Gates opened at 9:00am, but lazybones that I am, I didn’t even get out of bed until 9, so I strolled through the gates of Verizon Wireless a little after 11:00am. Thus I missed Arch Enemy, Trivium, Black Dahlia Murder, The Haunted and Bury Your Dead. First thing I did was head for the booths. I tried my hand at the pop-the-balloon-win-a-prize booth - you got an Ozzfest sampler CD just for playing. I did pop a balloon, but the booth-girl swore there was no prize on the piece of paper pinned behind the balloon. She didn’t show it to me, so I’m thinking maybe I got gypped, but whatever. I got the sampler and went and paid $35 for an Ozzfest tank top and $4 for a soda (you think that’s bad, a beer was $8! It was a very sober concert!). And so, because I’m a girl and I was shopping, I also missed Wicked Wisdom and only heard Gizmachi from afar. I caught the tail end of Soilwork, but from what I heard, they sounded good.
I hung around the second stage for awhile until It Dies Today came on. Sorry folks, I like heavy metal as much as the next girl, but I still want it to be music. Playing one chord over and over and barking into the microphone is not music to me. I didn’t hear any music here, so I headed over to the little Hooters stand to enjoy some shade...it was getting pretty hot out by this time. Headed back over around 1:00 to catch A Dozen Furies. They were very good. They were just as heavy but they sang and had some great speeding guitar solos! I sat on the lawn and enjoyed their show until I started getting bit up by ants. So I was up and wandering around again, watching the wondrous freak parade (and I mean that in a good way) that you can always find at any Ozzfest (or at any Renaissance festival). A girl with red wings and knee socks, a guy with his face painted like a skull, the obligatory colored mohawks...and there was a body painting booth, so as the Fest went on, you saw more and more women walking around wearing nothing up top but paint (the guys must have loved it!).
At this point I also discovered the mist tent (bless whoever put that there!) and the water fountains. Without these two things, I don’t know if I would’ve made it! I’m a huera so I get burnt and overheated very easily. And I definitely couldn’t afford to buy $3 bottles of water all day! The mist tent and the fountains became regular stops for me the rest of the day.
Because of this I missed Mastodon and As I Lay Dying, but I made it back in time for the full set of Killswitch Engage. They’re probably my vote for the best band of the second stage openers.
There was about a 20-minute wait before Rob Zombie came on as the headliner of the second stage. I spent most of this time in the mist tent and at the water fountains, as I was getting pretty sunburnt and wanted to be able to make it through all of Rob Zombie’s set without passing out or spontaneously combusting!Rob Zombie was a big surprise for me. I’ve never seen him in concert before and I was expecting something like this:
Instead I found a fairly normal longhair in a t-shirt and jeans, no dreads.
And...he’s really funny! Telling jokes, running around, very hyper, real into it. Almost first thing, he broke a shoelace and had to stop and fix it. Then someone threw their cellphone up on stage. He stopped and picked it up and started looking through all their stuff...”He has one message”...”On his speed dial...Regina, Tamara, Jake...should we call Jake?” Then he warned us that if one thing hit him, he was out of here. Basically he’d had enough of the Texas heat and would be glad to get off the stage and out of the oven at the slightest bullshit. So no one threw anything else after that, thank goodness. I would’ve hated to have had to kick someone’s ass for making me miss Rob Zombie! (I’m sure I would’ve had some help, too!)
Anyway, back to the music! From where I was, he sounded a little broken up and I couldn’t tell if his microphone was cutting out or if he just wasn’t actually singing all the words. But someone that was up front in the pit informed me that he was letting the crowd sing a lot of the words because they were recording to possibly add to a live album or something. So that explains that. Anyhow, it all sounded great, starting out with “Superbeast”, moving on to “Super-Charger Heaven” and “Living Dead Girl”. The crowd went wild when he went old school with White Zombie’s “More Human Than Human”! After a while, he paused and asked us if he was forgetting something. Then he said, “Someone up front here said The Brady Bunch theme song. Is that a Texas thing I don’t understand?” They played a little heavy metal instrumental of it, then got down to business and obliged us with “Dragula.” Finally, he ended the set, after teasing us a little more, with the song I’d been waiting for...White Zombie’s “Thunderkiss ‘65"!! Awesome!
I must add that Rob Zombie is a really cool guy. Two things he did convinced me of this. First, when a crowd-surfer got dropped on his neck on the barricade, Rob Zombie stopped and said, “Someone just got hurt up here. I think we should wait for a minute.” That was very cool. Also, he announced that he had a met a really cool guy named Austin from Austin, and called this kid out on the stage. Then he had the kid’s friend come out and take a picture of Austin facing the back of the stage with all the crowd behind him holding up the “rock-n-roll” hand sign
. What a kickass picture to have! Of course, Rob Zombie said, “All your friends are going to think you Photoshopped the crowd in there!” Funny guy!Now, on to THE MAIN STAGE:
I didn’t catch any of In Flames because it took me quite awhile to cool off in the mist tent after the Rob Zombie set. But I managed to get in there and find a seat (ok, I had lawn tickets, but there were plenty of unoccupied seats, so I snagged one) just in time for Black Label Society. For some reason I kept getting a weird echo on the vocals, but I could hear the guitar just fine and I think that’s what’s important when you’re watching any band with Zakk Wylde in it!
At this point, just a small aside, I happened to spy Jason McMaster. Some of you may know him as the singer of a band called Dangerous Toys, who had a big hit called “Teas’n Pleas’n” back in the late 80's. Others may know him as the singer of Broken Teeth. Anyway, I knew Jason way back in Jr. High, so I went over to say hello. And, even though he didn’t remember me, he was very nice and I asked about his brother, he’s doing well, etc. Anyway, the reason I mention this is that I just found out that Shadows Fall (the band coming up next) did a cover of “Teas’n Pleas’n” on one of their CD’s, with Jason on vocals. I thought that was pretty cool and an odd coincidence that I happened to run into him right before Shadows Fall came on, then happened to come across this little bit of trivia the next day. Weird but cool.
On to Shadows Fall. I knew nothing about this band...somehow they’ve escaped my notice. They were awesome! The singer has the longest dreadlocks I’ve ever seen in my life. They’re like down to his knees! How he swings them around like that I don’t know. You’d think he’d get whiplash! Shadows Fall was very tight, both in sound and performance. I was really impressed. I can’t tell you what songs they played or anything, since as I said, I knew nothing about them beforehand. But if you like a good tight heavy band and you haven’t done it yet, definitely check them out.
Next up was Mudvayne. Unfortunately, between Shadows Fall and Mudvayne I made a trip to get some more water and when I came back, the security was blocking the entrance to the seating area, so I was temporarily banished to the lawn. And because I’m only 5'5" (well, 5'4 3/4", but who’s counting?), I had to move way up to the top of the lawn if I wanted to see over all the dang tall people! So from my point-of-view, there were a bunch of little ants singing Mudvayne songs, but damn those ants did a great job!
Not last, but probably least, in my opinion of the main stage bands: Velvet Revolver. Now don’t get me wrong, Velvet Revolver fans, don’t bombard me with angry comments, I’m not saying they suck or anything like that. They were ok. I think Slash is awesome. And I always loved Stone Temple Pilots. I just think that with the talent in that band, they could do better. And I wish Scott Weiland would keep his shirt on, because watching his skinny, drug-addled body squirm around is really kind of nasty. In my opinion, the best moment of their show was when they played “Dead and Bloated.” And judging by the response of the crowd, that was a widely-held opinion. (Someone even told me that all the people in their section started shouting “Maiden! Maiden! Maiden!” when Velvet Revolver came on.)
So, I skipped the last part of their set and went and spent 20 minutes in line to get a $4 soft pretzel. When I came back, the security had moved, so I got my seat back just in time for...
...what we’d all been waiting for. What we sat through 19 other bands in the blazing Texas sun for. The Man Himself. The Prince of Darkness. The Godfather of Metal. OZZY WITH BLACK SABBATH!!! I wasn’t sure until the Black Sabbath curtain was raised if he’d really be there or not. They teased us for quite a while with snippets of Black Sabbath songs and footage on the big screens, while the curtain mocked us by occasionally moving a little like he might be coming out...then there he was! Totally against doctor’s orders, as he himself announced (he said he told the doctor “Fuck you!”), because as he told us between just about every song, he loves us all.I have to say, I’ve never seen Ozzy look so healthy and full of energy. He was running around, jumping, head-banging, throwing buckets of water on the audience. Amazing for someone who’s done so many drugs and is getting what? close to 60 now? He definitely looked and sounded way better than the first time I saw him, back in 1985 I think it was, when he just stumbled back and forth across the stage, hitting many flat notes and occasionally forgetting the words to the songs. And better than the last time I saw him, at Ozzfest a few years back, when he still mostly stumbled back and forth, and at one point wandered off and they had to go get him. Way to go Ozzy! You just get better and better!
I believe the crowd sang every word of every song along with Ozzy...”War Pigs,” “Black Sabbath,” “Fairies Wear Boots,” “Iron Man,”...all the great ones. I wish they had done “Sweet Leaf,” but the beginning of that song probably would have done Ozzy’s throat in then and there. They did have to stop a little early when Ozzy’s voice started to break, but it was enough. He came, he gave us all he had, we can live with that. Because we all love him too.
(This review has also been posted at Bandweblogs.com's Bar Blog!)