last night was chris cornell. i havent been that excited to see a show in a while. it wasnt on the spectrum of pearl jam excited where i cant eat dinner because im already bursting at the seams. no, it was more like "oh my god i might get to hear acoustic fell on black days" how wicked cool would that be. more anticipation than most bands anyways. funny considering i just saw him last week.

on monday i received and email from ticketek notifying me that the set times had chnage for the sydney and melbourne shows because there was no opening. fuck yeah. show apparently was to start at 8pm. it didnt, who knows why, but it was not because chris was off applying fake tan. no he looked non-orange and the well manicured moustache also looked more scruffy and something a regular person were be sporting. anyways, thats enough for looks. or is it? i shall start off the a photo.




just after midnight on wednesday i received this message from mullet Hinny who had been at the sydney show: "[ Jesus Christ Pose opening riff ] get out of my way you stationary fucks!" later he told me then he understood why i went to the linkin park shows. (Hinn was in Europe and had to sit through LP as an opening band at a few shows.. and like everyone else was less than impressed with their crowd)

Dawnie came over after work and we cracked open some red. with the week that i have had dealing with stupid ex flat mates i was anticipating some alcohol consumption as a good thing. she (who is now known as thewhore#2) almost drove me to the bar on tuesday morning. we had a few glasses and a chat at my place then left just before 7 (did want to get there before the bar opened) to walk over to the forum. squeeing all the way. lol. we were so like school girls, it was awesome. haha.

at the forum we started taking the piss out of everything. "agh, we are going have to wait 30 seconds to get in! whatever!" the forum is sort of like metropolis in montreal: an area at the back for standing and drinking at tables that is set on really wide steps so its elevated and then a GA area at the front. we got maybe 3rd row center-ish, which turned out to be really great. we eaves dropped on a while bunch of conversations, some about pearl jam some not. i found Annette at the refill trip to the bar and she came over with her friend. to stand with us for a bit. after 8 we got a little anxious, saying where is he?

i think the show started more around 8:25. the band came out first and played something.. no idea what. then chris came out and they went into let me drown. eff yah. people were really into it, but not in a lets knock each other to the floor way. i was probably one of the younger people there so people enjoyed the music in their spot, fists in the air and all.

im shit and remember set list orders so i dont know what was played where. im sure its online if i had the inclination to go find it, but at this point in time i dont. there was no hunger strikes, slightly disapointing. but, there was say hello 2 heaven and pushin' forward back. yah, thats right, TOTD right there. like with the opening slot thing last week, the set was heavy, on old stuff.

unlike opening for LP, people knew the old songs and knew that hearing temple of the dog was fucking awesome.

maybe about 10 songs in the band leaves the stage and the acoustic comes out. chris grabs a stool and sits down just him and the guitar. again if i wasnt lazy i would go through the find what he played here. (possibly an edit coming. yep, edit: two now, three of the songs were i am the highway, blow up the outside world, and cant change me) whatever it was, it was great.

the band came back out. i still have no idea who they are. i got this guys guitar pick, and he has his website on it. which i looked up right now for the purpose of posting. lol. in short to wrap up the crap about the show there was an encore break, they came back out and i have no recollection what the last few songs were (a whole lotta love in there somewhere). but it was definitely awesome.

after the show i saw rAdelaide Ben. who corrected me saying it was more like lamealaide. he had some fun reading festival stories and went to the show in dublin i had been thinking about going to before the UK trip was vetoed. i few of us hung out in front of the venue for a while and chatted about random nothings.

photos on flickr. clearly i was just a little camera happy and took 900 photos. of one guy. maybe half of them are decent. chris has a scottish flag draped over him for the last part of the show. it was thrown up there by a scottish guy who was front and center. "slaves and bulldozers" had been written across the white part of the flag. chris tied it around his shoulders, then songs later when the shirt came off, kept the flag. the guy got his flag back after the show and was letting everyone have a smell, because it smelled like chris cornell. haha.

i was not expecting this song, for whatever reason. and missed the beginning because it sounded like something totally different. disclaimer: the first minute is the worst (then the hands go down), i was slightly intoxicated at this time, i dont watch the camera screen when im taking videos. however, imo its still worth watching.

burden in my hand: