Coheed Week: Sept 27 - 30, 2005

Do you realize that I've now spent more than 24 hours of my life watching Coheed on stage? And that kind of fanatical devotion can pay off bigtime...

Coheed Week 2005
9/27/05 House of Blues, Atlantic City, NJ
9/28/05 Starland Ballroom, Sayreville, NJ
9/29/05 Club Zoo, Pittsburgh, PA
9/30/05 Newport Music Hall, Columbus, OH

Atlantic City: My 21st Coheed show. Not a bad drive from DC. I forgot that AC is where all the streets are from in Monopoly. Unfortunately I didn't get $200 for passing GO but I also didn't go to jail, so I guess it evens out. The Showboat was actually pretty easy to find since there are signs for all the casinos and it's at one end of the boardwalk. Special thanks to the woman at reception who upgraded me to a 23rd floor suite. I find slot casinos totally depressing and I'm too poor to play table games. But I was bored and had time to kill so I spent $5 playing the Tabasco slots (where I won 70 cents) and lost $5 to the Kenny Rogers Gambler machine. I guess that one only pays off in NOLA. The HoB restaurant was good though. Somewhere there's a workroom of monkeys churning out all those faux New Orleans decorations. Maybe Target will do a line of those someday...
So anyway, the show. Since I'm not a fan of mewithoutyou, I didn't actually go into the venue until Dredg was up. They were the one opening band I thought I would like and I wasn't disappointed. Kind of ambient-rock; it reminds me of Interpol, Codeseven, Verbal. Their singer plays a weird slide guitar thing on a table with a pair of pliers. One girl in the front was dancing like crazy during their whole set (while everyone else stood around like assholes). Next up the Blood Brothers, who (like several other underfed bands full of hotties) hail from Seattle. I didn't like any of their songs that I heard online (and the album I bought last night is also meh), but I did enjoy their stage show because they're freakin insane. It was crazy. Not as a crazy as HORSE the band, but in a very similar vein.
HoB closes the curtains between sets so you have no idea how long the set break is going to last because you can't really hear the sound check either. It lasted a pretty long time though because we got to listen to an entire Infectious Grooves album (which was awesome but not what I paid for). HoBAC is pretty different than HoBLV - in AC the general admission area is huge and concrete floored and less expensive while in LV there are mostly upper level seats and the GA area is small and more expensive. The drinks were really expensive though (also, why is water more expensive than soda or gatorade?). Coheed has a huge stage set with giant window-things (from the comic/graphic novel) and a big winged guillotine (see album art). They also have a crazy light show (which they're apparently not too keen on because they can't see anything on stage). The band comes on stage to a backing track recording of Keeping the Blade and starts the show with Claudio playing the 12-string portion of the his double-guitar on Always & Never. Then they break into the heaviest song on the new album, Welcome Home. Claudio switches to his regular style guitar for Ten Speed (which is rapidly becoming one of my new favorites). Rest of the set: Delirium Trigger, Apollo I: The Writing Writer (another of my new favorites), Once Upon Your Dead Body, Favor House, Mother May I, Wake Up, Suffering, Everything Evil, Willing Wells I, II & III, and the encore was IKSSE and WWIV: The Final Cut. The keyboards on The Suffering remind me of when Meatloaf plays the piano in Rocky Horror. The sound was kinda fucked up during most of their set - the backing tracks were too loud and Travis' mic was too. It was good to see the kids in the balcony rocking out (not like in LV when people threw stuff at me for standing up).
After the show I hung around the HOB bar in the casino with some drunk chicks, Josh & Dave from Coheed, Mark from BB, and Derrick the merch guy for Dredg. It's weird that there was basically nothing going on in the casino and there's apparently only one bar in the Showboat.

Starland: I hadn't planned on going to this show but Josh said he would hook me up (in fact, he yelled at me for buying tickets for the other shows). I hate hate hate driving in NJ. I did manage to get the car washed while I was lost though. I had very nice detailed directions from Starland's website (with landmarks and everything) but I still got lost because signage in NJ is horrible (which you'd think I'd be used to living in DC, but no). Anyway, I found it pretty early in the day and there were kids in line at 2 in the afternoon (I think doors were at 5:30 or 6). I had trouble getting ahold of Josh and ended up calling Kwame (who's number has been in my phone for two years) and having to go into a very long explanation of who I was and how I got the number. Eventually I caught up with him and he gave me a pass. Hung around with the lovely Miss K from Kingston and met Mrs. Todd, who was also very nice. Had a short convo with Claudio about hair products and high schools. I got to watch the special Concert for Hurricane Relief acoustic Coheed performance from the side of the stage (one of my many lifelong dreams fulfilled). I was trying to find the set list because all I remember is The Trooper (which was awesome!). They did play a couple of the new songs, which they'd never played acoustically before. Mic's acoustic bass is badass. After the show I chatted with MP, Chuck and Pete (who once lived in Moscow too). Claudio hung around outside for a long time signing breasts and other stuff. Even Travis was fairly chatty (for him). Some stupid girls kept yelling that they "love Todd" by which they meant Mic (Josh had to correct them, which was pretty funny). Dave was scamming on some trashy chicks (or vice versa, I wasn't exactly watching them). A good time was had by all.
Here are some photos that I didn't take because I was too lazy to go back to the car and get my camera.

*Crazy overnight drive to Pittsburgh*

Pittsburgh: *with apologies for the double superlatives* I got a very very nice hotel room in Pittsburgh (I love Marriotts...) and sold two of my tickets to friends of the front desk guy R. G hitched T & I a ride over in the Marriott van (since he works there too). Chuck hooked me up with a photo pass and Pete let me in the back door so I was able to watch all four bands from next to the stage without touching the riff-raff (no offense). Club Zoo was apparently Metropol back in the day (for those of us from PA). Dave said it looked like someone took the blueprints and folded them origami style before beginning construction. Due to the shape of the club the barricades didn't reach all the way across the front so the security guys had to physically restrain one side of the crowd. I have to give it up to them, because damn.... I met the very very nice Gentleman Jim (who has tattooed Coheed and has sat on the drum riser on stage in London). [and yes, I was trying to pick him up...because, a burly bearded neck tattooed man who loves Coheed, where have you been all my life? Seriously. Call me!] I don't know if it was because I hadn't really slept or eaten in two days or the show was just that good but I just sat there all teary-eyed during most of the set thinking about how this was the greatest day of my entire life. The only other time I remember feeling that way was at the Nashqband shrine in Bukhara. Intoxicating but not in a chemical kind of way. Afterwards we all went to Primanti Bros. for drinks and cheese fries and etc. Shout out to the IUP guys who were photographing/videoing during the show and gave me a ride back to the hotel and changed some of the manual settings on my camera. I think I left the poster Jim gave me in your car (no biggie - I have another one).

Columbus: Not a bad drive to Columbus at all. Before the show I printed some of my photos from the night before. I gave the Blood Bros. ones to Mark so he can look at himself when he's in his bunk. Got a sweet parking spot, even though I had to sit there for a while until the first hour on the meter ran out (several other cars were ticketed and I saw three people get towed later on). The venue was right across the street from Ohio State University's main campus and I think the show was sponsored by OSU. I am soooo glad I didn't go to a big 10 school. I can't deal with all the drunken Greek types. Ugh. At one point some obnoxious girl took over my spot in the upper balcony and would not shut up about going to some bar and then ran into the camera while I was taking pictures, squashing my nose. Good thing she left after that because don't think I wouldn't throw down for Coheed (if you're going to talk about how boring the show is, just effing leave already...). I did meet some really nice kids from Cincinnati who gave me the lowdown on Halloween there (since I'll probably be there for work then). They signed 'Favor House', which I thought was really sweet. Oh, and Three Evils was played instead of one of the Willing Wells. I didn't feel like hanging around afterwards so I got my goodbye hugs and took off (I had to get out of that neighborhood - Friday night frat parties, drunk chicks yelling at me when my weekly allottment of drunk chicks had aready been far exceeded...). I only managed to drive about 40 miles before I decided I should just stay at a hotel for the night. The drive back on Saturday wasn't really that bad. Beautiful weather the entire way. I took a great photo of a big pumpkin patch that I passed.

Other random stuff:
-I had an excellent italian sub sandwich from some gas station in OH
-I also had an excellent sandwich at Primanti brothers
-Only one of the sandwiches I ate in Jersey was excellent...
-I did grope Chuck, but it was an accident, I swear
-the Showboat does have poker - both on the casino floor and the House of Blues poker room (where you can either play for a $10 or $40 buy-in)
-Thank you! to anyone else who was nice to me and I forgot to mention (I'm still pretty tired)
-number of new winshield cracks=2
-total miles driven ~1380