Diamond Head Live in Edmonton August 29th 2017

Last night I got the chance to see the legendary British heavy metal band Diamond Head at The Forge in Edmonton. Other bands on the bill were local bands Echoes Of Apathy whom I missed, Shocker another E Town band that play cover songs, kind of weird for them to be on this bill, and Calgary band Dextress. But lets be honest the only reason anyone was at The Forge on a Tuesday night was to see Diamond Head.

For a Tuesday night it wasn't a bad turnout for Diamond Head's first ever visit to Edmonton. They are currently doing an extensive Apocalypse Metal Canadian Tour. Would have been nice to see the place packed, but still wasn't too bad.

Diamond Head are one of the originators of thrash metal having been around since 1976, starting out in Stourbridge, England. They have been a major influence on bands such as Metallica and Megadeth. It's probably because of Metallica that Diamond Head is still around and drawing an audience, and that's good because it's always good to see a great band like Diamond Head get the recognition they so deserve.

This version of Diamond Head had only one original member that being guitarist and co-founder Brian Tatler. On drums was Karl Wilcox who has been in and out of the band since 1991, on vocals was Rasmus Bom Anderson who did admirable job on the songs, his stage presence and voice reminded me of Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden at times. On bass was newcomer Dean Ashton who also did a great job of holding the rhythm section down.

Diamond Head did about an hour and a half show playing some new songs from their 2016 self titled release including songs "Bones" and "Shout At The Devil" which both sounded like old school thrash metal. And of course the band did the three songs that Metallica have covered "Am I Evil", "Prince" and "Helpless". Those songs got great responses from the crowd with everyone singing along and banging there heads and pumping there fists. The songs sounded amazing too, it was so cool to be two feet away from Brian Tatler watching and listening to him play those classic riffs that all metal heads have got to know over the years.

All and all this was a great heavy metal show. I had to laugh at how many guts I saw in the audience sporting their jean jacket vests covered in old classic metal band patches. Old school it was! Good times!!!

Setlist from the show.

Diamond Head at The Forge.

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I had already bought a shirt when at the end of the night I realized they had this t-shirt for 15 dollars, so I had to have that one as well.

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Autographed vinyl.

Beck Live in Edmonton August 22nd 2017

It's been a week already since I got to see an artist that I have on the bucket list to see live since the mid 90's. I'm talking about Beck of course. Beck made his first ever Edmonton appearance here at the Jubilee Auditorium to sold out venue.

Starting the night out was opener McRorie (originally from Edmonton), an artist I had never heard of, and now I know why. He is a one man band, who plays the drums on his chest and has some kind of electronic pads on his feet to mimic a drum beat, keyboards in each hand to do the bass and guitar. What a colossal mess this was. I thought it might be interesting, oh, how wrong I was. I managed to sit through three songs, or a mess of three songs. He was all over the place playing snippets of all kinds of songs, none of which sounded any damn good. Ten minutes was enough for me, I bailed and went and had a drink.

McRorie at the Jubilee.

Now it was time for Beck, the place was packed and you could feel the energy in the place waiting in anticipation of finally seeing Beck. Beck and his awesome back up band opened the show with "Devil's Haircut" the first of five songs he did from his Odelay album, which is my favourite album of his. Then into "Black Tambourine" and "The New Pollution" what an awesome way to start the show. Beck had the audience on their feet dancing from the get go. Beck and his amazing band did at least one song from everyone of his albums, that's what I call covering your catalog of music. Even doing a song "One Foot In The Grave" from his pre Mellow Gold album Stereopathetic Soulmanure. And by covering so much music he hit on soul, folk, alt rock, funk and hip hop. His guitar player was unbelievable too. This is one show that never got boring that's for sure.

At one point during the show Beck said "I'm just gonna do whatever I want, is that ok with you" and of course the crowd shouted yes, that's when he broke out into the Prince song "Raspberry Beret", that was super cool, the whole audience sang along with him. At times during the show, Beck's stage presence reminded me of a mix of Mick Jagger and David Bowie with all the quirkiness of Beck.

For the encore Beck played "Where It's At", it was during this song that he introduced his band, with each introduction they played a snippet of a different song, songs by Zeppelin, Bowie, The Cars and Phil Collins. The two hour show was over in a flash. So fucking good. Good times!!!

Beck setlist for Edmonton show.

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Beck at the Jubilee Auditorium.

T-shirt.

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers Live in Vancouver Aug.17th 2017

The last show I saw in Vancouver was the Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers concert at Rogers Arena, our holiday was based around this one as the band has no Edmonton date on this tour. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers are on the road for the 40th Anniversary Tour with opening act The Lumineers. Went to this show with a great group of friends including my love Janis, friends Shane, his wife Angie, my Brother Citrus as well as Saunta and a friend of hers. Janis and my Bro. had never seen Tom Petty before so we decided to make the trip for this one, and this would be my fourth time seeing Petty in concert.

We made it to Rogers Arena early as a few in our party wanted to see The Lumineers. The Denver, Colorado band The Lumineers can pack an arena themselves, and the place was pretty much full for the opener which is something you don't see often. They did a good job of warming up the crowd. As for me, I can't stand the band, I have tried listening to their albums a few times and they just do nothing for me at all. I didn't enjoy them, but I toughed it out and listened and am still not a fan. Their style of music which is a folk/rock Americana mix has no original sound to them, it's all been done before and better in my opinion. I might have been one of the few who didn't care for them in the crowd. Oh well!

The Lumineers at Rogers Arena.

Now it was time for Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. The band opened the show with the song "Rockin' Around (With You)" which is the first song from their 1976 debut album. Then it was into "Mary Jane's Last Dance" and then that's when the arena went up in a haze of blue smoke, even if you weren't one of the people to light up, I'm sure you caught a contact high as the place was smokey as hell. After that song it was "You Don't Know How It Feels" and that had the whole crowd singing along, one of many times during the show that the crowd took over on vocals, very cool to hear and see. What a great way to start the show. It wasn't til after the third song that Tom Petty addressed the crowd.

The whole show was just one great song after another, songs like "Into The Great Wide Open", "I Won't Back Down", "Free Fallin'" and "Don't Come Around Here No More". Petty then did a three song set of songs from his Wallflowers album "It's Good To Be King", "Crawling Back To You" and the title song "Wildflowers". The Heartbreakers and Petty sounded amazing through out the whole show as did the Webb Sisters (Charley and Hattie) on backing vocals, with long time guitarist Mike Campbell ripping it up all night. What surprised me was that half the show actually consisted of Tom Petty solo songs, lots of songs from the already mentioned Wallflowers album and the Full Moon Fever album. But then Mike Campbell played on those albums too, so I guess it shouldn't be that much of a surprise as those are quite popular discs. I thought he would play more of the older stuff only doing two songs from his first album the opener and closing out the show with "American Girl". Only one song from Damn The Torpedoes "Refugee" and one from Southern Accents "Don't Come Around Here No More". I thought they might dig deeper into the older stuff with it being a 40th Anniversary Tour but I have no complaints.

This show was absolutely amazing. The sold out crowd were on their feet from start to finish dancing and singing along, next thing you knew the two hour show was over, yet it felt like it had just begun. So much fun, I could have stood and sang along for another hour or two.

It's funny though that during the show I saw four incidents from where I was sitting of scrimmages breaking out and people getting kicked out of the show. Now you would think this would be something you would see at a Metallica show, but nope, this was happening at a Tom Petty concert, kind of weird. To those that got kicked out, you missed out on one hell of a show.

A big shout out to my Brother for scoring the tickets for Janis and I. It was an awesome way to top off our holiday in Vancouver. Good times!!!

Setlist for Vancouver show.

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Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers at Rogers Arena.

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