So Cash Industries

Dark Spartan796

This shall be a blog of the most epic proportions.

Me, Jake (UnlivedPhalanx), John (Disturbed Monk23), and my friend Tyler went to San Antonio to see Nightwish live.

The show was nothing short of spectacular. There’s so much to say so let me start from the beginning.

We got to the White Rabbit (the venue they played at) at around 3:45 in the afternoon. Doors opened at 7:00 so we were doomed to wait in line for about three hours. John was dumb enough not to buy a ticket ten months in advance like everyone else, and had to go wait in a seperate line that already had about 20 people in it. Lol @ u, John.

Anyway, since we were the first ones in line (except for one guy who had been waiting since 11:00), when the doors opened we were right up front. Well, I was for a while.

About ten minutes later a bunch of Mexicans come filing in to our right (I guess beaners need metal too), including this one stout one, I’d say in his twenties, with FISHNETS on. FUCKING FISHNETS. Oh, and he had black eyeliner too. Who ever heard of a Mexican Goth? Once it started filling up, I realized I would be standing next to this guy for the rest of the night. Fuck that. I moved back a row.

There was one opening act for Nightwish, but in the time they took to get ready, they could have had three play through their sets. The one roadie for the opening act had no idea what the fuck he was doing onstage, and apparently the band “lost” one of their keyboards when they were traveling. How do you just lose something like that?

It filled up FAST. There was easily twice, if not three times as many people as the Kamelot show back in September. The floor was absolutely full. At this point, personal space was the fevered dream of a madman, and so was air conditioning. It got to about a hundred degrees, and with no air circulation, I think we were all dehydrated at the end of the show, just from sweating so much. There’s this magical thing, called, um, shit what’s it called? Oh yeah. DEODORANT!

We waited easily an hour and a half for the show to begin. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with people I didn’t even know, with a combination of Spanish and broken English filling my right ear.

So, the opening act, Paradise Lost, was kind of okay. Their music wasn’t bad, but their singer was this old guy with long hair and a long beard who was probably drunk at the time. His voice just didn’t work. They played about nine songs.

Then we waited for the main act. “Welcome to the Jungle” looped about five times on the speakers in the bar, then everyone got pissed and told them to get a new mix tape or something.

After about 45 minutes or so, Nightwish came on stage. The reaction was somewhere between bat-shit crazy and psychotic fan explosion.

They opened with “Bye Bye Beautiful” from their newest album, Dark Passion Play. Their new singer, Anette Olzon, was a lot better than we thought she would be. Tarja, the old singer, did a lot of opera, and we thought the new one would never be able to fill that niche. While she doesn’t do opera, Anette fit the bill perfectly.

Marco Hietala, the male vocalist and bass guitarist, was also incredible. I forgot how many comments he got on his beard.

Everyone else was just absolutely phenomenal. Toumas Holopainen plays with three keyboards!
Meet and Greet Pictures:

Anette Olzon – Lead Singer
Toumas Holopainen – Keyboardist and Songwriter
Marco Hietala – Bass Guitarist and Male Vocals
Jukka Nevalainen – Drummer (for some reason, all of our pictures with him look like we were warping through space.) John Two-Hawks – The Native American vocalist in song Creek Mary’s Blood. We were one of two venues in their entire tour to get him.

If I look sort of angry in these pictures, it’s because I’m fighting fatigue, an aching body, and hunger. I was thrilled to death at the time. I wore the “I’m blogging this.” shirt for a reason. The band members liked it!

Unfortunately, we couldn’t find Emppu Vuorinen (lead guitarist) to get a picture with.

Also, John got burned on the leg by Marco’s cigarette. That was awesome.

Now comes the funny “what the fuck” section part of the blog!

After the show was over, we all stormed the merch booth to get our Nightwish swag. I got a Dark Passion Play tour hoodie, but something on the counter caught my attention. It was a little black packet that, on it, said “Want to start your own dark passion play?” Then, I realized what they were.

They were condoms. Nightwish-brand condoms.

If they weren’t sold out I would buy a pack just as a novelty. You can’t make this shit up.

After not being able to sit down for about 10 hours, my feet were killing me. Everyone else hadn’t eaten so after the show we just went to IHOP, just because we could.

I hadn’t had a drink since we left at around 3:00, so I was dying of thirst. Within two minutes there were four empty glasses of Pepsi on my part of the table. As a matter of fact, in the time the waitress and Tyler were having a conversation, I completely downed a drink. Nice.

So, that was my weekend. What did the rest of YOU do with your lives?