Fight the Fight

If someone were to ask me what my favorite concert experience was, I’d not hesitate to answer a week in 1994.  It’s all about semantics when asking questions.  I was amidst my big explosion of my musical appreciation from a musician standpoint, and this week had me going to 3 concerts that I anticipated each and every one for different reasons.

The first Concert: Nine Inch Nails / The Jim Rose Circus / Marilyn Manson

This was my second time seeing them on this tour, but the last show was not all general admission, so I was looking forward to not sitting up high to keep tabs on everyone’s t-shirts.  The arena itself was an ok size (a little smaller than the venue we had seen them at before). The acoustics seemed a little harsh – but who really cares when you’re as close to the stage as we were?

Marilyn Manson was the first opening act, and they had begun to take off in-between the last time we saw them and this time.  Most of the people on the floor knew many of their songs, so the crowd was definitely much more into it.  The pit was pretty rough.  There was some weird stuff happening on stage, but we were having fun.

The Jim Rose Circus was as entertaining as always.  Pretty much the same show as in Muncie, but much closer this time.

The NIN show was very similar to the last show.  But the experience of being up close completely changed it for me.  I came and went from the pit depending on the intensity of the song played.  It was a surreal experience being in the pit during the movie-screen portion of the set.  I had to step out of the pit for a few after I got a minor case of vertigo from looking up at the large screen and moving with the pit.

The show was better than Muncie, and I left quite drained from the pit.  I bought two gallons of water at a gas station on the way home that evening – one to dump on me and one to drink.  It was a fitting way to end the week.

The second concert: Helmet / Quicksand / Orange 9mm

As soon as I hear that Helmet was on tour, I wanted to go.  When I heard Quicksand was with them, I HAD to go.  I was (am) a big fan of their (then) current albums.  I went to the show with two great friends who were at the NIN concert as well.

None of us were aware of any other attached acts, but we thought there’d be one.  None of us had ever heard of Orange 9mm but their tone and ferocity took us, and the crowd by storm.  Minor pits started up from time to time, but nothing that didn’t fizzle out due to the crowd not being completely developed.  It was still more than good enough for two of us to pick up their CD immediately after their set.

Quicksand came on, and you could tell that there was a decent amount of crowd anticipation.  I was so looking forward to seeing them, but their set was only so-so.  Partially because they didn’t quite pull off the meticulous nature of their recorded music, and partially because there was a decent portion of the crown not really into them.

By the end of their set, we had worked our way up to about 2-3 people behind the barrier just barely left of center. We set up camp there until Helmet came on.

The crowd was very much anticipating their arrival, and when the first song hit its stride, the crowd up front just exploded.  Jumping and moving with their trademark stop-start style that gave a rhythm to the crowd.  The pit intensity picked up with the harder, more driven parts of the songs.

It was one of the better performances I’ve been up close at a general admission venue to experience.  I would have waited around after the show to try and meet any of the guys, but the next day I had that pesky thing called school and another concert to go to at the very same venue.

The third concert: Fishbone / Weapon of Choice

The previous summer was my first Lollapaloza experience.  Right in the midst of the lineup was Fishbone, which I was already a fan of because of the wonderful album The Reality of My Surroundings.  It was a great experience, and I jumped at the chance to go see them in a smaller, more intimate venue.

My two friends from the Helmet/Quicksand concert were going as well.  What can I say, We had a lot of overlap in our musical preferences.  My then girlfriend came along too…  She was on the brink of being very ill with the flu, but she really wanted to goregardless.  We got there early enough to be up against the stage.

We were all very impressed with the showmanship of the opening act, Weapon of Choice.  They were a perfect fit to open for a band like Fishbone, but their studio albums weren’t good enough for me to follow up on it.  It still ramped up the audience pretty well.  It was getting crowded up front, and my girlfriend was beginning to run a higher fever.

Fishbone coming out was a lot of fun.  For those of you who don’t know, it’s a larger band with a horn section and all.  They have quite the selection of stage attire, and stage persona that make the concert experience very fun.

I specifically remember hearing many of the more popular songs from The Reality of My Surroundings.  Notably “Fight the Youth”, “Everyday Sunshine”, and I think I remember hearing my personal favorite “So Many Millions”.

The concert was going well, but my girlfriend was feeling more and more dazed.  Not only was she sick, but she’d never been to a concert with a mosh pit in a small venue.  I ended up standing behind her with my arms locked on each side to keep her from getting swept away or pressed against the barrier.

The concert was probably between 1/2 and 2/3 of the way done when everything ground to a halt.  The drummer (Philip “Fish” Fisher) stopped and made everyone else on stage stop the song.  He began talking into his mike with the intention of getting the crowd riled up.  He basically called out my girlfriend (even pointing directly at her with a drumstick) for looking dazed and not as into the concert as he’d like her to be.  We were shocked, horrified, and appalled (myself more so because she was a bit out of it from the fever).  We immediately extracted ourselves from the crowd and left.

I’ve listened to their music some since, but I’ll never support the band again after such a display of calling out a fan in the middle of a set for the complete wrong reasons.

It was a downer to end the week on, but not enough to diminish was was what I look back on as “the week of concerts”.