security with him, and the passes around his neck where not official Ozzfest passes (which of course you wouldn’t know unless you saw people backstage wearing the actual ones, like I did).
Interesting moments during the show include Killswitch Engage telling us that we are all ugly and our fathers should’ve pulled out, Rob Zombie doing his rendition of “Jessie’s Girl”, Mudvayne taking a moment to thank all the stage crew for all their work, a sign backstage anouncing the time of an AA meeting and a single solitary clock on the wall of the loading dock with a label proclaiming “Official Ozzfest Time ( I don’t care what your watch says)” It was interesting to see that Ozzfest is apparently 10 minutes ahead of the rest of the world.
Highlights were, of course, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. Both legendary bands I have never seen before. Maiden went all out with a set consisting of a changing backdrop for each song (they only played songs off their first 4 albums) several stage additions for running around on, an animatronic statue of Satan, a 10 foot Eddie who came out and interacted with the band, and of course, my favorite thing a band can do, they talked to the audience, explained things, told anecdotes, it was just great.Then came Sabbath, most of the set I had to listen to from backstage, since call for the load-out is always during the last 45 minutes of a show, but they played “War Pigs”, my absolute favorite Sabbath song and I was happy. Ozzy is surprisingly active on stage running around like “a retarded 5 year old” as one of my co-workers put it. But it was true, he was like an overly excited kid, thoroughly enjoying the attention and the whole process of being on stage. As we were loading his stuff onto the stage and setting it up, I did notice that he uses a teleprompter. I guess all the years of all the shit he’s done to his body has taken a toll not only on his speech and motor functions, but his memory as well. Amanda thinks it’s cute, I just think it’s interesting; the prince of darkness singing karaoke to his own songs.