Yeah so tonight I went to the Symphony X show at the Palladium in Worcester.

They played the small upstairs room while George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic set up the downstairs. At the last minute the fire marshall decided that it was bad to have the shows start and end around the same time though, so doors opened early for symx opening bands, and p funk was pushed to later. What this resulted in was a shorter set for everyone playing upstairs. The first couple opening bands I had seen before, and they haven't gotten any better. When I was driving home I noticed one of the fuckers stuck their band sticker on my windshield. The actual opener for Symphony X was Seven Witches (I think it was seven) which had a vocalist who totally sounded like Bruce Dickenson. The guitarist was Jack Frost (ex-Savatage) and the bassist was some guy who played with Armored Saint. That band was actually pretty good. The guitarist went way overboard with the squeeling harmonics and wah pedal full treble. Then Symphony X came on stage. Lets see if I can recall the set list...

Inferno
Wicked
King of Terrors
Communion and the Oracle
Out of the Ashes
Michael Romeo / Mike Lepond trading off (including a nice metal rendition of darth vader's theme :)
Sea of Lies
Evolution

Encore:
Eyes of Medusa
Of Sins and Shadows

I think I'm forgetting one but thats fairly accurate. Right before the show I was talking to some guy, and he ended up being the old webmaster of the Symphony X web site, and he still kept in touch with Michael Romeo once a week or so. Afterwards we hung around and met all the members (I had already had them sign the V booklet last time around). I had Romeo sign some piece of paper I had for the hell of it, and just talked with Mike Lepond and Mike Romeo. Lepond mentioned plans to shoot a live dvd in Brazil (Brazilians make for excellent crowds, so it's perfect for recording), and also their record companies desire to have them re-record their first album (which had a different, and shitty, vocalist and a different bass player). I'm not so excited about them redoing the first album, as the songs themselves are not very well developed (understandibly) and even Romeo makes fun of it, and his solo album from right before that time.

Now they're heading home for a few weeks before embarking on the European tour with Stratovarius. They plan to return to Massachusetts sometime in the fall. Hopefully they'll have a decent headlining gig, where the set isn't cut short or any other problems occur. Last night Romeo cut his finger on a razor blade when he went to reach into his bag for a comb. Apparently blood was all over the place at last night's show, and it got so bad that the tech had to clean out the pickup switches on his guitar. The tech ended up putting the switch in reverse though, and so tonight Romeo went to play a heavy rhythm part and it took him a couple seconds to realize it sounded wrong. Still a great show, though I should have invited Kat (no not that one), even though she thought Blind Guardian was better last time (it's the german fantasy metal attraction or something).

Next Saturday is the Henry Rollins spoken word show in Rhode Island. It only took a minute to find 3 friends to head down there with me. I've heard most of his spoken word material from the past few years, but I'm sure he has plenty of stuff to draw upon what with all the crap going on lately. When I bought the ticket online, it had an $18 charge for basic shipping, so I ended up going for printing the ticket out, which apparently cost them three dollars to set up. What crap.

Tomorrow morning my dad is heading down with my uncle phil to grab his stuff. I don't have to leave for work until 12:20, and he is supposed to be here by 11. It would probably be a good time to figure out what I'm doing as far as relocation once I get out of school.

I could write more but I'm exhausted. I left the house at 5:45 today and just got home a few minutes ago. Oh yeah I called arioch today. That was cool. zzzz