Taper Notes: Show notes - WTF, I am the first taper of the summer leg of the Dystopia Tour? Where in the heck are you audio guys? On vacation? This is a fantastic tour for Megadeth coming off their Grammy Award Winning (like that really matters) album, Dystopia, and I get my presale tix for a taper seat for $40. By day of show they have tickets as low as $26 and so the venue finally was decently attended by about 80% capacity. Maybe the other bands on the bill kept fans away until the end. I skipped the first two, arrived for Meshuggah and gave a listen. I didnt bother running a recording of the show, I wouldnt have wanted to put any post production effort into it, it was just noise to me.
My funny story of the evening, I arrive and am scoping out the venue as usual. I see Meshuggah getting close so I go to the concessions stand and there is an older lady and a "square-ish" late teen aged girl talking as I approached. They were talking about the loud, screaming music. No sooner than I stepped up to the counter and the older lady says "can I help you?", Meshuggah starts in the background and of course its loud, hard and double kicking and I said
I WANT DIE-IT-COKE IN A QUART SIZE CUP
I WANT DIE-IT-COKE AND I WANT IT NNNNNNOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW (as i go into mosh pit head thrashing mode)
the two gals broke out laughing and said thank you for making their whole evening worthwhile. I even had to laugh at myself for that one.
Anyways, other than that it was great night for a show. Temps in the high 70s with a breeze coming in at the top of the pavilion. I had to move a couple times as people got in the way as the crowd settled in but I really was able to get a nice shot and had a camera clamp so I could lock down and have a nice steady picture. A few times I cut away and recorded the video screen but it had a pixelated effect. Its cool for a few songs but I dont know if I would enjoy a few show with that look. Its nice mixed in with a solid stage shot though.
Dave got into an issue with some security guards and briefly stopped the show and pointed the guy out to the point that venue officials got involved. The band came back and played when the security person was removed and then Dave apolgized to the rest of the security staff who he said were doing great work and he didnt mean to put down all of them for the actions of one asshole.
Dave also had an event at a local international market that morning for his A Tout Le Monde beer. My buddy and I crossed town and got to the market 2 hrs and 20 min before it was to start. I saw people had line tickets and asked where I could get one, some guy said at the end of the line they are passing them out. I get back there and the last guy is holding ticket 180 saying they guarantee the first 150 and then try to fit in the remaining 30 but yes, he got the last ticket a couple minutes before us. With that we decided to leave and lost out on our chance to meet Mega Dave. I have a friend who was in line and said that the venue made a bad time of it, denying any items for autograph. Instead he got a promo poster that I guess was pre signed, took a quick photo and was on to the next. Sounds brief and to wait close to 4 hours outside in the sun was not a good trade off for me. I went home and caught up on some work anyways so that was a plus.
Anyways, here it is, enjoy. Its a great show. I think with Kiko in the band its really pushed the Daves to play as hard as ever and its succeeding, I think its a kick ass performance and the band shows no sign of slowing down.
