Well, time to recall my story of seeing Sevendust and Skillet at the Victorious War tour at the Wiltern Theater (fourth show at this venue this year, and all of them have been solid to f'en awesome), last Sunday. Where do I want to begin? Well, I knew I wanted the rail in the second section behind the pit (since Live Nation charges you $15.00 extra for pit tickets, $65.00 total) and I figured I want a rail spot and thought, I might as well get there around 1:00PM and if there is no one in line, I'll just walk around the skirts of Koreatown before finding my way to the Wiltern. Why do I want to go through this length? Well, next to Alter Bridge and Shinedown and Daughtry, Skillet and Sevendust are the two bands that I have heard their music the longest in life for around almost 10 years. I heard first Sevendust's Enemy and Skillet's Hero as they were theme songs for WWE PPV events and since then, I was a relative listener for both bands (moreso for Skillet, but I have a great amount of respect for Sevendust being around as long as they have). Anywho, I found a parking lot about 5-10 minutes away from the Wiltern that's $16.00. Cheaper than the $25.00 if you park next to the venue. I could have saved $27.00 in parking fees had I knew that last Spring......
So I got in line at 1:00 PM and found that there was 7 other people in line that had the same idea as I did, but I figured all right, no worries. My phone is fully charged, I can wait it out for 5 hours before doors open. The people around me were nice as always. Always talking about the various shows that they have seen over the years from a range of bands. There's this one guy that has been to a lot of shows overall, and goes to the yearly Shiprocked cruise every year, and that he always goes with a group for concerts and that guy was in line since 11:30AM. Anyway, at around 4:00 PM, I knew that people that bought the VIP meet-and-greet and early entry was going to arrive, but I had horribly underestimated how many bought those. I think there was like around 50-70 people, I thought, "crap, 50-70 people standing in my way to get a rail spot." I was hoping that most of those got pit tickets because I thought if people spent $100.00 on meet and greet, might as well dish out the extra $15.00 for pit tickets. Turns out that the guy that was handing the wristbands for the pit tickets told me that around 10 or so people out of that meet and greet line had pit tickets. I thought all of that waiting for 5 hours was going to be in flames, but oh well, I made it this far, I'm going to make a dash to get a good spot in the second section. Turns out, I did have a good spot. In the second row behind the person that got the rail. Good view and thankfully, the person wasn't too tall that he would block a good portion of my view of the stage.
Once again, the people around me were nice. There was a couple that's a huge Sevendust fans that stated that they went to three shows in the SouthWest area around the late 90s for them, but haven't gone to a show in a long while since they were taking care of their kid, but thought now's the chance to see Sevendust again and the kid's grandmother to babysit for them to see Sevendust. Also, the music the house speakers playing was solid. You got your standard plays of songs you would normally hear on modern rock radio, but out of the blue, I get to hear Alter Bridge's One Day Remains (that's not even one of their most well known songs) and Big Wreck's Mistake (I don't think anyone in the room, other than me, knew that Big Wreck playing on the house speakers). Also, a great thing of a strong kinship among all of us is that when Linkin Park's Numb or In the End is playing on the speakers in the post-Chester Bennington passing, everyone just stopped talking and sing along to the song. It happened at the Disturbed show, it happened at the Shinedown show, it happened here.
Anywho, on to the bands. The first band of the night was Devour the Day. They only got 20 minutes and what they played was ok, but honestly, them being there for as short as they were on stage in the grand scheme of things is a bit pointless.
The second band was Pop Evil and I thought to me they were overplayed on radio at times and the lead singer wearing a Lakers shirt for that cheap pop didn't help a bit. That stated, they went through their staples of songs that people that listens to rock radio often like Boss's Daughter, Torn to Pieces, Be Legendary, Waking the Lion, etc. and people got into them and I liked their set and people sang along when needed from the frontman. In their last song, Trenches, they got Don Jamieson from That Metal Show to provide backing vocals and the surprising thing about the closing set was that the vocalist from Pop Evil came to the crowd and decided to not crowdsurf, but opted to actually walk on top of everyone as a path. In all fairness, people were supportive to keep him afloat and he didn't stop at the pit section, he came near where I was at and was walking on top of everyone there. He almost took a nasty spill on his back, but people kept him up. If he did fall, I can see the headlines now on Blabbermouth: "Pop Evil frontman took nasty fall on crowd in Sevendust/Skillet show." At the end of the set, he wanted to take some pictures with people in the crowd near where I was so everyone was gathering in that area and I was left feeling a bit crushed with little walking room for a few minutes. Still that sight there of Pop Evil's frontman walking on top of the crowd is probably one of my favorites sights this year.
Sevendust finally came up and started with one of their more well know tracks, Black and everyone expected them to be the heaviest band on the set and I expected Sevendust to want everyone in the crowd to be moving along and getting into it. They were what I thought they would do. I felt that the atmosphere in the room was elevated the moment they came on. They were very heavy and they had great moments of soaring melody playing songs like Denial, Waffle, Trust, etc. Lajon Witherspoon is a great vocalist and this set solidifies him as in my top five favorite rock vocalists. One of the songs I was really looking forward to see was Angel's Son. It may be a short 4 minute or less song but that song packs a huge punch emotionally and Lajon talked about the backstory about creating this song. They were good friends with this band, Snot, and their frontman, Lynn Strait, passed away due to a car accident and they stated that this was the first time they really felt this kind of personal tragedy and when it's time for them to do a song for the tribute album to Lynn Strait, Lajon claimed that he didn't have any lyrics prepared for Angel's Son beforehand. He just heard the guitar playing of Clint Lowery and the lyrics just came to him and created for me, probably the best Sevendust song I have heard. Anyway, their set lasted for an hour and then they closed it off with Thank You.
Skillet was the closing band and they came a blazing with great production with steam and and a great video screen with solid visuals. They went for around 70 minutes. Primarily favoring playing the songs from their two most recent albums, Unleashed and Victorious, along with their usual staples (Monster, Whispers in the Dark, Hero, and Awake and Alive). They had the crowd in the palm of their hands and had some great singalongs in almost every song. One of my favorite moments of the set was during the song, You Ain't Ready, where John Cooper had some custom-made fire extinguishers or coolers or something like that strapped to his arms and he was spraying them to the crowd and on a warm summer's day in LA, that was greatly appreciated. Another solid arrangement was during Awake and Alive, a song where John Cooper and drummer Jen Ledger would trade verses. However, in this live version, they had the first verse played in string arrangements while trading lines (they would have a cello player, and I think in the past they had a violinist as well, play this live, but John said that their cello player was at home getting ready for a newborn baby) before going into the heavy band version and then both guitarists Korey Cooper and Seth Morrison was on rising platforms playing the song. The show closed off with The Resistance, which I thought would be a great closer since it has a great outro which did close off the Unleashed album. It also gives a great platform for lead guitarist, Seth Morrison to show off what he can do and his guitar playing actually reminds me of Alter Bridge's Mark Tremonti which isn't surprising since he's also an Alter Bridge fan from the near start.
Overall, I really enjoyed Skillet's set the most. The crowd was great. The band played great. Production values were as great as it can be in a small theater. I personally wished they played more from the Comatose album (especially the song, Rebirthing, which used to be their closer, but they didn't play it here which makes me sad since that's one of my favorite songs from them) and the Rise album. Even though, I didn't enjoy the Unleashed or Victorious albums as much as Collide, Comatose, Awake, and Rise albums, the songs still came off well live. I enjoyed hearing the title track Victorious (John Cooper stated that he wrote that song for people to find a way to deal with the struggles that people have mentally, especially in light of the post-Chester Bennington passing) and Save Me. The one issue I had was that they could have not have Devour the Day on the bill and instead give Pop Evil another song slot and Sevendust/Skillet another song slot or two. Other than that, this is a great night altogether and for the fourth show I was in at the Wiltern Theater, these shows I was at in this place (Within Temptation, DT, Switchfoot, this show) have been tremendous.
Now then the next shows awaits and probably the greatest week of my life will happen in about a week or so.
Iron Maiden with Fozzy and The Raven Age opening - Banc of California Stadium, Los Angeles, CA - September 14th, 2019
Alter Bridge's Walk the Sky Album VIP Listening Party with a brief live set - The Beacham - Orlando, FL - September 17th, 2019
Alter Bridge with 10 Years and Dirty Honey opening - The Ritz - Raleigh, NC - September 19th, 2019
Also, I decided to go to the Self-Help festival. I saw a ticket on Stubhub for $60.00 and thought, this is probably going to be as good as a price that I'm going to get for an outdoors festivals. I saved $15.00 than if I bought it on their site. Line-up looks good enough for me. Never been to an outdoors festival before.
Starset - The Regent Theater - Los Angeles, CA. October 2, 2019
Self Help Fest with A Day to Remember headlining featuring I Prevail, Beartooth, Motionless In White, Animal as Leaders, Periphery, and more - October 12th - NOS Events Center - San Bernardino, CA
Switchfoot - Fox Performing Arts Center - Riverside, CA. November 5th, 2019.
I still may consider going to see Big Wreck, but I need to know what shape I am still in after the Self Help Fest. Also, Trans-Siberian Orchestra is doing their annual Christmas tour and coming back to Ontario. Hopefully, there's a Groupon deal on it like last year and if that's the case, I'm planning on taking my parents and my sister/her husband to the show if they want to go to it and tickets are going to be on me, and I don't see why they don't want to go. It's a good Christmas concert with great production values. Bad news is that the show is on November 30th and I still need a show in December to complete the "at least one concert a month" goal I set this year.
Topic: Your concerts for 2019 (Read 30689 times)
