We attended the Shinedown concert at Mayo Civic Center with a few of my work buddies to promote team building (if my supervisors are reading this), or to just hang out, drink beer and enjoy the awesome rock concert (if others are reading this).
As I’m blogging this now, I’m listening to the Shinedown songs through my music subscription service. This is Angelina’s first ever concert, not to mention, the first ever ROCK concert. In contrary, I have been to a few rowdy concerts in the past. We had about 10 to 12 persons attending this sold-out concert. Prior to the concert, all of us had our dinners at TGI Friday’s.
By 7 pm, we headed to the concert. Kurt was kind enough to give Angelina and me a ride with his big truck. I brought my god-knows-how-old 3.2 MP point and shoot camera along since Corey had successfully convinced me a few hours ago not to smuggle my dSLR camera through the security into a rock concert… come to think about it, I at least made one good decision the whole week. Of course, everyone took the opportunity to mock me with my crappy old bulky camera. Using this camera is like using an old 1990s bulky rectangular cell phone… pretty outdated. I must admit… it has been at least 4 years since I last used this camera. Talk about peer pressure… I think I need to upgrade my point and shoot camera very soon. Unsurprisingly, I was held up at the security check point longer than anyone else when proceeding to the concert hall and Kurt took that opportunity to tease me again. Obviously, every security officer in the world and I just don’t get along well for some reason. Do I really look that dangerous??! I’m just a freaking 5′ 4″ Asian dude, who happens to be a martial art expert… that’s all.
There were two rock bands opening for Shinedown: Halestorm and Saliva. My verdict on Halestorm: Meh. All I heard was just bunch of noise and girl screaming. I thought it was pretty hilarious when the chick lead singer tried to promote her band’s latest album using her macho rock voice at the end of their gig… it was like: “YEAAHH! ROC… CHES… TA… Now is the chance! YEAAAHH! … You can get the CD now for just five bucks! OH YEAAAA!” … well, that’s not going to make me buy the CD, that’s just going to crack me up. Halestorm, I know there are times you need to be in the “rocka” mode, but I honestly don’t think that was the right time to do so.
Saliva is a whole lot of better than Halestorm. At least, I already knew a few of their songs. Saliva started out a little weak, but they got better towards the end. For some reason, all their songs sound almost the same to me.
Shinedown is the best of all three… not to be biased, but they better be good since I already forked out my money on the tickets and I spent the past 2 weeks listening to their songs for 8 hours a day. Shinedown has many really awesome slower rock songs. Somehow, there was lots of yapping on the stage. At one point, the frontman of Shinedown started talking about his grandma and such… I mean, WTF??! First, most of the audience was already beer drunk and second, who would care about that in a freaking rock concert??! This is not even a talk show concert!
During the concert, some rowdy folks started moshing in a mosh pit in front of us. Kurt and Joe were our heroes for that night. All we needed to do was to stand behind them and they would beat the crap out of the moshers who came close to us. I mean, we have Kurt who has a very impressive list of attended rock concerts in his resume. He has been to more rock and heavy metal concerts than the rest of us combined together, and at least as many times as he has been to the work meetings. On the other hand, we have Joe who bench presses 455 lbs just to see if he could do it (not to mention he even You-Tubed his achievement for us to watch), just like he attempted to tackle two humongous taco salads one afternoon just to see if he could do it (although the taco salad got the best of him that day… a low point in his life).
The concert ended at about 11 PM. Angelina and I left for home while the rest hung out at the pub, which coincidentally located just a block from our apartment.
