Extreme/King’s X 08-20-08

We rode against the traffic grain fron Plano, Tx down to the House of Blues in Dallas, barely hitting the brakes the whole way there.  God bless each and every single on of those Southbound bastards for they impeded our progress not. 

Upon arriving at our destination we were unable to park as we were there a bit early and the barriers hadn’t been removed from the parking lot entrance.  “No worries”, I said, “Just pull around to the other side.  There’s another lot there.”  This could not have worked out any better as the moment we made that extra right hand turn I spotted the great Kip Winger (of Winger fame, for all you kids who think Nirvana invented rock) just standing around, watching the world go by.  “Park the fucking car quick, I gotta go meet that fuckin’ guy”, I yelled to a less-than-enthusiastic carload of people.  Turns out, I was the only Winger fanboy in the ride.  Fair enough.  We got ourselves squared away with the parking and doubletimed it around the corner, running into the Winger frontman himself.  I knew he’d been doing the Rock N’ Roll Fantasy Camp thing all day and because of that I didn’t wanna whip his ass too much.  I told him I was fan, didn’t wanna take up much of his time and wondered if I could shake his hand and get a quick photo with him.  Kip was really cool, assuming a rockgod pose before shouting “No!”, then grabbing me by the shoulder to snap the pic.  He then spotted my wife and asked who she was.  I told him and he pointed his finger at her and said, “I want my picture with her!”  My wife’s a bit of a looker…I have no clue why she married me.  Anyway she took the pic with him, I shook his hand and left him to it and we made our way to the front of the venue.

Now, I know they say ‘no cameras, no recording devices’ and that’s fine…just means I’ll be one of the few to get the pics and video footage.  I had one camera stashed in a side pocket of my wife’s bag and a lesser quality camera out of its case in the bag in plain site.  I figured if they ran through a metal detector, she’d beep, they check her bag, they see the crap camera, and I’d send her on through while I took the one camera back to the car.  Well, they did check her bag but they didn’t say anything about the camera so kudos to the security staff.  Nice to see some human decency from those guys.  From my experience, sometimes that’s asking a bit too much.

Once we got inside I made a straight shot for the front, grabbing a great spot on the rail.  After about 30 minutes, the Rock N’ Roll Fantasy Camp started.  For those not aware of this thing, it’s basically set up to where pro musicians spend the day with amateurs who’ve dropped serious cash to jam and perform live that day/night.  Various musicians from a few different genres are participating in this and it made for some interesting viewing.  I don’t want to say it was bad because that’s not what the RN’R Fantasy Camp thing is about in the first place.  I know for a lot of those folks they lived out a dream last night so I’m not gonna run any of them down but needless to say, the actual talent on that stage ranged from Pro to non-existent.  It’s all good.  I will say this, it was really cool to see the likes of Gilby Clarke (Guns N’ Roses), Kip Winger (Winger), Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple), Dave Ellefson (Megadeth), Mark Slaughter (Slaughter), Chris Slade (AC/DC) & Earl Slick (David Bowie) up there coaching these folks through the songs, picking up slack where it was needed and letting the reins go where they could.  It was cool to see them make it about the folks they’d spent the day helping.

After a quick changeover, King’s X hit the stage with “Groove Machine” from the Tape Head album and from there went right into a couple of older classics (”Dogman”, “We Were Born To Be Loved”) mixed in with several songs (”Pray”, “Move”, “Go Tell Somebody”) off their most current release XV.  When they broke into “Dogman”, the first track from the 1994 release of the same name, the place errupted and sang every word.  King’s X is a seriously tight band.  Flawless from stop to start.  Doug Pinnick laid down a huge low end with his bass and sang with soul like I haven’t seen in some time.  Jerry Gaskill is an intense drummer.  He’s not flashy, he just beats his drums into submission.  Finally, Ty Tabor on guitar was unreal.  The sounds he gets that thing to make are otherworldly and, save for the girl behind us yelling “Ty, you rock.” every 30 seconds for virtually the entire set, seeing his artistic playing was the best treat of their run.  They played “Over My Head” as an encore and had all of us eating out of their hands.  I consider myself very lucky to have gotten video of this song as it was a great performance.  I’d forgotten how much I really love this band.

After King’s X left the stage, they puller the curtain so Extreme could get set up.  They were scheduled to start at around 9:45pm but actually hit stage 15 minutes early (First time I’ve ever seen a bad go on EARLIER than advertised!) going right into a song off their new album, a groove-laden track called “Comfortably Dumb”.  With the crowd sufficiently hyped, the Boston boys ripped straight into 3 older classics “Decadence Dance”, “Rest In Peace”, and “Warheads” before coming back to another new song, “Star”, the first single off their latest album Saudades de Rock.  After playing a medley of tunes from their 1st self-titled release, Nuno sat down and played the instrumental “Midnight Express”.  From there Gary walked out and sat down, setting the stage for the performance of the bands biggest hit, “More Than Words”.  Now, I’ve heard that song a million times (seriously, a million, at least) but you know what, it still hit me.  And I think the reason why it hit me was because the song speaks to the most basic of human needs (love) and it does so in such a way that so unabashedly sappy that you simply get caught up in it and, whether you’re a man, woman or a dog, it sweeps you right off your feet and by the end of it, you’ve been humming along for 3 minutes without even realizing it.  The crowd sang along (me included, dammit!) and both Gary and Nuno seemed pleased with the reaction.  The last half of the show was spent trying to keep up with the band.  Gary jumped, ran, crawled and dived all over the stage while Nuno and Pat just tried to stay out of his way, all the while playing at a breakneck, technical pace.  After closing the show with another instrumental “Bumblebee” and another hit off the Pornograffitti album, “Get The Funk Out”, the Extreme boys left the stage, grabbed a breathe and came back out for an encore of “Am I Ever Gonna Change” off the III Sides To Every Story album and their ‘other’ hit, “Hole Hearted”.  Again, the crowd sang along and the band seemed to dig it, especially Gary because after they said their goodbyes and did the whole ‘band bow’ at the front of the stage, Gary whispered something to Nuno which Nuno then conveyed to the crowd saying, “Gary says he doesn’t wanna leave yet.  He wants to do one more song.”  While I know much of this sort of thing is planned in advance, this really felt like a spur of the moment type decision, made obvious to me by the sketchy version of “Mutha (Don’t Wanna Go To School Today)” that was played.  The guys obviously hadn’t been playing this one in rehersal and were all laughing and cutting up throught the song, giving each other the finger and cracking jokes.  It was the perfect way to close out the show and left everyone on their feet cheering for more.

Afterthoughts: Despite having viewed some shakey vocals from Gary Cherone in a few video clips from earlier shows, he was spot-on Wednesday night, belting out high notes from his shoes while simulteaneously bending himself into positions that would’ve embarrassed a more modest man.  I’m guessing Mr. Cherone is a big fan of the Yoga.  Pat Badger played a mean, funky bass and was far more technically sound than I think most would realize without seeing him live.  Badger was in great form last night while also mixing in some fine backing vocals.  The ‘new guy’, Kevin Figueiredo was great behind the kit, smiling ear to ear for much of the set but when all was said and done, the night belonged to Nuno Bettencourt.  What can you say about the guy that hasn’t been said a million times already?  He’s brilliant…but that’s almost too easy.  That doesn’t say enough.  I don’t know that words exist to fully describe what it’s like to watch Nuno play live.  He doesn’t command attention like some many of the ‘rockgod’ types yet you find yourself completely drawn to him.  I know as I was filming my camera eye would just naturally wander to wherever Nuno was standing.  Take nothing away from the rest of the guys in the band because each of them are very talented musicians, but Nuno is something special, something that simply does not come along very often.

My final thought concerns my wife.  At one point during the show, Gary Cherone was dancing around, happy as you please when he locked eyes w/ my Mrs..  He stopped, mid-kick, and held out the mic stand, gently tapping her on the top of her head almost as if he were knighting her.  Nuno, curious as to what Gary was doing, followed the mic stand to its target, saw my wife, and tapped the middle of his chest with his hand uttering the phrase, “Holy Shit”.  Glad to know that not only does Kip Winger find my wife attractive, but Gary and Nuno reached the exact same conclusion.  I think they all have good taste.  And I think I married wayyyyy over my head.  I’m a lucky fucker for sure.