La Crosse had a Rock Show?

Second review of my 2 concert, 5 band weekend which was capped off by the show at the La Crosse Center featuring Saving Abel, Avenged Sevenfold, Buckcherry and Shinedown!  For this of the 4 bands, I will say my favorite was Shinedown.  Well, to tell you the truth, I was at that concert for them, but they put on an awesome show.  We got there half way through Saving Abel’s set.  What were with the lines outside of the Center?  You think they would be better prepared for crowd management, seeing that it was 20 degrees outside too.  None-the-less, everyone got in, whether they got the seat/standing room they were looking for.

Saving Abel was pretty good.  The sound was decent in there, even though most arena concerts just blast their speakers because they can.  I had the privilege of sitting up in the seats, mostly because I didn’t want to stand around people whose main purpose was to go crazy for their “first rock show.”  Well, I’ve been to enough concerts to know that I should stay away from these people if I want to enjoy the show.  So sitting in the seats was good enough for me because I was there to listen and rock out.  The set change in between Saving Abel and Shinedown was pretty quick.  The crew from 95.7 The Rock came out to introduce Shinedown, at which time I was pretty upbeat.  The lights went dark, the drums came on, and “Devour” was born.  Awesome song, probably a little much on the radio play side.  What I mean by that is the people who don’t know who Shinedown is, know the song “Devour.”  Not my choice of the true fan, but if it makes the band make another record, I’ll take it.

Brent Smith, lead vocalist, and the rest of the band put on an awesome show!  They played a little of everything.  First their well known stuff from their latest album, few tracks off their 2nd one, and to my pleasure, a few from their debut CD.  Nothing like standing up in the mist of lighters and cellphone lights and singing “45″ like I was on stage with Shinedown.  They got a really good response from the crowd.  I think some people thought this was the 2nd opening band, so they’re probably not that entertaining.  And I have nothing more to say about that.  I just respect the people a few rows in front of me who were standing up the whole time Shinedown was on stage, singing along to every song and going crazy with every introduction.  I give one of these \m/ for that.

The depth of the crowd during Shinedown

A7X was up next and they didn’t get but a hair into their set until the crowd decided they didn’t want to be blocked by a barricade anymore.  So security had to tell the band to announce to the crowd that they had to fix the barrier.  Well that turned from a small project into fixing the ENTIRE barrier again.  So A7X just started talking to the crowd, playing some jams to keep the crowd entertained.  But yeah, it’s not every concert that you get to see a band just chillin’ on stage and walking around.  Good times.

A7X played a considerably long set, including the 20-30 minute wait for the barricade to be fixed.  But the wait for the set change and Buckcherry’s first note seemed even longer.  That’s because it was.  I don’t know how long it was, but we must have waited 45 minutes to an hour for Buckcherry to come on.  Now that’s not that long for the crowd to wait, but we’ve just been through a long wait with the barricade and 3 bands before this, and it probably didn’t help that I wasn’t very pumped to see Buckcherry in the first place.  Although I do listen to their music and wanted to be able to say that I saw them.  They finally came on, only about 15 minutes after The Rock introduced them.  But they were high energy and played a pretty good set.  They definitely don’t disappoint their fans.  Josh Todd, lead singer, talked with the crowd a bit, even during some songs, so that was pretty cool.

But yeah, good concert, sound was pretty decent, I got to see an awesome show from the band I came for.  That pretty much equals a good time.  The morning after was a bit tiring, however, that’s the price to pay for these things, right?  This basically wraps up my concert tour for this year.  I always seem to go to shows in the fall.  November 2006: Blind Guardian, November 2007: Alter Bridge, October 2008: Kamelot, November 2008: Iced Earth, Shinedown.  Maybe Iron Maiden will come to the Midwest next fall?  I can dream.  Till next time…

Rock, BC \m/