Whee! Went to the System of a Down concert in Baltimore yesterday.
The opening bands sucked. Bad Acid Trip was what I'd imagine "grindcore" to sound like, ie: incomprehensible and goddamn retarded. To be fair, it was probably partially due to the horrible acoustics, since the concert was held in a sports arena, so it wasn't specifically set up for music... that and there were too many sports flags and shit to fuck with acoustics. Still, though. That and one of their t-shirts had "Bad Acid Trip" on it, some image (presumably some of their album art or some such) and "Fuck Bush". I mean... wow... that's just the pinnacle of creative and original social commentary right there, eh?
The Mars Volta was interesting enough for the first 5-10 minutes, then it just kinda went on... and on... and on... and there was no real way to tell how many songs they had played since it was so "indie rock" there was no clear way to diffrentiate between songs unless you already knew them from listening to the album. So yeah... the later part of their set made for a nice little 30 minute nap to rev up for System.
System... well... they were fucking awesome. Only thing I can say that was bad about System's set is that they didn't play Old School Hollywood (one of my favorites from Mezmerize) and unfortunately the bad acoustics applied to them too. They did, however, play a few songs they'd gotten done from Hypnotize, so that was pretty cool. That and I didn't get to mosh (seriously... System of a Down and no moshing? wtf?). That's more because I went with friends who wanted to get seats, so getting a pit ticket would kinda defy the point of going with friends. My friends are pussies. Best line from their set, though, during an interlude between songs: "In this great country, some people are blue, and some people are red... but if we got together we could all be purple!". Also cool from the interludes were random sitar segments (at least it sounded like a sitar) and such.
I'm starting to get on a roll with these political t-shirt ideas
(continued from the 1984 one). Thought of two more yesterday. First one would have a picture of Hitler doing the Nazi salute with the face blanked out and replaced with "[insert face here]". The caption would be something along the lines of "Look at me! I'm socially concious!". The second one would be your standard "Che" t-shirt with a caption of something along the lines of "Who is this?".
Okay... uh... /end babbling.
[EDIT] Forgot to mention... one cool thing about Mars Volta was that one of their songs had a flute solo... random and probably not too terribly interesting but I found it amusing. Also, another of System's interludes was them playing "Sultans of Swing" except replacing "sultans of swing" with "the system of a down". I love that song so I thought it was pretty cool. [/EDIT]
The opening bands sucked. Bad Acid Trip was what I'd imagine "grindcore" to sound like, ie: incomprehensible and goddamn retarded. To be fair, it was probably partially due to the horrible acoustics, since the concert was held in a sports arena, so it wasn't specifically set up for music... that and there were too many sports flags and shit to fuck with acoustics. Still, though. That and one of their t-shirts had "Bad Acid Trip" on it, some image (presumably some of their album art or some such) and "Fuck Bush". I mean... wow... that's just the pinnacle of creative and original social commentary right there, eh?
The Mars Volta was interesting enough for the first 5-10 minutes, then it just kinda went on... and on... and on... and there was no real way to tell how many songs they had played since it was so "indie rock" there was no clear way to diffrentiate between songs unless you already knew them from listening to the album. So yeah... the later part of their set made for a nice little 30 minute nap to rev up for System.
System... well... they were fucking awesome. Only thing I can say that was bad about System's set is that they didn't play Old School Hollywood (one of my favorites from Mezmerize) and unfortunately the bad acoustics applied to them too. They did, however, play a few songs they'd gotten done from Hypnotize, so that was pretty cool. That and I didn't get to mosh (seriously... System of a Down and no moshing? wtf?). That's more because I went with friends who wanted to get seats, so getting a pit ticket would kinda defy the point of going with friends. My friends are pussies. Best line from their set, though, during an interlude between songs: "In this great country, some people are blue, and some people are red... but if we got together we could all be purple!". Also cool from the interludes were random sitar segments (at least it sounded like a sitar) and such.
I'm starting to get on a roll with these political t-shirt ideas
(continued from the 1984 one). Thought of two more yesterday. First one would have a picture of Hitler doing the Nazi salute with the face blanked out and replaced with "[insert face here]". The caption would be something along the lines of "Look at me! I'm socially concious!". The second one would be your standard "Che" t-shirt with a caption of something along the lines of "Who is this?".
Okay... uh... /end babbling.
[EDIT] Forgot to mention... one cool thing about Mars Volta was that one of their songs had a flute solo... random and probably not too terribly interesting but I found it amusing. Also, another of System's interludes was them playing "Sultans of Swing" except replacing "sultans of swing" with "the system of a down". I love that song so I thought it was pretty cool. [/EDIT]
i hate you...i have to miss the system of a down show tonight because i'm being forced to work for this cock sucker.