So my day was interesting seeing Bush headline Hollywood Palladium yesterday.
For lunch, I went to a small Chicago-style restaurant and got an Italian Beef sandwich and a Maxwell Polish sausage hot dog. I didn't had the change to get those items when I was in Chicago last year, so this somewhat makes up for it. The hot dog was surprisingly bigger than I thought it was. It was all right. Wouldn't mind coming back to the restaurant on the way to another concert in the future.
Anywho, the day was like half-cloudy and when I got to the parking garage (which costed $17.00 on ParkWiz, no issues getting in and out of the garage), the sky did not look like it was going to rain at all. Keep that in mind as the story goes on. Got in line at around 3:30 or so. Good standard modern rock crowd to be around. Got an email after 5 PM that says "We just learned that due to being snowed in in Reno, Jerry Cantrell is no longer performing at your upcoming event." I don't know how Cantrell couldn't make it, but Bush was still able to make it from Reno to LA (which is only 7 hours of a drive away). Touring logistics is a tricky thing to navigate.
Anywho, doors opened at 6 PM, I got to a spot in the back of the venue that has a rail near the soundboard. Would have a clear view and I don't want to be cramped into the largest all-GA floor venue in Southern California that holds around 4,000 people or so. I felt slightly underdressed for this show. I've seen a fair amount of people wearing plaid and flannel shirts and I kinda regretted not wearing the Shinedown flannel I bought a few weeks back that has the Leave A Whisper album cover on the back of the shirt. Oh well, it's going to rain later in the day, probably for the best.
So people were thinking after Cantrell pulled out, what's going to happen? Well, I heard someone next to me say that they heard from a bartender told them that the first band is not going to go out until 7:45. Oh dear, so we waited 90 minutes without a band playing, with not even interesting instrumental house music in the background to get pumped to.
The opening band was called Starcrawler. Oh my goodness. It has taken 8.5 years, but I might have saw the worst opening band I have ever seen. While I was waiting in line, someone behind said that this band kinda reminds them of Early Motley Crue, and I go, "All right, well I can tolerate that." Yeah, nope. I couldn't hear clearly what the frontwoman was saying. The music was ok, I guess, but their aesthetics clearly did not match a show that would have had a guy that's a lead guitarist of a 90s grunge band and a great 90s Alt rock/Grunge band. The frontwoman seemed like one of those try-hard person getting people into them. I think she tried to get the crowd to bark at her. At the end of their set, she left the stage and the band still played for like a minute of so and when they were done, people just give a scattering small round of applause moreso out of confusion and displeasure out of anything.
So the set lasted until 8:30 and we waited until 9:15 until Bush came out. So basically, Bush needs to clearly salvage the night, because I feel bad for the people that paid face value of $58.00 for 45 minutes of whatever that opening band was and 90 minutes of Bush, when if things worked out fine, they would have also gotten 50 minutes of Jerry Cantrell playing solo stuff and some AIC songs. I paid $25.00, so I wouldn't be as mad. However, Bush pulled a great set. Gavin Rossdale is still a great solid frontman. Even if they played Machinehead as the 2nd song of the set, they didn't had the crowd dead the rest of the way. It was a solid responsive crowd. They dedicated 8 songs towards their last two albums. They also sprinkled their big songs from Sixteen Stone and stuff like The Chemicals Between Us and The Sound Of Winter. The pacing of the show was fantastic as well.
Sadly, Gavin didn't the thing in Little Things like he during the Altimate tour where he would ran around the entire venue and high-fiving anyone he sees in the crowd even the people in the lawn. Probably would be hard to accomplish that in an all-GA floor where everything could be cramped, but he had great energy and the band had great energy.
Anywho, the shows was over at 10:45 and despite no rain at the time the doors opened at 6, there was plenty of rain when the show ended that caught people off guard. The cheap knock-off shirts people and LA Hot Dog vendors was still trying to get their hustle in the rain. Thankfully, the parking lot wasn't too far away from me, so I made it out ok and went to a nearby tea shop close to home to get a tropical fruit blend with tea in the mix with lychee jelly. It tasted ok at the start, but it got more bitter in the end, but drinking that was probably going to help my voice out for the next day. I wouldn't mind coming back to that shop since everything else closes at around 11:30.
Well, my next shows are going to be fantastic. Three Alter Bridge shows, one of them in Toronto, one of them 5-10 minutes away from me near Disneyland, and one of them in the Inland Empire. Heck, depending how I feel after the Toronto trip, I may still book a trip to see them in Kansas City one day and go to St. Louis for a Blues game the next day.
Topic: Concerts for 2023 (Read 29430 times)
