Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Queensryche 30th Anniversary Tour 11/10/2011!




















I grew up during the 80s and during that time, I was mostly into Metal/Hair Bands.  Some of the notable names were Metallica, Dokken, Motley Crue, MegaDeth and my favorite was Queensryche.  I was HUGE fan of their early albums and got into them around 1984 when Warning was released.  I liked their first album, which was a self-titled EP in 1982, but it wasn't until Warning came out that I really got on board.  My friends turned me on to them around that time and I was hooked.

To the best of my recollection, the first concert I ever went to was Metallica and Queensryche at the Rochester War Memorial.  According to the Google machine, that was on Mar 7th, 1989.   I also saw them with Type-O Negative at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center and in Weedsport when I was in college sometime around the mid 90s.  YOU KNOW IT'S SUMMER WHEN THEY'RE ROCKIN IN WEEDSPORT.  Heh, it's so funny the odd things I remember.  I have trouble remembering my name at times, but I remember that slogan from old commercials on TV for the small little Weedsport Amphitheater.  I think it was mostly played on Syracuse TV and because my college received Syracuse TV stations, that's where I picked it up from.  This dude knows what I'm talking about.  Haha...

I was/am a huge fan of their albums Warning, Rage For Order, Operation Mindcrime, Empire, Promised Land, Here in the Now Frontier and Q2K.  After that, which was around 1999 they kinda went in a different direction and I was still a big fan of them and their earlier work, but wasn't a huge fan of most of the songs on their subsequent albums.  That was similarly how I felt about Metallica around that same time frame.

However, I've always kept up with the band, their website and Facebook page and they're both quite active and updated daily.  Which reminds me, I was in college when the Internet first started and the first personal web page I ever created was a Queensryche fan page, complete with a background graphic, images and it even automatically played a midi file of the song Anarchy X!  Click the link to hear exactly what that sounded like.  That automatically played every time you went to the web page.  Very high tech for the time and I remember being very proud of the site.

I remember being part of a Queensryche 'web ring' as well.  Remember those?  I doubt it...It was a collection of similar websites where everyone would put the web ring link/picture at the bottom of their page and you could click next or back and scroll through several or 100s of similar web pages.  I just searched for my last name and Queensryche and still actually found links to the original page and was able to pull it up using archive.org, going all the way back to 1996.  How freakin cool!  None of the images are there, but the song still auto-plays!  Ryche on!

Their lead singer Geoff Tate has released solo albums, a wine label, etc.  They also have done a few 'Shiprocked' cruises also, but I haven't attended any of those.  Oh man, they're actually getting on the ship next week!  I wanna go.  I think it would be fun to see some of your favorite old bands on a cruise ship like that, but it would probably be more about the music and partying than the ship, ports and excursions I would imagine. 

I'm still a huge fan and much to my surprise, I saw online that they were coming to a very small venue in town!  I did not hesitate, I broke the news to the wifey that she was going along and ordered tickets the second they went on-sale.  The concert is this Thursday and I've checked out a few set lists from recent shows and I'm so psyched the majority of the tunes are from back in the day and hardly any, or possibly none, are from the albums I did not like.  I will be in the zone and loving every minute of it.  The wifey will probably be a bit lost, but she has an IOU for any concert of her choosing to redeem any time she sees fit.

If you happen to be in the NE FL area, there is actually a Groupon today for 50% off tickets and you can even get a meet and greet with the band and free autographed picture.  Too bad we already have tickets.  It will be a great show and I can't wait!  Ryche and Roll!!


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