Last Tuesday, I had the pleasure of going to the Grand Ballroom at the Regency Center in San Francisco to see Shinedown with Red and Jet Black Stare.  The show was quite the steal at $20, especially considering that it was pretty easy to get up close to the stage and see the bands - practically within cock-groping distance!  The place sort of felt like a high school dance (definitely had the high school gym feeling) except the only babies being thrown in trash cans were ... those, um ... yeah this joke is going nowhere.  On with the show!

The show opened with Jet Black Stare, who we've actually covered on BnR before (see their album review here).  In fact, we've still got some deal with WWE for some type of giveaway (more details here).  I should have mentioned to the band that I was a member of the elite BnR journalist team so I could get a free guitar or whatever, but I decided to drink beer and film them from a dark corner instead.  Ah, the simple voyeuristic joys in life.

Jet Black Stare put on a pretty good show, especially considering they are the bitches of the tour, as they had virtually no room to work with on stage and some of the band members had to become roadies afterwards, moving equipment and the like.  Nevertheless, they did a great job.  Of course, I'm a bit biased as I had already listened to their album multiple times, so I already knew all their songs.  I did notice that a bit of the melody was lost in the live show, but that's nothing unusual for a rock band.  Plus, that was more than made up for by the antics of one of the guitarists (far right in the picture to the right).  He did this awesome crab-walking, head-banging motion that made it look like he was going to squeeze out a dump on stage and squeeze out a sweet guitar solo at the same time.  Now that's rock 'n roll!

Definitely check out their album In This Life - it's a great rock record.  Plus, the bassist for Jet Black Stare is a total fake Bob Wettner:





Next up was Red.  To be honest, I wasn't sure what to make of this band.  A week and a half later, I'm still not sure what to make of this band.  I will give them props though for having a very unique makeup of people:  the bassist and one guitarist are (almost identical) brothers who look like they should be in the marines, the drummer looks like he's 16, the other guitarist was wearing flannel (flannel!), and the lead singer totally reminded me of Bob Geldof in Pink Floyd's The Wall:


     


According to Red's Wikipedia page, they are a Christian rock band from Nashville, Tennessee.  Holy shit, you wouldn't guess either from their music.  There's definitely no country going on and nothing holy or religious about their show.  I would describe their music as lots of angry guitars, yelling, and screaming.  Even their "single" was somewhat devoid of melody (in the live show at least).  I'm not expecting Jesus Christ to descend from the rafters and start blessing the crowd, but come on, how about a catchy hook or two that doesn't involve violating my ear drums?

I guess it's not really fair that I already knew the entire catalogue of Jet Black Stare and Shinedown and knew nothing about Red going into the show, but I wasn't really impressed.  I'll try to end with something positive though - um, their band logo is pretty cool?


Finally, Shinedown took the stage.  We've actually reviewed their latest album, The Sound of Madness, here on BNR and I must say it is fantastic.  Listening to this album several times before seeing them live definitely paid off, as they played a lot of songs off it.  The first track on the album is a great intro track, especially at a live show:



The rest of the show was classic Shinedown (as classic as a 7-year old band can be).  I haven't seen them since they played at a a free concert in Philly some years ago, but they were exactly as I remembered them (plus or minus a few band members).  Brent still likes to talk a lot before the songs and still tries to induce civil war in the crowd, and people still mosh around like idiots.  All around, a Shinedown show is a pretty awesome rock show, except for the loud, drunk, moshing retards that don't deserve to live.

As I mentioned before, most of the songs they played were off their latest album.  They played a few from Leave a Whisper and a couple from Us and Them, but The Sound of Madness was definitely the big winner of the evening.  I was quite content with that selection as their third studio album is their best to date.

Also, I might add that Nick Perri (of Silvertide and Satellite Party fame) is quite an addition to the band.  He was hitting everything perfectly and hammering out some pretty sweet licks.  He's known as a bit of a perfectionist with his guitar playing and it definitely shows in the live shows - his solos sound exactly like you're listening to the album at home.  I also found it interesting that he had practically an entire half of the stage to himself.  I'm not sure if the band is still trying to gel together or if they just respect his space, but he definitely owned the right side of the stage for entire evening.

I managed to catch the solo (and the last portion) of "The Crow and the Butterfly":



My one complaint of the evening was that the crowd was a bit underwhelming.  I'm not sure if it's because it was a Tuesday night, or if it's because San Francisco isn't a hard rock kind of city.  The moshing was a little weak and the overall crowd response was good, but not great.  I feel bad that Shinedown didn't get a better turnout, especially from such a major city.  As much as I want San Francisco to be a Philadelphia-rock kind of place, I don't think it's going to happen.

All in all, it was a great show and totally worth the low cost of admission.  However, I can't finish up this post without a big shoutout to Ticketmaster, and by "shoutout", I mean "fuck you".  Who charges $13 in "convenience" fees on a $20 ticket?  Why don't you rape my grandmother and take one of my kidneys while you're at it, dickheads?

Anyway, I totally recommend this show to anyone reading this blog.  Even if you miss this tour, definitely check out Shinedown or Jet Black Stare sometime in the future (sorry Red) - I think you'll be hearing a lot from both of them.

Here are a few more pics that came out pretty well: