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:

notice the important bit of information on the right hand side of the ticket "BAR OPEN 6:45PM". what blatant advertising of alcohol consumption. lol.

i was going to post more re: cornell on sunday night. i ended up going again on monday night too, to a less than sold out show back at RLA.

RLA is the venue where the australian open is played, aka the tennis centre. the quarter/ semi/ finals are in this arena, im not sure what else is, possibly the matches featuring the big name players.. anyways, its not super huge. the top part of the "upper" section was curtained off the second night. upper being defined from where one enters from the concourse level. im dumb and paid for a floor ticket.

once again i managed to randomly stand beside people who were very excited about cornell being there. he changed his set, or at least, the order of his set. night one opened with let me drown followed by outshined. total fucking killer as i was expecting it to be new crap. wrong. new crap didnt come until song number three. i have no idea what it was called, but it sounded very much like stone temple pilots - sex type thing. and his backing band and some points reminded me of velvet revolver. as in cliche rock n roll moves and soloing. hmmm.. aging rock stars trying to bring back the past? night one hunger strike was fourth. overall he played a lot more soundgarden than i was expecting, and thankfully there was more SG than audioslave. i cant remember too well, but i dont think there was anything from euphoria morning. definitely no cant change me, because i know he is saving that one and black hole sun to play them acoustic next week at the forum.

night two opened with two new songs. dumb move, the crowd was not with him and he never got them. then the sex type thing sounding song, then something else, then hunger strike. black hole sun was played both nights.. kinda funny that songs from superunknown and badmotorfinger were being played opening for a band who he obviously influenced.. mike shinoda spoke to that the second night, soundgarden was one of the few non hip hop artists he listened to growing up. easily there was kids there who werent even born in 1993.

linkin park were about what i expected. for any 13 year kid going to their first concert or for the once a year mainstream pop fans, it was what you wanted to see. the crowd was on. i never stand that far back at arena shows but to see the people in front and behind and turn around and be able to see the stands.. well, its pretty cool. they did something that i have not seen at a show before, but i know other bands do it: the GA floor was split into front and back sections. about time this happened. the nice thing it meant was that i could show up at 7:25p and get fairly close to the stage aka the back of the front section.

as a band linkin park have definitely grown into their stage. they got rid of those stupid ramps from whenever the last time i saw them that made them look tiny and lost. when you watch their show, there are two guys in that band that do everything. clearly, its mikes band, hes calling the shots. 2-3 of the other guys are basically punching the time card and just playing along. and then there is a the drummer, as i drummer i dont think that you can just show up, you have to be into it.

chester bennington is a very good front man. the dude was on. at the first show i watched him for a while trying to figure out what or who he reminded me of. he had on a navy paddington bear type jacket that was screaming something at me, like late 80s axl rose who hadnt quite hit the weird stage costumes yet. the best i came up with was that he is a 12 year old version of scott weiland who is not a junkie, crossed with a mexican jumping bean. scott weiland i think is another great frontman: post jail time/ pre velvet revolver/ minus the drugs.

linkin park also changed their set list. weird since for so many years no one else was doing that. considering they had a whole heap of production that cannot change it was surprising that the order of anything was not static. they did a nice job of rearranging studio tracks of songs to stripped down piano versions. best quote of the night was mike shinoda getting the crowd up during dont stay where he alluded to a sign posted at the sides of the floor: "alright the sign says no moshing, so you all just jump up and down in your place."

chris and his low rise jeans
10.15.07

mike shinoda: mama said knock you out!
10.15.07

more photos on flickr.

i heard hunger strike tonight!!

yaaah.. wooo wooo!

some dude named pete sang ed's part. the same dude (he's the rhythm guitarist) was doing backing vocals on a few songs and changed the line "all my friends are brown and red" in spoonman to "all my friends are australian". two guys beside me went off.

so yeah, cornell is still wearing his pants lower than i do. at least he had a belt on this time..