09/20/2001 Archived Entry "Godsmack concert"

(from my hypermart blog powered by greymatter)

I went with three friends Tuesday night to the Sports Arena to see Godsmack. There were two opening bands. I cannot remember the first one, but we didn't see them anyway. We watched the second band, Saliva. They were okay, but the Godsmack show was great.
Godsmack had an excellent stage setup with three story cave-like background or mountain scene with some strange looking dogs standing in couple of the openings. This structure, behind the drummer, stretched the entire length of the stage.

They had five projector screens setup too. One on the outside edge of each end of the stage, one in the middle of the cave structure and a couple smaller screens on either side of this one.

They showed different videos for each song and if no video was playing, they showed close-ups of the band while they were jamming.

We were located on the floor, about halfway back from the stage. There was a pit up front.

Godsmack also had some fire pits setup at the top and bottom of the cave structure and they occasionally shot out large flames and we could immediately feel the heat.

Godsmack exploded a couple very large caffetti balls from the ceiling. They also had a huge disco ball hanging down. They offered some cool lighting effects.

Most importanly, they sounded great. Godsmack can really crank for only a four member band. The leadsinger sometimes sings only and sometimes sings and plays a guitar.

For their encore, the leadsinger gave a real nice patriotic speech and the one key point he made was to not let the united brotherhood feeling we are having right now fade. He than asked for a 30 second moment of silence. The place got strangely quiet. There were a few screams here and there, but the vast majority of the crowd was silent. Strange.

The band members stood in a row near the front of the stage and held hands during the silence. Afterwards, the Star Bangled Banner was piped through the speakers and while it was playing, two huge American flags unravled at each end of the stage from the floor to the ceiling.

Then the lead singer dedicated the song "Whatever" to Osama Bin 'f**kin' Laden. Yeah, during his rousing patriotic speeches, the lead singer dropped a few 'F' bombs, but it was still a real nice talk from a heavy metal band. No doubt about it, Godsmack is in favor of whooping on those terrorist's ass.

Godsmack had initially planned to cancel the remaining two weeks of their tour because of the attacks and the national mourning, but they decided to finish the tour and donate 100% of the money from shirts, etc. to the rescue fund. Another real nice gesture.

It was great show. I saw Godsmack last October as part of a three band bill that included Disturbed and Stone Temple Pilots. I will be looking forward to seeing Godsmack again.

#toledo - #music