Coheed and Cambria, Screamcore and the monkey boy who wouldn’t quit

So I just got back from my first concert without jackie in a long long time- went with my friend phil to the orbit room to see Coheed and Cambria. The events are as followed:
* went and got dinner
* went to the orbit room, realized phil was the “old guy” there (actually 3 or 4 people ended up beating him for that title) We got a table in the back because, since we were 10-15 years older than 9/10ths of the crowd and needed the support.
* first band was named “three” I think. Very good- their keyboard player also played a second set of drums- him and the main drummer rocked out for a bit- very cool. the lead singer played an acoustic guitar. The whole thing sounded a lot like Coheed and was a hell of an opening act. Phil commented as much and I replied that I had had good luck with opening bands….

Rule # 1: Do not tempt Fate.

It turns out there was a second warmup band- I don’t know their name because they never introduced themselves. Besides looking 19 and acting 14, the lead singer sang like a 2 year old who was told he had to take a nap…
“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII*gasp* DON’T WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANT*gasp* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA- NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPP!!!!!!”

This my friends is called screamcore, and has replaced rapcore as the most annoying rock spinoff. The lead singer alternated between yelling lyrics and screaming them. I didn’t think it got much worse than that. The only reason we didn’t walk out was because we had a nice table in the back and we wanted to sit for the opening acts.

* I found out that there was yet ANOTHER opener called “dillenger” something or other, and that they were a much better act than the nameless band. Well, I guess it depends on how you define “better”. See, as far as screamcore went, the nameless band was untalented because the lead screamer sometimes yelled instead of screaming. Apparently this is frowned upon, and Dillenger showed us how it was really done.

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, Dillenger upped the Ante. Not only did they suck, but they were louder, more incoherent, and didn’t have any decernable rhythm. again, we didn’t walk out cause we wanted our damn seats.

Finally they stopped and I clapped, and phil and I talked about other concerts he’d been to and how he was bitten in the back by a rabid butthole surfer fan at a concert. Coheed and Cambria came out and after the abuse we took on the last 2 acts, the bar was set pretty high- we wanted our money’s worth damnit. The only thing I really have to say about them is the lead singer has got some hair going on.

yeah, except it’s longer and frizzier than that picture- it ran to his shoulders, but actually mushroomed past them by about 3 inches on each side. when he sang it looked like the shaggy dog was licking the mic.

The music was good tho- I liked it quite a bit. the last song was a 20 minute blues rock jamsession where the lead guitarists traded licks back and forth. very cool.

and before I head to bed, let me tell you about monkeyboy… there was a coheed fan sitting about 20 feet in front of us who was enjoying the music a bit much. where some people would play air guitar, this gentleman had all the bases covered-
– he played “air base drum” with his foot coming about 2 feet straight up then back down to the beat
– he played “air cymbals” with his t-rex type arms (elbows never leaving his sides) flailing to the cymbal smashing
– and finally, “air guitar.” during the parts where there wasn’t really any guitarpart that stuck out.

On top of all of this, he’d occasionally flail out in something that could only be described as “sub human”. Once he even got up and did a little jig of some sort- not sure where that came from, but it was defininitely unique.

Other memorable moments included seeing a girl come out of the crowd while dillenger was up there gushing blood from her nose. I’d laugh, but I actually felt sorry for her… let see… Phil’s story about how he got his junk x-rayed… and of course random monkeyboay outbursts during the entire thing.
ok, time for bed I think.

UPDATE: after looking it up, the opening bands listed are “The Dillinger Escape Plan, Chiodos, and 3”. so yeah, 3 is a crappy name for a band since I can’t google for them, but I did find 3’s CD on ubl.