Lancaster, Pitt, Allentown MEGA Review, 1 Band, 3 concerts, 4 days, 857 miles driven, 3138 air miles Options

[brianblank]

I finally have had time to post my review of the 3 PA shows and photos. This is a copy/paste job from our site, http://brianviki.com. I went back-and-forth if I should post in "On The Road" or over here (Mods feel free to move this if you like), so here goes...

1 Band, 3 concerts, 4 days, 857 miles driven, 3138 miles flown

2007-04-13
Chameleon Club
Lancaster, PA

Operation Spirit
Pain Lies On The Riverside (Ed on acoustic)
The Beauty Of Gray (Ed on acoustic)
Mystery
All Over You
Rattlesnake (Ed on electric)
Shit Towne (Ed on electric)
Sofia (Funky intro)
Walk The Line (Ed on acoustic)
The Dolphin’s Cry (Slow intro)
Iris
Heaven

Encore 1
Lakini’s Juice
Run To The Water (Ed on acoustic)
Selling The Drama (Ed on acoustic)
“Chad T. walk down memory lane”
Turn My Head (Ed on acoustic)
I Alone

Encore 2
Lightening Crashes
Wings
White, Discussion

We took the red-eye from Denver to Philly, arrived just after 5am in Philly, picked up the car and headed out to Lancaster in hopes that the hotel would let us check in early and get some rest. We made it to Lancaster without any problems, found the hotel only to be told that they were booked up the night before and didn't have any rooms available. They suggested a few breakfast places so we headed out on foot to get some eats. We wandered from the hotel to "Wish You Were Here" only to find that it didn't open until 8, we wandered around town a little more until they opened. It was a nice little local place, good food at good prices. We then wandered back to the hotel to get the car and head out to see some of the "Live sights" in the area. We walked back along Water St. past the Chameleon Club only to see Tim and Hillary pulling up with the bands gear. Once we got back to the car we headed off to York to get some photos of historic places in Live history, Edgar Fahs Smith Middle School (where they all originally met), William Penn High School, we grabbed lunch at Granfalloon's(Ed and Chad G. worked there thru high school), Murph's Other Bar, the York Harley-Davidson factory, the York Caterpillar factory, Otter Creek, Vine Street and the Blue Star Hotel. It was finally 3pm so headed back to Lancaster to check in and get a few hours sleep. The hotel is a loft style converted warehouse/factory with lots of modern touches and local art. We crashed for a few hours and then met up with a friend for dinner at El Serrano for dinner before the show.

We didn't get to the venue until just after 8 and the line was still pretty long. The venue is up on the second floor, as we reached the top of the stairs we turn the corner only to see a sea of people all the way back under the balcony and to the rear bar. So we headed up to the balcony to see if there were better places to stand, no luck there either so we headed back down and worked our way up to just in front of the sound board.

They started off with 3 from Mental Jewelry!!! What a way to start the show, people around us were hoping they would play the entire album, how crazy would that be? (Less Than Jake is doing just that in a few weeks, 6 shows in 6 nights, each night is one album played in its entirety.) Crowd was a little tame in my opinion, especially for a Chameleon show, Ed tried to get everyone to sing along a few times and there as very little response. I also expected a crush towards the stage when they came on stage; there wasn't any movement when they came out. The band struggled thru a few of the MJ songs, Iris rocked, full blown White, Discussion is back, they added a few funky intros to several songs, mainly stuff off of Songs From Black Mountain, Chad T and Ed telling stories about the old days at the Chameleon, sneaking beers at 19, taking the MJ cover photos to the left of the stage, Chad T meeting his wife who was selling merch on the dance floor (there was room on the floor back in those days) and later getting engaged to her there too, arranging STD as they prepped for the TC recording sessions, etc. Ed actually introduced all the guys in the band, I can't remember the last time he did that. Ed mentioned that Adam has been with the band about 9 years, I can't believe it has been that long already. All in all a really good show.

It looked like Jimmy filmed the entire show until his camera got knocked into the crowd by Chad T during White, Discussion.

We headed behind the club after the show to hopefully get my drum head signed. The guys didn’t really stick around behind the venue very long, but they were kind enough to sign my drum head. We finally got back to the hotel around 2:30a, we had been up for 44 hours without any real sleep.

See our photos here.

My recording turned out pretty well, it is great to have all of Chad T’s stories on tape.
(Download torrent from DIME)
(Download torrent The Den)



2007-04-14
University of Pittsburgh - Bigelow Bash
Pittsburgh, PA

Rattlesnake (Ed on electric)
All Over You
The River (Ed on acoustic)
Mirror Song (Ed on acoustic)
The Dolphin's Cry
Sofia
Walk The Line * (Ed on acoustic)
Iris
Run To The Water (Ed on acoustic)
I Alone
Shit Towne (Ed on electric)
Heaven

Encore
Lightening Crashes

* Johnny Cash cover "A good version of a great song"

We woke up in Lancaster, packed up the car and headed west. After a few minor detours we made it to Pitt. We found our way to the festival just in time to catch Bon Journey (yup, you guessed it, a Bon Jovi and Journey cover band.) Needless to say we didn't stick around to hear any more of them than we had to. We found out that Live was going on stage about 5:30p so we headed into the student union to get some food and get out of the cold and rain.

We made our way back out to the festival around 5:15p. The stage was pretty basic (other than all the tarps to keep things as dry as possible), there was not real lighting to speak of, a few banks of white floods was the extent of it. The boys took the stage around 5:40p. They all looked very cold, everyone was in hats and coats (Ed might be the only person that can look good in sunglasses and a knit hat), most had hand warmers in the their pockets. It was a short set, but I was suprised to hear another MJ song, Mirror Song. It sounded great, Ed's voice had a great tone for that song, it was great to hear some of the songs that originally got me interested in the band 15 years ago. Even in the cold and rain they were in great form, a little more subdued than the night before but still a good show. Chad T was stopping, Ed was running around, Chad G was still shoeless even in the cold, Pat was pretty mellow (but was doing his best George Harrison impression with the beard and buttoned up coat.) Most of the students were there just to "the hits" and they made sure the band knew that, several people were yelling out requests for the Lightening Crashes, Shit Towne, etc. During the set the crew and the student crew were constantly squeegeeing the stage and pulling tarps over gear, seconds after the set ended the back of the stage cover collapsed sending a deluge of water over a lot of the gear. V was able to get one of Pat’s guitar picks.

We headed to the hotel to warm up and dry out. Luckily we had brought our taxes to fill any free time we might have over the weekend. So we spend most of the evening working on taxes. We kept an eye on the weather since they were predicting more cold and possibly snow. We were a little worried about our drive the next morning to Allentown.

See our photos here.

Recording is a little muffled and bassy due to the mics being lower on my shoulders to keep them out of the rain as much as possible, people were moving around lot as well, so the sound comes and goes.
(Download torrent from DIME)
(Download torrent from The Den)

”The Pitt News” student paper artcile on the show




2007-04-15
Crocodile Rock Cafe
Allentown, PA

Rattlesnake (Ed on electric)
Shit Towne (Ed on electric)
Mirror Song (Ed on acoustic)
The Beauty Of Gray (Ed on acoustic)
All Over You
They Stood Up For Love
Sofia (Funky intro)
Walk The Line * (Ed on acoustic)
Wings
Iris
Run Away (Ed on acoustic)
Selling The Drama (Ed on acoustic)
Heaven

Encore
The Dolphin's Cry
Lakini's Juice
Run To The Water (Ed on acoustic)
Lightening Crashes

* Johnny Cash cover "A good version of a great song"

Thankfully we awoke to no snow, it held off and the rain had actually lightened up. We packed up again and headed back East. We pulled in to Allentown, headed straight to the hotel, unpacked again and headed into town to the venue. It was right downtown, fortunately that made parking easy, unfortunately that meant there were very few options for dinner in the neighborhood. The club actually has a bar area and "restaurant" so we decided to head on in and grab a quick bite. "Basic" barely describes the menu, it was typical bar fare. V ordered the "Plain burger w/ Fries" and that was exactly what it was, burger, 2 buns and fries. No lettuce, no tomato, not even any ketchup or mustard. But it got the job done. We headed into the club part of the venue. It was actually a decent set up, bar along the side wall with cool Tiki heads up on the wall, large dance floor broken up in to a few areas by barriers and TONS of lights in the ceiling for what must be pretty cool DJ/Dance party nights and a few large fans to cool the place off, however the trash cans setout in the middle of the dance floor to catch water dripping from the ceiling were a sign that things weren’t quite right. You could tell that the owners didn't reinvest their profits into the building. The wierdest thing about the layout of the club is that the green room is in the basement next to the bathrooms. So the band has to come up the stairs and thru part of the venue to get to the stage. We picked out what we thought was a good spot ~10' back from center stage. We noticed feathers all over the stage and stuck into the framing and lights in the ceiling, apparently Vanilla Ice played the night before and for some reason there were feathers all over the club.

There was an opening band tonight. I am not sure what they were called, lets just call them ‘1000 Stunned Faces’ since that is what the crowd was when they hit the stage. They might be good but we will never know since the bass was turned up to 11 and you couldn’t hear your self think. (Raymond must have been running sound.) I have never heard a set that loud, not Ministry, not Body Count, not Tool, nothing was that bone shaking. Thank goodness it was a short set.

Doors opened just before 7 and Live didn’t hit the stage until almost 10, we were SO tired of standing. However, it turned out to probably be the best set of the weekend. (I think the guys were a little “happy” at the Chameleon show and just way too cold at Pitt.) Mirror song made it back into the set. We had noticed Ed going back to a mic near the back of the stage during each of the shows during the weekend. We had assumed he was requesting changes to his monitor mix, however, we were talking with Raz (the monitor sound guy) after the show and he said that the band is not playing with a set list, the band is calling out songs as they play along. They have about 33 songs rehearsed, including what guitars the techs need to bring out, what light sequence to run, etc. However, Run Away isn’t on the list, so everyone had to scramble when Ed called it out tonight. This is a great change from the old days when they would play almost an entire tour with the same set list. Iris rocked as always and it is great to hear Lakini’s Juice again. The guys seemed pretty pumped when they left after the encore but they didn't return, Chad didn’t even throw out his drum sticks. I was hoping for another White, Discussion end to a show, but no luck.

Some very generous friends hooked us up with after show passes, we were able to meet up with Chad T, Adam and Pat for a quick chat, photo op and obligatory signature. Ed and Chad G. left pretty quickly so we didn’t get to chat with either of them, apparently they had early flights home the next morning so they were driving to Philly right after the show. Adam is such a nice guy, we talked a little about his solo album and if he would be heading out West anytime soon, unfortunately he has no plans to make it out this way (other than dates in LA).

See our photos here.

Recording turned out pretty good, other than the screamer in front of us, luckily he calmed down about half way thru the set. (Download torrent from DIME)
(Download torrent The Den)

The local radio station did an interview with Ed, here are some links to the Wzzo.com interview
WZZO site
Interview Part One
Interview Part Two
Interview Extras

This post has been edited by brianblank: May 1 2007, 2:08 pm

[Heather]

Great review thanks for sharing that. It makes me miss roadtrips!