Al rules. I’ve seen him before in Ventura a few times, in Oxnard (probably the best Al show I’ve ever been to) and a few times in LA. I even bought a luxury box for his show at the Greek about 5 years ago. It was very worth the money to be a VIP at a Weird Al show. Quite the memorable experience.
Al has had the same band forever (Jon “Bermuda” Schwartz, Steve Jay, Ruben Valtierra, and Jim “Kimo” West). Those guys are all geniuses and Al is definitely one of the greatest performers ever.
My last minute ticket ended up only costing me $25. It was some craigslist Groupon deal that I ended up lucking out with (GA was $40, so I scored).
I responded to the ad around 5:00 and was there by 7:00 for the show. I even got a front row parking spot in the…
I thought it was a good idea to get my pre-SSMF groove on, considering I probably can’t even attend the event this weekend. And I was going to go to Vegas to see Julien-K, so this saves me a trip…
I missed Filter last year when I opted to go to a celebrity boxing match. I’m thinking that may have been a mistake. At the last minute, I jumped at the 4th chance to see Julien-K, even though their new album is a radial departure from their Transformers soundtrack song and the overall feel of their first album.
As expected, Julien-K played a set similar to the one they played at The House of Blues In Anaheim earlier this summer. I primarily went to see them tonight and I unexpectedly ended up a Filter fan by the end of the evening.
FILTER AND JULIEN-K AT THE ROXY 8/14/2012
Julien-K came out and played most of their new album and a few songs from their last album. There were 3 songs I wanted to hear and I only got to hear one of them. Still, it was an excellent set and I think they are a great band.
Next up was the headliner, Filter. I have the Short Bus album, although I haven’t listened to it in 10 years. I could hardly remember what they were supposed to sound like. They came out on fire and played a very impressive and long set of awesome tunes. They jammed way harder than I would have ever imagined. It was intense and I am thinking it was one of the best concerts I’ve seen this year. I really am in shock over how great this band was. Jeff Friedl is an absolute monster on the drums.
I saw him play with Devo last year and he was just as phenomenal then.
Richard Patrick is an intense dude. He threw down with an excellent vocal performance. In addition, he crowd surfed and also did some I’ve never seen before- he set his guitar in the crowd and it somehow “crowd surfed” and somehow found its way to the other side of the stage. That was a first. Talk about being able to control a crowd. Very few bands are as tight as this band was. Some of the music was unbelievable. I’m truly astonished by this show. I’m at a loss for words. This may take some time to process.
This show was pretty impressive. I’m not familiar with his solo material, but it sounded really good. His singing was pretty unreal- he hit some great high notes throughout the set. He played a few solo tunes before breaking out with “Rainbow In The Dark”. It rocked. His band is really good and they did a remarkable job with playing the song. The guitar solo for it was spectacular, as was his actual guitar solo a little bit later in the set.
The band seemed to take a short intermission and James came back out and said he was going to play a few songs from his album. At this point, I had to leave, but I wanted to stay to see the remainder of the show. I was bummed because I felt like I was going to miss something. I’m sure I did.
Concertologist 
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