Subj : Black Sabbath / Alice Cooper / Queensryche
To : All
From : Ille Homine Albe
Date : Wed Oct 03 2007 02:33 am
Just returned from this concert at Fresno's Selland Arena.
I think the last time I went to a concert there was 1978, so it brought back a
lot of memories of being a teenager in the dawn of rock music. The last time I
was there, the only people over 25 years of age were security guards and
janitors. This time... well, Tony Iommi will be 60 in February. At the time,
had anyone suggested a 60-year-old would even attend a rock concert it would
have seemed ridiculous, let alone be on the stage. My first concert was ELP's
Brain Salad Surgery tour, then Jethro Tull, then Yes, and I could locate the
sections I'd sat in at each. As a teenager, I didn't know it, but the
acoustics in there are horrible. The sound system has to be good, and forget
adding reverb to anything. Sound systems then were better, although even then
Tull's was somewhat sub-par. The one tonight was sub-par generally.
Queensryche benefited from that because since they customarily up the volume
for each band, and they started, so they had the least distortion from the
system being overdriven.
Anyway, a brief review:
Queensryche: band pretty much spot on, singer excellent, only played 6 songs,
no encore. :(
Alice Cooper: band spot on, as in whoa, singer very good, stole the show.
Black Sabbath: band good, singer Dio, and at this point I have to disqualify
myself.
The concert was well worth the money, for Queensryche and Alice Cooper.
But if I were to do it again, I probably would leave at that point. I never
cared for Dio w/ Blackmore in Rainbow, or with Black Sabbath. He sounds the
same in every song, no imagination. "Heaven and Hell" was good, but drawn out
with a wandering guitar solo and various other nonsense as if to avoid playing
something cool like "Paranoid" that Ozzy originally sang.
