01.08.2008 - West Palm Beach, FL, Cruzan Amphitheatre

[hahninator]

The morning after Charlotte, we were really worn out so it doesn't surprise me that we slept through several alarms. I mean the night before...getting in at 4 and then still posting on LPLive before I went to sleep...it was exhausting, haha. Anyway so we eventually did get up at 11 or so to begin the loooooong drive to Florida. Krystal for lunch in south Georgia and we were still marching onwards. After hearing plenty of LP shows and lots of random rock mixes, we finally made it. The damn toll roads took $20 out of my pocket but that's fine. Good times, but a super fucking long drive. Preston made the entire drive himself, which earned him the nickname...."Driver", lmao.

 

We made it like by 7pm or so, and after checking into our hotel we decided to "go see the city" and find some nice place to eat. The funniest thing I've ever seen was the fact that we couldn't find the city. I mean seriously, we left the hotel and drove, but we couldn't find downtown. We went south into some little community named Lakeworth but as we tried to get out, we came across a 4 way stop. It was hilarious because 3 of the directions were BLOCKED by cops further on down the roads. It was like some drug raid shit, but we bolted out of there as Preston kept trying to find where were going. We drove by the airport, we drove west and everything, but FINALLY like 45 minutes later, we went on some random road and indeed found downtown West Palm. Well, everything was high class and fancy, so later on we decided to eat....Taco Bell. Epic. Still though everything that happened that night was fucking great and was pretty funny if I say so myself.

 

We slept in the next morning and then hit the beach, which was VERY impressive. Clearest water I've ever seen...the beach was beautiful. I was a dumbass and got sunburned because I absolutely hate sunscreen, but that's just my stupidity for you in fucking August. We had a blast, and then decided to go to the show. What sucked is the fact that right when we were leaving the hotel, it started to get really cloudy! We left and it started to rain too, god damn I was pretty upset, but I didn't say anything.

 

We pulled in, parked, and I went up to buy a ticket. That's when we saw that "Sorry, Hawthorne Heights won't be performing today" sign everywhere. AWESOME! I should have saved one, LOL. Anyway I bought my ripoff ticket...there was not one good seat left so I had the absolutely shittiest seat. I was like in the back row of the furthest seating section from the stage...ALL the way on the left. NASTY. I wasn't going to take that bullshit, so I began thinking of another plan.

 

Well anyway (lol @ how long my reviews are), we hit the Rev Stage. 10 Years was up, so I saw them do Actions & Motives, Waking Up, So Long, Good-Bye (Acoustic), and then Wasteland. It had toned down to a drizzle so everything was fine, and the sun came out. We actually got like pretty close for 10 Years, and seeing Jesse in the crowd on Wasteland was EPIC, I loved it. Their outro was really fucking good. Well, then they had the break and Given Up came on the screen...of course we clapped on the intro, etc, lol.

 

Atreyu was next and they ROCKED that shit. Excellent set...great stage performance. My favorite time during their set was when some guy threw a baseball on stage, Alex picked it up and CHUNKED it back at the dude. Everyone was like WOW. Then it came back up and he did it again. Very surprising, but really funny. We laughed at these fatass chicks crowdsurfing, and actually some dude fell right beside me LOL. Doomsday Clock opened, they did Blow, Falling Down, Becoming The Bull, etc. They were really good. At one point they threw all these beach balls out to the crowd which was pretty cool to mess around with. At another point they had a massive circle pit get started. And as you all know, on the last song, they had everyone get down on one knee, then jump up. Well Preston said this part was cool so he jumped up and wow started pushing everyone and started his own fucking mosh pit. That was great. I had this bag of stuff with me but I didn't care...it was pretty fun.

 

Atreyu kicked ass, but then I was like "Where's the SDC stage transition?" They didn't do it. Preston said that they didn't do in Raleigh either, but now I understand why. I mean it took us like 10 solid minutes to get from stage to stage because of the small walkway area. For SDC to do that and not get mauled, it'd be impossible. So anyway yeah we went to the main stage and saw like 1 song of SDC. They were decent. I used my Charlotte ticket...tore it in half and showed it to the people and got into the front section to sit in LOL. I sat and watched ASHES dIVIDE there...holy crap I didn't like their set AT ALL....but then I left to go sit with Preston and Mary Ann during The Bravery.

 

They were pretty good, I mean I thought they were alright. Not many in the crowd liked them, but their songs were nice...I really like Believe and Honest Mistake. Not a bad band at all in my opinion. We had a good spot to watch them at too, because their seats were like the front row of the section directly left of Front Of House. We went after that to the merch stand to check out the poster for the show. As Mary Ann went to the bathroom, Preston and I listened to some guys saying "OH BUSTA RHYMES IS HERE? SWEEEEEET". Haha, whatever. Well after all that, it was time for Chris Cornell.

 

Back at their seats, we enjoyed Cornell's new Black Hole Sun violin intro into Cochise. However, like 4 songs in, some people came and forced me out of my seat. I just went to the back of the section and watched a few more songs as the sun set for Chris. Then I walked around to the left side and after hassling with security, they finally let me stand where they check the tickets to let people in to the lower sections. Here, I watched Black Hole Sun, etc, the last songs of the set. I won't get into all the details but I did have some problems with the security. Chris was good, but I was looking forward to seeing him in Tampa without having so many distractions. One thing I forgot to mention was that the song I got moved on was Hunger Strike. Haha what bad luck. Well I was in the back row and right before Chester came out, I turned around to the entire lawn, did like Mike did in Atlanta on Don't Stay in 2007, and told them all with my gestures to get the hell up. Well, Chester came out and that's what they did. They must have thought I was crazy at first, but I bet they knew why I did that as soon as Chester stepped out. Hunger Strike owned.

 

After Chris went on, I went to see Pooch again and after talking to him for a minute, this time I decided I'd pick a seat near him. Well, that went flawlessly, so I sat in a row next to FOH for LP. Once the lights went down, guess what? Jesse from fucking 10 Years showed up! Yeah! He stood RIGHT beside me in my row. I shook his hand and as I swayed to the SDC drum intro, he stood there with me and smiled. Awesome!!!

 

Well SDC did their fucking thing, and then the WID sample came on. This time, I mean I understand now why people like the WID intro so much. The lights on that intro are AWESOME. The reds and blues combine to make some sort of fucking epic scene that just overall looks really cool. I thought it was very nice. Well then Mike came out and the song started and of course everyone went nuts. SDC doing their chainsaw shit was cool to watch too. Anyway so yeah WID rocked, and then Faint came on. Brad did his little dance and everyone started jumping. Great stuff. The outro was SICK as always and it flowed right into the No More Sorrow short intro, which I am a HUGE fan of.

 

Then it came time for another favorite of mine, Wake 2.0. The lights were good and hearing Joe scratch was nice. Brad stood up on the triangle at the front of the stage and did his thing, and it was nice watching Chester flail around like his good ole self during the actual song. Given Up was up next. Of course we clapped on the intro the second Wake was over...actually you might be able to hear me on the live audio since I was close to FOH. Great bridge, great outro. LFY intro was up next, and of course that was sick. Mike said there were a lot of fucking people out here, and I agreed! I mean that place was PACKED. Everyone threw their hands up as always and they proceeded to rock LFY.

 

After LFY came another favorite of mine, well it's kind of old now but I like Don't Stay when I see it in person. Everyone started bouncing like they did in 2007, and it was cool to hear Joe's scratching once again. One bad change to this song is how Chester extends the scream so far into the bridge, which causes Mike to not say anything on it anymore. Well it was still alright.

 

In Pieces rocked us next. I think it's an overall really good song live. It's actually one where I don't mind Chester on the micstand. The guitar solo was sweet...I mean it's always cool to see that live. The outro with "Don't lie....to me" is A+. Somewhere I Belong time. Well it was generic but I really got into the ending of this one for some reason. After the last chorus, I started headbanging with these like 10 year old kids next to me (who knew all the words to all the songs like me) really heavily, and I was throwing my fists everywhere on the ending drum patterns. Sick song.

 

Points was next, and I got to see Petrified for once. Cool stuff. Well then came probably the best highlight of the entire 4 show-cycle for me. Mike of course did his "HANDS UP Y'ALL!" on Points, but holy shit, as he said that...I mean I was in the PERFECT spot for it. Like all of the hundreds of people in front of me threw their hands up, everyone besides me, and I mean it was just such a beautiful sight to see. An entire sea of people in every direction waving their hands side to side IN SYNC with Mike. It was indeed a beautiful sight...I loved it. The ending to the regular song is great as always, and the outro tore that place up.

 

Then came LOATR...which was a little boring to me...I mean I really hope they drop this song from 2 setlists in the future and only do it in 1 set. It will kill the crowd I bet if Chester doesn't get off the micstand for it. He stood still the ENTIRE song in that exact same place. Anyway, Numb was next. The ending really got me because I IMMEDIATELY recognized Mike doing the piano piece to 'Show Me'. I was so sure he was going to do it because he started to do the intro for it. I started to sing "show me show me show me" right as he ended it unfortunately. Well when he ended it he started the SOTD sample, so I guess he was saving it for another show. It turns out that he did do Show Me at the next Set Y show in Albuquerque. Figures.

 

SOTD was decent. I mean what can you say after seeing a lot of these songs so many times. It was good of course, though. Then came my favorite time of the show! Crawling's intro, ah hell yeah it gets good again. Mike says "yo" and steps up on the triangle and starts his epic verse, again with the lights PERFECT. The intro sends chills down my spine every time and I think it's such a fucking good part of the show. I am so glad they decided to do it that way to start Crawling. Well Chris came out and the crowd went nuts, and that was that. The crowd was 1000x better than Charlotte for Chris. I mean this bitch was packed and these people were going crazy. I have to say the crowd was quite impressive in my opinion.

 

In The End was next and it was good as always. Now after that is what I was waiting to see. I had seen Bleed It Out close twice, but I needed to see it before the encore break. Well I got my wish. Little did I know that on the intro, Mike and Brad went and faced each other and did this little jam-off. It was really neat seeing. I didn't like it at first but then I thought it was pretty cool. It's always good to change things up. Great performance of the song. I think BIO is the best song to do before the encore I guess. It's a good one, that's for sure.

 

Well then the kids next to me knew they'd do more but they wanted to know what was left. I told them Pushing Me Away in a piano version, and then One Step Closer...but they reminded me "Breaking The Habit?" and I said oh yeah they are going to do 2 encores...PMA and BTH, then Cure For The Itch and OSC.

 

We went crazy on the encore break, screaming as much as possible, and Chester came out and said "Show's over guys...you guys are supposed to leave! Alright we'll play more...but we're only doing cool jazz from the 80s!". I looked over at Pooch and saw him laugh at this, and Mike laughed at Chester too, which caused him to restart the song, haha! Very funny. They sure didn't talk to the crowd a lot in 2008, so this was great to hear. I need to note that this is the "newer" version of Pushing Me Away (Piano Version) that I saw for the first time. Remember halfway through Proj Rev 07 Mike changed the piano piece? Well yeah this is the new one I saw. I like it too, of course.

 

After that with no intro, came Breaking The Habit. And boy they tore through that. I didn't have a camera to catch Mike on the bridge this time, but I lucked out because he didn't go headbanging at this show. I knew in Tampa I was going to catch that sucker going nuts on the bridge, so I was determined to get him for sure. I'll take this time and tell you that I love Breaking The Habit live. It's a really good song in my opinion, and that outro is so fun to sing-a-long to.

 

Don't think that by not including all the details in this one that I included with Atlanta 07 that I wasn't going as crazy as fuck at this show. I really was, trust me, lol. I mean singing all the words, etc. I give it 110% at every LP show. It was also hot as hell during this show since it's in the summer but I really like that. Anyway so I was really pumped for the next part of the show. I was finally getting to see Cure For The Itch live. After the first tiny little sample of the intro started, I was pretty pumped. "I'd like to introduce...MR HAAAAHN!" and we all screamed. It was cool seeing Joe up there by himself doing his thing. It was a good moment for me because I felt Joe was left off of MTM honestly in a lot of places and I liked seeing him have that one song in the setlist just for himself. CFTI needs to be in every set in my opinion.

 

So after that, I thought LP would be doing the long intro to OSC because I was on top of my shit and researched the last Set Y they did (in Virginia). Well I guess they changed it because I heard the tap, tap, tap and the OSC riff from Brad. The guys next to me looked at me and we all fucking went off when the song kicks in.

 

I mean I lost my MIND on One Step Closer. I was waiting the entire night for this because I know how epic it is for them to close with OSC. I felt like I was dying again (lmao), but when Mike asked if we had any energy left, we went INSANE. I had never headbanged and sang so loud at an LP show before. ATL 07 was great but I think I gave twice as much energy on OSC at this show, even though it was the last song. And I kicked it up a notch on the outro. With sweat flying off my head, man I gave that shit everything I had and let it loose on the end. When Chester did his SHUT UP WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOUUU *BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG*-UUU ending, man I threw my body every which way possible, lol. That was a sick ending to a show. I had the WORST headache after that because I felt like I had just bashed my head open, but it was worth it. I woke up that next morning with quite an ache in my neck but I really enjoyed OSC ending the show.

 

After grabbing a water, I waited on Mary Ann and Preston at the Proj Rev bus outside before we drove back to the hotel as I called Astat and Nick (nkramar) with show updates. Preston was discussing something later when the SDC thing came up. He was like "Meh I don't really like them on OSC." I was like "Well at least we didn't get that in West Palm" and he was like "LOL what are you talking about?" Well needless to say that's when I found out that SDC came out on OSC at West Palm and I had no idea, lmao. My world was turned upside down when we were losing it on the bridge, so I never even noticed them on stage. Hilarious.

 

Well, on to Tampa the next night!

[linkinmetalfanatic]

nice review