tiger army and the business. an uber-cool double feature.
there were three opening bands, just some local emo shit, the were ok for some moshing, but thats about it.
then the fun started. the business is a british oi hardcore(street punk) group from london, england. theyve been playing for over a decade and a half i think, and they are awesome. they were sporting bruce dickinson(drummer/vocalist from iron maiden) on the drums, and their guitarist (steve somebody) was hella talented. he had a few bitchin solos played with his guitar behind his head. ive since bought several of their cds, they are ****ing great. i talked to steve and said hi to bruce, they were both cool.
i have to dedicate an entire paragraph to bruce dickinson's drumming, it is so damn good. first of all, his hands move so fast that he only needs one hand to play a good fast beat. to fill in pauses he taps the roof or other random stuff with his other hand, and throws in stick flips whenever the hell he feels like it(which sometimes is like every hit for 10+ hits in a row). he also drinks beer with his one hand while drumming with the other. the single greatest moment was when he hit a symbol with his right stick, and in the same motion(using the recoil from the symbol) threw the stick up towards his shoulder. the stick landed on his shoulder, rolled down his arm all the way to his palm, where he flipped it off his knuckles, catching it midflip and crashing down on another symbol. im not exaggerathing this one bit, every thing i said here happened exactly the way i said it did(i saw this all from a balcony no more than 20 feet away). my official opinion on this matter is that bruce dickinson is definitely the coolest person on earth. i told him that he kicks ringo starr's ass, to which he chuckled.
tiger army . . . just some good punk. they had a standup bass(ie, not an electric bass, a string bass, chello or w/e), and had good harmony and vocals. got some good moshing in there too.
it was easily the best concert ill ever see for $15. i can think of some other bands that would be better, but it probably wouldnt be as cool(ie, it would be in a big auditorium, not a medium sized club).
) but anyway, It was right when Ripper joined the band, and I still wasn't sure how it would sound without barlow, or even his backup vocals, but it was ****ing awesom. Ripper shreds like a mutha ****a, and even the classics sounded great (Pure Evil was ****ing insane). All time was definately Ozzfest '01 or '00, can't remember, but it was cool cause people started setting fires in the stands while slipknot was playing... good times.
