Every once in a while, I need a good dose of heavy music. My friend and I went to the Ogden Theatre in downtown Denver on Monday night to see Down. I got my dose, plus some (can you say "hot box"). Down is from New Orleans and features members Phil Anselmo (Pantera) and Pepper Keenan (Corrosion of Conformity). Anselmo handles all the vocals while Keenan supplies the relentless riffage. There was no opening act for the show...a trend that more bands need to follow, especially for Monday night shows. A white sheet was draped in front of the stage where old concert footage of 70's metal bands (Skynyrd, Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC) was projected. When the videos ended, a series of shots of the band and album artwork were displayed to the sound of live feedback and then the sheet dropped and the place went nuts and Down launched into their first song. Since I'm in my 30's, I decided to wear earplugs and enjoy the show from the upper tier of the theatre, away from the shaved-head, goateed, tatted up angry motherfuckers. Everyone fired up their joints and the place quickly became enshrouded in a thick fog of stinky leaf smoke. The dude next to me lit up and promptly had a bunch of white-trash bitches begging at his side. This guy would scream "Yeah....Fuck Yeah" in a perfect Macho Man Randy Savage imitation between every song. It was always that way: Yeah, pause-pause-pause, Fuck Yeah. He did this at least fifty times. I totally remembered this dude from the Clutch show I went to at the Gothic last Spring. A fat, fiftyish bald dude with child-molester glasses a few seats over was totally laughing at the macho man. Awesome. Down rocked. I especially liked the songs they played from the new album, which in my opionion is their best. My favorite moments were On March the Saints, Ghosts Along the Mississippi, N.O.D., and Three Suns and One Star. The only songs I didn't know were the ones they played off their first album. I don't own that one. I must not be a true Down fan because all true fans own the first record. I heard that Anselmo wanted to remix it and re-release it, so I'm waiting. Down played for about two hours including the encore.
Now for the negatives. Some kind of melee ensued in the crowd near the stage, forcing the band to stop mid-song and kick some dumbasses out of the show. Note to dumbasses: This is a concert. You should be having fun. If you drink too much and smoke too much weed you are an asshole and deserve to be kicked out of any show if you are ruining the experience for those around you. I hate you. The other thing that bothered me about the show was Phil Anselmo's lame banter between songs. He was definitely stoned and it showed. He kept preaching about how meaningful his lyrics were and how we all needed to read them and "study that shit". Cool, dude. Pot-head philosophy drives me crazy. Just because you smoke weed, you are not some ultra-intelligent bastard living on a higher intellectual plane. You are a pot-smoker. Your lyrics aren't deep. They fit the songs and I enjoy them, but they aren't going to change my life. Thanks for trying, though.
2 comments:
At first I thought you said "Keenan supplied the relentless roughage." That would have really been something. There were a-holes, douchebags, and cougars galore at my Pinback show last week, too.
Relentless roughage...awesome! The fiber that never quits. It's getting to the point where I almost won't go to shows anymore because of all the lame people. I expected some d-bags at the Down show, though.
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