Screwed By Smashing Pumpkins

I have tickets to see Smashing Pumpkins tonight. Turns out that the drummer was having some "chest discomfort" the other day and was admitted to the hospital. They cancelled the Atlanta show yesterday but said today's show would go on as planned.

Now comes word that that the show tonight is cancelled as well. No Smashing Pumpkins for me on Halloween. Their tour ends next week in South Carolina and they said "It is hoped that the two shows scheduled for Atlanta will be rescheduled and announced within the next week. "

Hoped? Sounds like I'm getting my money back and no show.

No official word on their website but was impressive was that Ticketmaster actually called Buck to tell him the show was cancelled.

Pumpkin Picking

Two Sundays ago the whole family went pumpkin picking. We went to Berry Patch Farms which was the same place we went to last year.

It is a small farm that has a few baby animals like pigs, cows, and chickens on display. Shannon got a kick out of seeing them since she is currently learning her farm animals. She seems to have cow down pretty well.

You get to take a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch. All the pumpkins are picked already and laid out in a large field. As you walk through the patch they left a bunch of the tiny pumpkins laying around so kids could pick them up.

Shannon had a great time picking one up and then putting it down and picking up another. After a while she finally found one that was to her liking.

It took us a little while to find a good pumpking but we finally did. We took the hay ride back and paid for our new orange squash. On the ride home the pumpkin started rolling around the back and the stem broke off. This broke my heart cause I always love having a good stem on top.

We carve it up on Tuesday.

14 Years Ago Today

Today is the 14th anniversary of when Erin and I started dating.

Our first date was on October 23, 1993. I showed up at her house to pick her up with a dozen roses. After being greeted by her Grandfather and two dogs, I presented Erin with the roses which she promptly left on the kitchen counter. I still give her shit about that to this day. Her defense was that she had never been given roses so she didn't know what to do with them.

We went out for pizza at Little Vincents and then ice skating at The Rinx. I hadn't skated in a while and I found out through the grapevine that Erin enjoyed ice skating so that is where we went. Amazingly I stayed on my feet and Erin feel once. I laughed at her.

Purposely I left the card off of the roses cause I had written "will you go out with me" on it. I figured if the date went poorly I could just ditch the card and if it went well I'd give it to her.

So I took her back home at the end of the date and gave her the card. she took it and went back inside her house. She never opened it.

The next day I got a phone call from Erin saying she had opened the card and the answer was yes. So we counted the 24th as the first official day of our relationship. The rest is history.

Wisdom Teeth

On Thursday Erin had her top two wisdom teeth taken out. She actually doesn't have the bottom ones so only the top two needed to come out.

The operation went well. The whole thing took less than an hour from the time she went in to the time I was helping her back into the car. She was laid up for about 4 days. I took off from work on Thursday and Friday to help her out. I did a lot of up and down the stairs bringing soup and Jello and anything else my semi conscience wife needed. The pain killers pretty much ensured that she wasn't getting out of bed for any extended period of time.

With Erin being laid up it meant I was on my own with Shannon. I managed to survive without any tears or broken bones on either of us.

I even took Shannon over to the Perkins' house for a play date with Sophia. Courtney and Shawn went out to dinner and I was alone with 3 kids. I survived that as well. Everyone involved seemed to have a good time.

Guitar Gods

Within the last 7 days I've seen Eddie Van Halen as well as Jerry Cantrell and Slash live. Last night a group of us went to see Alice in Chains and Velvet Revolver at Hi Fi Buys Amphitheatre here in Atlanta.

At 60 bucks a ticket I guess the show didn't sell very well cause Ticketmaster ended up giving tickets away for free. We were the lucky ones to not have bought tickets before hand. I personally got 4 tickets and all I paid for was the $2.50 fee to print them and a $1.50 processing that they hit you with. So the 4 tickets cost me $4 total. Parking at Hi Fi Buys was free as well. You just can't beat that deal.

Alice in Chains went on first and they stole the show. The crowd really seemed to be more into them than VR. I was really excited to see them. The first time I saw them was around 1991/1992 when they opened for Van Halen. How funny is that?? Something that Buck pointed out at the show last night. That was the first show we saw together and we've seen both bands within 4 days of each other.

I saw Jerry Cantrell solo at Music Midtown but he hurt his hand a few days before the show and could only sing. So it was not the full expereince of seeing Jerry play.

AIC opened with Again and then tore through their set which ended with Rooster. William Duvall (who is actually from Atlanta) took over on vocals and sounded really good. Enough effect of his voice that he sounded pretty close to Layne. Jerry sings a lot of backup so that helped the sound out a lot.

Other stuff they played in no order:

Man In The Box

Rain When I Die

Them Bones

Would?

We Die Young

Nutshell

No Excuses

Angry Chair

Grind

Sludge Factory

Brother

Those are the ones I can remember. There might have been one of two more.

Stage set up was pretty basic with one screen behind them. The amps were white so they were used really well for the different lights. During Rooster they put up parts from the video as well as some images of Bush, Cheney, and Condi. One image said Bush Lied And People Died and at the end of the song NO WAR appeared in big letters as the drummer pointed to the screen.

This is the second time I've seen Velvet Revolver. I saw them on their first tour in 2005 at the same venue. Hoobastank was the opening act.

VR opened with Let It Roll and closed with Slither. Let It Roll started with Slash behind this black curtain and white lights on from behind him so you could see him. Once the band joined in off the opening riff the curtain came flying down towards the stage.

They had good energy throughout and even played a few of the slower songs sitting on stools. The crowd seemed to be just passively into the set. The mood really picked up when an Stone Temple Pilots or Guns n Roses song was played. The crowd would usually go nuts for those ones.

Songs again in no order:

She Mine

Get Out The Door

The Last Flight

Pills, Demons & Etc

Sucker Train Blues
Do It For The Kids

Big Machine

Superhuman

Vasoline (STP)

Patience (GNR)

Interstate Love Song (GNR)

Sex Type Thing (STP)

Mr. Brownstone (GNR)

It's So Easy (GNR)

She Builds Quick Machines

Fall To Pieces

Highlights were It's So Easy and Slither. I was really, really rocking to those two. Overall they were really good. I'm not a big fan of Scott Weiland's voice live. It sounds really ripped up. If you go back and listen to the first STP album and listen to him now it is almost a completely different voice. Especially after listening to something like Sex Type Thing.

Slash was awesome as expected. He even got in a guitar solo that was pretty good.

The stage show was good. They had two video screens on the side and a big one behind them. One song they had a montage of serial killers on the screens and another there were naked women so in S & M poses and others just naked.

Velvet Revolver just oozes what a rock and roll band should be like. I enjoyed their set but I have to say that Alice in Chains put on a better show.

Van Halen Crushed It!!!!

Road trip to Greensboro this weekend was a great time. Took us about 5 hours each way. Had my first 5 Guys burger.

We got to Greensboro and checked into the hotel. The Van Halen show must have been the only thing going on in that town cause everyone we talked to were asking us if we were in town for the show.

After driving around and finding out that the Greensboro Coliseum was on the same block as our hotel we hit Buffalo's Bar and Grill to kill 3 hours. We drained a few pitchers and had some pub food.

Since the hotel was close to the venue we decided to walk to the show. The guy in the room next to us was also going to the show so he asked to walk with us. Before we left he offered us a beer he had on ice in his room. This 45 year old Southerners beer of choice? Milwaukee's Best Light. It was cold so it went down smooth.

The walk over wasn't that bad at all. We got into the venue and discovered t shirts were 35 bucks so we decided to pass.

Van Halen was awesome. Eddie was the tightest I'd ever heard him before. This was my 3rd time seeing him. They opened with You Really Got Me and closed the show with Jump. The set list had been leaked on the internet a few weeks ago and they played every song off of it.

This is what they played:

1. You Really Got Me

2. I'm the One

3. Runnin' With the Devil

4. Romeo Delight

5. Somebody Get Me a Doctor

6. Beautiful Girls

7. Dance the Night Away

8. Atomic Punk

9. Everybody Wants Some

10. So This Is Love?

11. Mean Street
12. Pretty Woman

13. Drum Solo

14. Unchained

15. I'll Wait

16. And the Cradle Will Rock

17. Hot for Teacher

18. Little Dreamer

19. Little Guitars

20. Jamie's Cryin'

21. Ice Cream Man

22. Panama

23. Guitar Solo (incl. "Women in Love" intro, "Cathedral", "Eruption")

24. Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love

------------------------

25. 1984

26. Jump

At times the guitar was louder than Roth's vocals which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The tempo for Hot For Teacher was so fast that Roth was skipping words here and there to keep up. For the most part his timing was great.

Roth had a few leg kicks and during Jump did a whole baton twirling thing. On Everybody Wants Some he did a slight variation on the speaking parts. I liked the original. The strong first few lines of the song he just kind of talked them out. That was about the most disappointed I was.

Wolfgang was there. You kind of forgot about him cause you are looking at Eddie and Roth the whole time. He did mess up the "come on Dave, give me a break" part to Unchained. He sounded nervous and flubbed the first part of it. He did move around the stage a little. He definitely has his mom's genes cause he is a pudgy thing.

The stage was in the shape of a giant S and that snaked into the crowd. The whole time Buck and I were thinking that S stood for Sammy. There was a big video screen behind them and they used a lot of video feedback for effect.

Overall one of the best shows I've ever seen. They played song after song after song. Almost no talking in between songs at all. The only long talking part was the set up for Ice Cream Man which Roth played acoustic guitar on.

These pictures are from the Charlotte show: