Monday, December 06, 2004

Godsmack the Krampus!

Not much FSF or Comics to talk, at least until the very end of this post. Music and the holidays are today's themes.

I’m very excited since I’m going to see Godsmack perform an acoustic set at the Starland Ballroom tonight. I saw Disturbed at Starland over the summer, and while it was about 90 degrees inside, Disturbed was very good. Starland is a really great venue a) because it is only about 25 minutes from my house and b) it is just about the perfect size for concerts, good amount of room to move around but intimate enough that you really can see the band. This will be the third time I will see Godsmack in concert. I saw them about a year ago at Asbury Park’s Convention Hall. That was a great concert, I got as close as humanly possible to the stage and of the 20+ or so concerts I’ve seen, it was very near the top of the list. They are a GREAT live band.

I saw Godsmack for the second time a couple of months ago when they opened for Metallica at the Meadowlands, which also happened to be the third time I saw Metallica. I saw Metallica for the first time back in ’91 with about 10 of my high school pals and it was the best concert experience I ever had - 3 hours or Metallica with no opening band, before they cut their hair and got all touchy-feely going and into therapy. I saw Metallica again last summer at the Summer Sanitarium tour, with a bunch of other bands, Limp Bizkit (not bad), Linkin Park (horrible, but I don't like them anyway), Def Tones (not good, but I think their sound system was off), and Mudvayne, (not bad). Metallica was still in top form and had a good set list, with a lot of pre-Load/Reload stuff. However, the concert from about two months ago left me very disappointed. Godsmack, while great, didn’t get enough time to play, the crowd was pretty thin since the concert started relatively early at 7PM and Metallica played ok, but the set list was pretty bad. Metallica didn’t play enough from Puppets, …Justice, or Kill ‘em All. They played more than half of the Black Album and too much garbage from the Load/Reload crap albums. It was like they were promoting the Black Album, my brother in-law, my wife, and I were all very let down.

So now, my brother-in-law, my wife and I and some friends will see Godsmack perform tonight. I don’t think there is an opening act, so a whole two hours of pure Godsmack should be great. I really think one measure of how well a band plays and performs is when things are stripped down and acoustic. Godsmack’s acoustic EP The Other Side is great, Sully is an amazing front-man and drummer, and the band members are all very talented musicians. I’m expecting a great concert.

In holiday news, today is Little Christmas in the German/Austrian traditions. There are quite a few traditions surrounding the Krampus and Little Christmas. As I was brought up, on December 5, the Krampus, an impish-devil like figure, pretty much the Joker to Santa’s Batman, travels the night with Santa. Santa and the Krampus leave “gifts.” If the kid is misbehaving, the Krampus leaves coal in the stocking as a warning that he or she better start being nice or the kid will get more Coal on Christmas morning. If the kid has been behaving, then he or she gets a little stocking stuffer gift basically saying, keep up the good work. My parents always threatened me around this time by warning me to be good or the Krampus will visit. Mrs. Blog-o-stuff and I have been keeping up this tradition since before we were married. Luckily I didn’t get any coal, and of course she didn’t either, so this bodes well for Christmas morning at the Blog-o-Stuff househould.

Pretty busy weekend with Christmas things like getting the tree, putting lights on the tree and outside the townhouse, Christmas shopping and the seemingly never-ending floor installation project I’ve been doing; so again, I feel like I need a day off to recoup after the weekend. In my shoppings, I picked up the third of Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas Trilogy, The Lost Christmas Eve. On the second listen right now and it is a bit different and has a more metal and operatic feel than their previous two Christmas albums (Christmas Eve and other Stories, The Christmas Attic), but still quite good. One of these years, my wife and I will get to one of their live holiday performances.

Thankfully, the Yankees seem to be getting rid of the annoying players, no more Lofton, no more Heredia and hopefully soon, no more Giambi. Maybe they will be watch-able next year. Charley Steiner also left the Radio booth. I loved Steiner when he was behind the desk on ESPN and all the great ESPN commercials he was in, but he just didn't work well broadcasting the Yankees.

Well, that’s it for now, in the next day or two I’ll let you, my millions…..and millions of readers, know how the concert turned out.

Batman/Fanboy-geek-out link of the day http://batmanbegins.warnerbros.com/images/onesheet.jpg

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