Next was the one song that I just don't understand being played. This is where they lost a lot of the audience (they got them back with the following song). "Down" is just not a live song. It's the slowest thing out of 10 albums and was just not energetic at all, which you need at 2:10 am. But for those of us singing along, it was fun - just not fun to try and pay the band respect when others are chit-chatting while they wait for the home-stretch.
This is a digression from the review, but King's X is always an interesting dichotomy of characters. Doug, who renounced Christianity, had a little speech in "Believe" about believing in yourself and not worrying about what people in the Church say about you. Then they play the anti-abortion anthem "Mr. Wilson," written by Ty, a devout evangelical Christian. I got the impression last night that each band member probably picks two or three songs that they want to play that the others cannot veto. The reason I get this feeling is that Doug seemed to be just playing his part on "Mr. Wilson" which was probably Ty's pick. Doug was jamming on "Mr. Wilson," but you could tell that it wasn't his idea to play that song this tour, just as Ty was on auto-pilot during "Down." I could tell that "Down" was a Doug pick. Anyone who follows KX knows that Doug is a tortured man, and "Down" is one of his biograhical songs (most of his are). He looked like he'd just walked out of a good therapy session when the song ended. Ty didn't seem very into it-more like he was playing his part for Doug. Always interesting to hear Doug sing, quite passionately I might add, some of the lyrics he wrote as a Christian, such as last tour when he sang "I read the story said You died/I turned the page-You were alive/with hope and love and mostly faith/one day I'll see You face face/Everywhere I go I see You." And he sang it like he meant it. When I see King's X, there's always a whole other context for me to watch, as I watch Doug's expressions when he sings some of those older songs. Anyway, back to the review.
After "Down," the band was really enjoying themselves and went into the home-stretch. They freaking jammed on "Sometime." For the remainder of the show KX went went back into their prog roots. People went crazy at the opening chords of "Visions." BAM! Straight into their standard closer, the mind-blowing "We Were Born to be Loved." Folks, if you want to see a band play a very rhythmically complex song, singing all the while, and play it
Tight, go see King's X, because when they do this song, people just stand in awe and wonder. After "We Were Born to be Loved," Doug said "we usually go off-stage and come back for a formal encore, but this nice club-there's no where to go, so we'll just keep playing, ok?" We cheered.
Here is my hero moment:
Ty had to change guitars so I took that moment of silence to yell "Junior's Gone Wild." Ty started playing it! Doug grinned and said "hold up." He started trying to remember it. Ty and Jerry started it again, and they freaking played it!!!
I was going crazy because I love that song. Doug was trying to remember the words and did ok for the first verse, but he forgot the chords or words or something at the chorus and stopped. He said, "Dudes, we gotta work that up. That was fun. We recorded that for the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure soundtrack and just left it there. We've never played it live. Ya'll want to do that?" Ty and Jerry said "heck yeah." Doug continued, "I'll bet you when we get back here we'll have that worked up [note: actually Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey]. Two guys right at the stage turned around, "yeah, you're my hero" and giving me high-fives (they were sooo drunk).
Now the band was really having fun. Doug said, "Since we had so many problems earlier, let's keep playing. Requests?" Well, you know what happened. I'm screaming "Ono" and I hear "Cigarettes," "Complain," "Goldilox," "Pleiades" (that would've ruled), and dozens more. Someone yelled "anything you want to play" so Ty started "Walter Bela Farkas." What nonsense, but what fun. Doug heard "Mission," so they did that. Doug said "Here's another one we've not done in years, so it might be rough." They played it flawlessly, but slightly slow because they were trying to remember it as they went. So killer. We're still yelling songs. I thought they'd be playing for a while, becuase they were having serious fun. Doug said, "You wanna hear "Over My Head" or "Goldilox"? I shouted "Both!" but "Over My Head" won. Toward the end of the song, the band completely dropped out, Doug stepped around the monitors and on top of the woofers and without his mic he lead the whole audience in singing the chorus four times a-capella. At the end of the chorus, he hit his mic again with "Just like yesterday!" BAM. Of course, now we want "Goldilox." But they are getting tired, so Doug said "Let's do "Summerland" and get outta here. We'll be at the merch table signing stuff and taking pictures. Sorry about all the technical stuff, but you guys have been incredible and encouraging and we appreciate it." "Summerland" was solid as usual, and that's all she wrote. It was 2:20am, I didn't have a camera, I had to be at church this morning at 9:30, and I didn't want to wait in line, so I came on home, got a shower (I was sweaty and smelled like 638 cigarettes) and got to bed about 3:10. Got up, went to church, came home, and wrote this review. Ahh.