Two more Heaven & Hell clips

Here are two more clips from the Heaven & Hell show at the Warfield in San Francisco on Monday, August 10, 2009. The first one is the song Die Young. I had problems with the camera's zoom, so there are no closeups. Still a smoking performance. This one includes most of Tony Iommi's unaccompanied guitar solo at the beginning.



The second one is for the song Neon Knights. The band actually plays a bit of the song Country Girl, but I basically missed all of that. Good thing because I got to Neon Knights right when it started pretty much. The tragedy of this clip is that I ran out of memory right after Iommi's second guitar solo. Here it is:



I like my little Nikon Coolpix camera, but the lesson I learned is that I need to get on with the times and get a newer, better camera.

Heaven & Hell! :D

I really let the switching venues from San Jose to San Francisco almost make me not go, but I did and I'm really glad I did. I took BART to the Powell Station in San Francisco and only had to walk a couple of blocks to get to the line. I went all by myself and I really wanted to join in the conversation of the group that was behind me. I texted a couple of my good friends, including Baeleron who lives in Irvine and is my Metal concerts partner too, even though we haven't been to one since like 2005 (the Irvine Maiden show).

They let us in shortly after 7:00. I kind of wanted to see if I could upgrade my ticket, but decided against it seeing the way they were herding people in like sheep. When I went in, I remembered that I had been to the Warfield already back in 2002. Bael and I had tickets for the Judas Priest / Iced Earth show in September 2001, and well, everyone knows what happened then so the bands couldn't travel and the show got postponed. It got rescheduled for like February 2002, but by this time Anthrax had taken Iced Earth's opening spot and Bael had moved to Southern CA. Nothing against Anthrax, but I really wanted to see Iced Earth. Anyway, I had an extra ticket and I almost didn't go because no one wanted to go with me. Finally I convinced my Bryan Adams-loving friend and roomate to come with me, so we got there just as Anthrax had ended their set and were literally walking away from the stage. I really liked the show with Ripper... but anyway, back to H&H.

I went into the general admission area and took a spot in the third section from the stage right in front of a barricade over on the right (if you're looking at the stage). It was a good spot and that's where I stayed for the whole thing.

First off was Coheed and Cambria. Their set started at 8:00 sharp! They were pretty good and there were a few songs that I enjoyed a lot. I'm not very familiar with their work although I do have one of their CD's. It's clearly Claudio Sanchez's band and he's really good. They played a shortened version of maiden's The Trooper. I had my ancient Nikon Coolpix camera handy so I took some video:



I thought the second guitarist was going to take the second solo and you can see I went his direction, but didn't play it. Some peopple in various forums complained about the opening act, but I thought C&C were great and enjoyed their set very much.

Heaven & Hell came on about a half hour after C&C, and their set smoked! I'm not going to go into detail since I took some video! I was there mostly to see Tony Iommi, but Dio, Geezer and Vinny were all great. It was cool to see Geezer in his element (I had seen his metal core band open for Bruce Dickinson back in '97). It's hard to believe Dio is 67 years old. The set was 90 minutes long and, in my opinion, just right. Here is some video I took.

My camera is old and crappy, but for me this is a nice way of keeping memories of some of the shows I've gone to.

The Mob Rules (opening song):


Time Machine (including part of Vinny's drum solo):


Falling Off The Edge Of The World:


I have a couple more that I haven't uploaded, but I had problems with those. For Die Young I had probelms with the camera's zoom, and for Neon Knights I ran out of memory before the song ended. Maybe I'll upload them anyway. No one looks at my stuff anyway! :)

By the way, I've been in a pretty sour mood since last night, but listening to Grace Under Pressure this afternoon put me back in a good mood!

Heaven &... Hell! >:(

August 10! The date I've been waiting for a while now. This is the date of the Heaven & Hell's (or "Black Sabbath with Dio" - TM Yngwie Malmsteen) concert. I bought my ticket way in advance during the so-called "pre-sale". If I go to a concert by myself, I don't really like general admission anymore, so I get assigned seats instead. I got a pretty sweet seat over at the San Jose State University Events Center. I like that venue. I've seen a few concerts at the Events Center, and I work not far from there. I had planned on going to grab a bite to eat after work and then walk over to the venue.

Good plan, right? All I had to do was patiently wait... But of course everything had to go to... hell. The band's official site announced that the concert had been moved from the SJSU Events Center to... The Warfield in San Francisco. I couldn't believe it. I strongly, strongly dislike driving to San Francisco. I always get lost, there's never any parking and I don't really like being out there late at night. My dislike of going to SF is so great that I have skipped shows where I would have very liked to have gone, only because it's San Francisco. I have nothing against the city or those who live there, please don't get me wrong. I don't mind going if someone else drives and keeps me out of the whole trying to find the address and/or a place to park. I just don't like driving over there. Why oh why, if it was a low ticket sales issue couldn't they have moved the concert to, let's say, the newly remodeled San Jose Civic Auditorium (across the street from work pretty much!)? I really want to go to this show, so to freakin' San Francisco it is.

But wait! That's not all! A few days ago, I got an e-mail from Ticketmaster saying among other (stupid) things that those with $60 tickets had the choice of 1) getting an assigned seat, or 2) get general admission entrance and be able to get in 1/2 hour before everyone else. Those with $50 tickets would just get general admission and be let in at the regular time. Since I got my ticket a long time ago, I went back to check the e-mail receipt. $67 total. Surely I must have a $60 ticket, so I'll just take the assigned seat option, right? Wrong! I have a $50 ticket, just that I was charged ALMOST $20 IN FEES!!!

So I'll be going to a concert that I really want to see, except that everything surrounding it is what, in my own personal case, is WRONG about going to concerts.

I found out BART stops fairly close to the Warfield, so I'll be going that route more than likely. I'd still rather walk in San Francisco at midnight back to the BART station with my legs hurting from standing for hours and hours and having to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to get ready to go to work, than driving there. Hopefully the talks between BART and the union will have been resolved by the 10th.

The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams indeed.

And yes, no one's holding a gun to my head to go!

er... Happy New Year everybody!

It's like the middle of the year pretty much and in a way it doesn't feel like it! As far as this blog is concerned, it has felt like this: "I guess it's not so bad if I post a couple of months after the new year." Yeah, more like six months! Anyway, it's not that big of a deal. It's not like anyone reads this. :)

So, what's new? Ah! I'm finally going to a concert! It takes place on August 10 at the San Jose State Events Center and is none other than Metal's favorite senior citizens Heaven & Hell! This is exciting because I always wanted to see Sabbath (this is the Mob Rules, Live Evil, Dehumanizer and almost the Heaven And Hell lineup of Sabbath). I'm going by myself because no one wants to go with me. My two good friends who would go live pretty far away. I'm going to stay healthy so I actually make it to the concert unlike last year's Iron Maiden show. I'm more excited about this one because it's close to work and I have a good seat. The SJSU Events Center is a good venue too. I saw the Gypsy Kings there once, and maybe one more concert. In 1999 Maiden was set to play there for their Ed Hunter Tour, and they went as far as setting up the equipment, but it got canceled because Dave Murray broke his pinky the night before in L.A. We had press passes too. Oh well... but yeah! I'm excited. Coheed & Cambria will open. I have one of their CD's and sound like a pretty good progressive rock band. The singer sounds like Geddy Lee!