By: Unshetek
Since I missed the Phoenix show and didn't want to limit my Type O
live fix to one show, I decided to make the 120-mile trip up to Sacramento
to see the guys again. I'll skip the road trip part, suffice it to say that
some Beavis and Buttheads set Vacaville on fire and in the Bay Area of
course that means traffic will be completely bolloxed...
Anyway...
Return to the US Tour '96 page
First thing into the club, I noticed I KNEW ABSOLUTELY NO-ONE THERE!
That is, until I went to the back and saw John and Kenny standing around
(knew John? We talked for maybe ten minutes cumulative the night before and
zero before that). John smiled and stuck his hand out when he saw me.
"Hey! Made the trip, huh?"
I pumped his hand and leant in close to talk (the music was very
loud). "Yeah!"
"Decided to take a little more punishment, I guess!"
"You don't know how right you are! Gotta use the facilities, see ya
later!"
I passed Kenny, who turned off instantly, absolutely stoic,
impassive face, no expression, stiff nod like, "Yeah. I see you. Go away."
Smiled at him anyway. Gods, he made Masonite look like fresh pasta!
First thing in the ladies room, there's this, I swear, coterie of
Vampire chicks straight out of Gorey. At a glance, they looked to be
Toreadors, Ravnos and possibly Tzimisce - all doing their makeup in a pack,
clustered in front of the mirror. They were cool enough, probably because I
was wearing my Vincent Price t-shirt. One of them asked, "Didn't he die
recently?"
"Yeah, back in '92. Met him at the Weekend of Horrors in L.A. once, he
was a real cool old guy."
"I think Christopher Lee is dead, too."
"Nah, he's still going! Met him, too, same convention. True English
gentleman, very gracious, great smile. Excuse me..."
I moved over to the
mirror and started painting my face on; the Vampire coterie were too
wrapped up in discussing Christopher Lee and Vincent Price, and split soon
after. I came out and John and Kenny were gone.
Sigh.
The El Dorado Ballroom was about the size of the Stone, around 400
capacity, all mirrors, black paint, monitors and an actual pit for
thrashing. Those who didn't want to or couldn't pit could stand up on a
catwalk circling the thrash pit and still be afforded a good view.
The club was decorated for Hallowe'en and while the Type O trees
backdrop and most of the stage set weren't there (stage too small), that
was more than made up for because they had lite-up pumpkins, black cats and
skeletons everywhere you looked.
Over the ladies' room door they had this big ol' honkin' taxidermy
moose headmount and over the backstage door they had a longhorn bull's
head, which I thought were kind of cool; they had a food bar but all they
served was fried junk: mozarella sticks, jalapeno poppers, french fries,
corn dogs, stuff that made me sick just thinking about it (I kept kicking
myself for not stopping for dinner at the Chinese restaurant right next
door to the place).
For most of the show I just went over into a relatively well-lit
corner and drew. users were pretty impressed with Manhole (of course!),
they went over well and you could actually hear the lyrics - the song about
rape and wifebeating got a roar of agreeing applause - and as I predicted,
LOA did better in a smaller club environment. The kids got into a nice
lather pitting to them but this crowd was pretty well charged tonight -
lots better response than the Fillmore.
Halfway through the setup for Type O, a fuse got blown and plunged the
whole club into darkness and silence except for the door and exit signs,
and a minute later the power came back on. The monitors went on and there
was a news report on the fire in Vacaville (which I got to scope on the way
home). Around that time I saw Mike d'Amato and he gave me a big smile and
hello. He asked me where I'd come from and I told him Sunnyvale; he knew
where it was and said, "Which way did you come, 80 or 5?" I told him I cut
through the East Bay Hills to 5 and up, then over on 80, slightly surprised
but not really to find that he knew what I was talking about. Hey, road
managers - that's what they're paid for and Mike does a great job of it! He
thanked me for coming up and said, "Have a great time!" before splitting.
Type O came out to an already-torqued crowd and let me tell you,
everyone there was ready to go like nothing! They took off playing and the
crowd started pitting as soon as they did. I'd taken up a position behind
the soundbooth (I was up on the catwalk; the booth was down in the pit) and
they had a mini-monitor going, showing the local PBS affiliate's showing of
the John Tesh concert. I kept glancing up and down between Type O on the
stage and the John Tesh thing on the monitor, it was so fucking surreal I
kept cracking up! While they were howling and groaning through "Glass Walls
of Limbo" they had this box-shaped opera singer up there howling away at
the microphone - I was busting a gut! I lost my space briefly when my
stomach, still unsettled from the food poisoning/heat exhaustion/whatever
of the day prior, made a demand and when I came back, these two Mexican
guys were standing there, smoking big, ugly, stinky cigars! Ugh! My father
smoked those goddam things at least twice a day when I was growing up and
for the first ten years of my life all I remember is being queasy 'cause
they smell like shit and burn forever! This on top of the fact that
everyone in the club except me, Mike and Peter was smoking, smoke effects
from the stage was clogging everything up, and I had to dive back into the
bathroom to jury-rig a smoke mask out of a wet paper towel. For most of the
show I kept my mouth and nose buried in wet paper and I still got sick.
Sick side-note: after "Love You To Death," some wiseass in the crowd
next to me yelled out, "DEFTONES!!" I turned round, gave him a look like
granite on fire and growled, "Don't even..."
Anyway, we've already talked about the setlist and the only deviance
from it was that there was no white trash TV talk show squeals-in-heat when
Peter let his hair down in "Xtian Woman;" and halfway through "Kill All The
White users/Aqualung" (which I thought, I could use one of right then),
the fuse blew again, shrouding the band in darkness. There's just this
massive shadow up onstage, I could barely see Josh and John, and I yelled
out at the top of my tortured lungs, "DRUM SOLO!" When I yelled that there
was an orchestral break in the John Tesh show and the conductor was up
there, vigourously conducting the strings through some movement that was
probably pretty fast and furious (for John Tesh) - ROFL!
The PA came back on and Peter started through the "Dazed and Confused"
bassline, Johnny laughed, and then Peter yelled sharply at Kenny, "Hey!
HEY!! Wake up!" Kenny apparently had disappeared from the stage, came back
with arms spread in a "Hey, what did I do?" gesture. On the soundbooth
monitor was someone talking into the mike on the John Tesh PBS program at
the same time, ROFL!
Since it had less of a distance to fall, and thereby spread out, the
snow during "Too Late: Frozen" caked up heavier on everything and everyone,
almost all the way to the back of the pit. Josh going nuts on the keyboard
during "Set Me On Fire" was juxtaposed with John Tesh going at the piano on
the soundbooth monitor, ROFLMAO!
(Yes, by this time, I'd gotten my space back and the stogie suckers
were gone - thank the Gods!)
During "MGG" all three guest vocalists, the orchestra and John Tesh
were going at it on a pretty involved piece and, apparently, the finale to
the PBS show, and it spanned both that and the next song, and I was trying
desperately not to laugh myself inside-out (and miserably failing). They
say they can't see past the first three rows because of the lights but I
felt like I was making the Type O guys uneasy because I was laughing my
happy ass off throughout their set, and they probably thought I was
laughing at them. No, I wasn't - just the juxtaposition!
Anyway, at the end of the show, Peter said that they'd had fun tonight
(YES! Wait a minnit - is that possible? Isn't there some sort of by-law in
the Type O Negative charter that they aren't allowed to have fun at a
show?), and once again thanked us for coming and to give ourselves a hand
because without us, they're nothing.
They had to pass through the crowd from the stage, past the side bar
to the loading dock door, where the bus was. Josh was the first one off the
stage - smiled at me briefly - followed by John, then Kenny. By this time
there was quite the little gathering of fans and well-wishers lined up like
a reception line at a wedding, and Peter got mobbed when he came off. He
was nice to everyone and smiled and apologized for not being able to hang
for long, but he paused to sign a few autographs and talk for a bit before
moving on. Some chick in red and black lingerie was sitting like a cat at
the bar, she grabbed Peter on his way, pulled his head down, said something
in his ear and kissed him. He didn't look at me at all, even though I
touched his arm on the way by to say hello (nice soft skin - yeah, Peter
does have great skin). Josh, however, saw me and gave me a big, friendly
smile.
I couldn't believe it when the club let a nice little crowd of us hang
around for autographs and chat later. There was this one chick that had
brought The Centrefold, two more that brought the whole magazine, and were
showing them off like they were a carnival sideshow while we waited. I just
sat, drew, and talked with this guy who remembered me from the Berkeley
Voivod show on Beltaine and told me that they were coming back to the Bay
Area and Sacramento late next month; we sat and talked for awhile and
watched the roadies load up the truck.
Johnny was the first to come out and he said, "My God! They told me
that there was a few users waiting to meet me here, I didn't know they
stuck you all in this little cage!" We were stuck up in this microscopic
seating area behind a sort of industrial-gauge wire mesh retaining wall;
there was probably around 50 or 60 users stuck in this little area. So he
came over to the wall and of course, the Playgirl Brigade - or those who
would _deign_ to be seen asking the rest of the band for autographs, as if
they didn't exist or even matter - crowded him instantly, clamouring for
his autograph. When he got done doing that, he glanced over at me, the
quietest part of the crowd, and checked out the Werewolf character sketch
I'd been doing. After a brainfart-type pause, he said edgily,
"That's...very..._interesting!_" I just smiled at him and went over to hang
with him and the more well-adjusted, mature Typo's and chat.
What pissed me off about those girls with the Playgirl copies, was how
bloody neurotic they were. I won't say names because I didn't bother to
check anyway, but we really had the cream of the Middle America crop here
(Ding!). They were probably in their late twenties and early thirties and
they were acting as pissy as teenage Romance novel readers. After shaking
my head at them once or twice, I just turned my back and ignored their "Oh,
Patricia, darling - what did you just say?" antics. Someone asked John how
he liked playing small places as opposed to larger places and he said that
this place wasn't that much smaller than the Fillmore, it was just laid out
different. "Ya gotta play them all," he said. "Big towns, suburbia, like
this...we enjoyed ourselves tonight."
Josh came over and smiled briefly at me, John hung about for a bit,
but Kenny and Peter just disappeared onto the bus and stayed there. They
never came back out. I saw Josh palling around with the singer for LOA, he
was doing funny things like leaning against Josh's shoulder and snuggling
up to him. It's funny how the guitar player for them is the band's
frontman, and the singer is just the singer - guess he's kinda shy. I
mentioned to John that I had been making plans to go down to Phoenix for
their show, that friends had invited me down, but it hadn't come off; I
knew about the riots and the Deftones/TypeO bar brawl after but I didn't
mention that and thought maybe John would say something about it. All he
said was, "Well, good thing you didn't - 'cause we didn't play!" I said,
"Yeah, I heard about that!" and he didn't say anything else, I didn't
expound, and nobody asked. After about a half-hour of hanging and
bullshitting, John and Josh split for the bus and that was it for the
night.
They moved us out of the club proper and into the box office area, but
didn't kick us out. The Playgirl Brigade caused a big stink and one of
them, the one who'd been displaying the centrefold and spread, was bitching
and saying she was gonna give the club a bad review and even tried to rally
us into saying that Peter owed us coming out and signing autographs. A
bunch did but a few of us didn't; she left all in a huff but I hung for a
few more minutes, refusing to be chased off, and the club users didn't
push it. This one Goth chick went into the bar and drew herself a glass of
water; some other chick who'd heretofore gone mostly unnoticed showed a
couple pictures of her friend on the bus with Peter from the last tour,
that she wanted to give to him. In the first one, her friend was leaning
into Peter and biting his neck; him and those wonderfully expressive eyes,
he was looking kind of blankly up at the ceiling, and loooking slightly
bored. In the second picture, she was leaning back, presenting her carotid
and he was returning the favour by biting her on the neck - she of course,
unlike him, was smiling in wicked bliss. They were cool shots; I can't
remember now whether she gave them to Mike or not to give to Peter, but I
seem to think she did.
Anyway, with that, I headed back to the car, took off for home, and
with all the traffic tie-ups, the fire still going on Wild Cattle Canyon in
Vacaville, and talk of police action down in Richmond by the freeway, it
took me over two and a half hours to get home. It was around four and
folks, I'm still turned round on a night schedule, a week and a half later.
Folks, it was still great. The show was fun, it was actually better
than the Fillmore (as good as that was!) and I don't regret a minute of it.
(*< unshetek
// \\ Lupus Paganis
|| * ||
____\\ //____
|____0|0|0____|/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\ / "Overture, turn the lights
| | This is it, your night of nights
| | No more rehearsing and nursing a part
| | We know every part by heart
| | Overture, turn the lights
/___\ This is it, we'll hit the heights
And oh, what heights we'll hit! On with the show, this is it!"
- What? You mean you don't recognize this? ;)