PixlBit

All of those things were involved in the BFD concert I went to Sunday, May 28, 2017 at the Starplex Pavillion in Dallas, TX, put on by Live Nation and 97.1 The Eagle. 

As long as Google Drive stops being an asshole, I should be able to share some videos, pictures, and t-shirts with you as part of this recap. 

My friend Austin bought me 3 shirts (~$30-$35 each) in exchange for the pit ticket I got him. 

This shirt was the general one for the concert. I liked the wreath design, so I got it. 

Dorothy

I think we came into the first part of this band's set. All I know about them is they're from L.A., they have a song that gets played in commercials, and the lead singer is hot and has an amazing voice live. 

This isn't the show we saw, but she's wearing the same outfit she was in Dallas. 

I don't know that the band's classic rock style is something that'll be in heavy rotation on my iPod or anything, but I dug the singer and design enough to get this shirt:

Fozzy

My friend is the much bigger fan of WWE/wrestling, so he was excited to see Chris Jericho. No merch, because neither of us saw any (he really wanted some, but I think they sold out), but this band had by far the greatest stage presence of any we saw that day, in my opinion. 

Jericho was a bit flamboyant (his outfit was LOUD ... and I hate to admit this, but standing a few feet away made his codpiece pretty noticeable to me) with his gestures, but the important thing is this band moved. A LOT. I hate seeing live shows where the musicians seem to stand and stare at their feet the whole time. If I pay $100 for tickets, I expect you to ACT LIKE A ROCK STAR. And they did. 110%. You could tell some of it was staged (pretty sure I saw Jericho time a jump with the guitarist by talking it over with him before hand), but that's fine by me. WWE superstars are great showmen, and it ... showed. 

Sadly, I was having too much fun actually watching them to bother taking video, but here's the one picture I got: 

And here's a video of them playing "Judas" in Green Bay that's way too static to actually capture their live energy (at least what I saw in Dallas): 

Starset

We pretty much skipped their set to get merch (long ass line) and food. We could still hear them, so my friend commented he liked some of the dirty vocals he could hear (re: screaming as opposed to "Clean" or singing vocals) and we recognized their single:

In retrospect, it sounded like a really good show, but we needed shirts and corn dogs, dammit!

The Pretty Reckless

I didn't know the lead singer was a lead character on the show Gossip Girl. I learned that from some women on my Facebook after posting videos and pictures. 

Anyway, my friend was skeptical she'd sound as good live as on the radio, but she absolutely nailed it. I wasn't expecting her not to be good, so I was more impressed by her ability to be so tiny and have that voice! 

They performed their hits like "Follow Me Down" and "Heaven Knows," but my phone doesn't exactly pick up on songs that loud very well. What I did manage to catch on my phone was their cover of "Like A Stone" by Audioslave (Chris Cornell tribute):

All in all, it was a better set than either of us were expecting. Great job by them!

Three Days Grace

This is where audio problems started affecting things a bit. I could hear the instruments very clearly, but the singer was a no go. In his defense, that's because they've had quite a few hits and, being in the pit right in front of all the equipment, it's sometimes hard to hear singers over bands like this at all, and the audience singing just about every word to every song probably didn't help. 

You could tell we were getting into the better known acts once they came on. 

Here's my favorite song by the old singer (most of the stuff they played was stuff they recorded with him):

The lyrics to this are a perfect description of how I feel about music

And here's a new single with the new singer (the one we saw):

This was the first band where the singer took his wireless mic into the crowd and they actually got a Wall of Death going on the lawn.

Ironically, the pit wristbands we got said "No moshing No crowdsurfing" on them. Maybe the lawn section wasn't allowed to have lawn chairs or blankets cause they figured they'd allow them to do all that? 

Papa Roach

I was there to see the actual closer, but a lot of folks I spoke with were actually most excited for Papa Roach. You've definitely heard "Last Resort" by them, if nothing else. 

When they came out, they asked the audience to flip them off and yell "Fuck Papa Roach." Or at least a disembodied female voice over the sound system did ...

My favorites from them were always "Getting Away With Murder" and their closer or second-to-last song (I forget):

The singer spent even more time in the audience than the Three Days Grace guy did. They also had a lot of rap/funk elements in their live set, like the singer asking the bassist to "boogie" him back on stage and some (what I thought was) cringy rapping in between or during certain songs.

This is also where mosh pits and crowd surfing started in the pit, and I realized the warnings on our wristband were going to be enforced inconsistently. I was less bothered by the mosh pits than others seemed to be (there were like 10 dudes in a WIDE circle with everyone else stuffed up front or in the back), and more annoyed by a couple girls aggressively trying to move to the front (no one liked them ... no one at all ...)

They mentioned that they were NOT willing to cut any songs from their set, which people there to see them loved, but I got annoyed with, since I was mainly there to see

Stone Sour

And here we have the Slipknot connection. Lead singer Corey Taylor actually started with this band before joining Slipknot. Unlike that Drop A-heavy masked metal outfit, Stone Sour has some heavy songs, but presents an overall very different vibe.

For one, you have their single "Through the Glass" that got very popular when I was in high school (video is mine):

Then you've got my favorite song by them: 

And some more radio-friendly heavy stuff, like Absolute Zero:

I'm excited for their new album, with stuff that reminds me of my pop punk days:

But also heavy stuff like Fabuless, whose music video heavily informed the live show we saw:

He had a confetti gun with him that shot rainbow confetti and the inflatables in the video showed up on stage

Shitrless Corey ... Shirtful Corey ... Shirtless Corey ...

I did of course get their t-shirt, which also happens to be my favorite design of the ones I got:

Well, Pixlbit, that was my day last Sunday. 

This weekend so far, I've been stood up on a Tinder date to see Wonder Woman, watched the movie Nocturnal Animals with my best friend and his gf, played with Rocksmith 2014 and my new guitar amp some more (the VYPYR-1 is so cool! So many buttons! And it goes to 13 because FUCK SPINAL TAP! I guess), finished watching One Punch Man, and started Season 5 of House of Cards. 

Yup, it's summer.

To close this blog, I leave you with what happens when I try to record heavy songs using my phone in the pit: