They were great, as always. They did, however, go on about 40 minutes earlier than their scheduled time...so show up a good hour earlier than you were planning to and do your best to endure that day's rotation of the other bands. Other than that, hard to add much... hypergrrl's review of the Auburn show hit that nail squarely on the head.
I grossly underestimated the extent of Jason's fan club. I was able to walk right up most of the way to the front on stage left. Center stage and stage right were packed full of screeching Jason worshippers, with devil horns in the air. Completely clueless, but there they were. Those that that were cheering for something other than Jason were, for the most part, cheering the new material. A couple older guys near me were nodding approvingly at various points in the show, and kept referring to some Ozzfest compilation CD they were carrying. They seemed to be very pleasantly surprised at the performance. Snake did the disposable camera thing again toward the end of the show. Standing in front of one of the giant fans and holding the camera at arm's length to take a self-portrait, he looked more like Medusa than Snake.
After the show, Snake announced that they'd be signing autographs at the FYE tent, so I thought I'd drop by to say hello to Piggy and Away. A few kids in line kept yapping about "Jason's new CD"... all I could do was roll my eyes and say yeah, whatever. In their world there was no Voivod before Jason. When the band walked up, a couple girls standing next to me literally started shaking at the prospect of actually meeting their idol, raving on about how Jason had changed their lives. It reminded me of the black-and-white footage of quivering teenage girls at a Beatles concert. Jason remained gracious and cordial, and almost seemed a bit embarrassed by the sniveling twits fawning over him. I wonder if that poor guy can leave the tour bus in daylight without getting mobbed.
posted July 22, 2003 00:44
