Live in Concert: The Sword

Yesterday, after the longest hair cut of my life, a two hour ordeal at a training salon where I'm pretty sure the trainee cut each individual stand of hair on my head one at a time, I met with my good friend, and fellow metal head, Justin. Justin and I had tickets for The Sword a metal band that has been covered around here once or twice.

Prior to the show we walked over to the Pine Box, a funeral home turned bar with a great selection of beers on tap. They also have a nice selection of wood fired pizza on the menu, so we did a little bit of pre-show beer and pizza indulgence.  We were joined for the beer and pizza portion of the night by my lady, and later by Mike, the third person in our concert going party.  The Sword show would be Mike's first metal concert, which was exciting.

Having little interest in either of the opening bands, we hung out at the Pine Box sipping beers until about 9:30, and then walked over to the venue to see when The Sword would hit the stage.  It turned out we had about another hour to kill, so we walked to another nearby bar which you can see in this awesome video.  After more beers for Justin and Mike (none for me...I'm a total light weight!) we made to into the venue just as the second opening act was finishing up their set.

We scored a decent spot on the floor about 20 feet back from the stage and held firm as bodies jostled for position while the roadies set up for The Sword.  The dudes came on just a few minutes shy of 11pm and proceeded to shred steadily for an hour, often launching directly into the next song immediately after finishing up the previous one.  They provided a nice mix of songs from their new album Apocryphon with songs from past albums.  What impressed me the most with The Sword was that all their material translates amazingly well to the live show.  Their music inspired a lot of headbanging and even a fairly large mosh-pit for a Seattle crowd.

With a solid hour of playing under their belt, The Sword left the stage only to return a couple minutes later for a three-song encore.  All told, it was a very impressive performance from The Sword and I'm very happy to have had the opportunity to see them live with a good crew of friends to share the experience.  If you haven't yet experienced The Sword they are definitely worth a listen, and if you are a fan, then I strongly suggest seeing them live.  They rocked.

Live in Concert: Willie Nelson

Last night I saw Willie Nelson live at the Puyallup Fair. (Don't worry about trying to pronounce "Puyallup", I always mess it up.) I've been a Willie fan for a long time, but I don't think I developed a full appreciation for his music until I became an adult. I think you sort of have to go through the ringer a bit before you can fully enjoy Willie.

Even at the age of 77 Willie can still entertain. The guy is pretty animated on stage, and he goes through about a dozen or so red bandannas per show. He played a ninety minute set without any pauses, plunging directly into the next song after one was finished. He more or less alternated between his sad songs and his upbeat, snappy ones throughout the set, mixing in some covers of songs by Hank Williams, Ray Charles and Waylon Jennings. Towards the end, he played a couple of his newer songs, I Ain't Superman, and You Don't Think I'm Funny Anymore. Both of those songs were new to me, fantastic and pretty damn funny too.

Willie played most of my faves, with the exception of my personal favorite, Me and Paul. Still, it was a totally awesome performance, and one I'll never forget. Easily one of the best concerts I've ever been to. Not to mention, I got to hang out at the State Fair afterwards. Bonus!

Grade: A+