09-19-1995
Sea Bright, NJ
Tradewinds
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credit: Greg Prato
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Review by: Greg Prato Me and my friends lived on Blind Melon's 2nd album, 'Soup' (no pun intended), for the summer of '95 - Hootie, Bush, and Silverchair mania was sweeping MTV and radio, making us sick. It pissed us off that MTV/radio was ignoring Blind Melon all of a sudden, but it made us all the more enthused to treck a couple of hours to check out the band play in Jersey, at Tradewinds. It was quite a while since the last time I saw the band (summer of '93), so I was curious to see 'em again. The vibe of the crowd was not an entirely positive or peaceful one - I remember they were violently slam dancing to Rage Against The Machine's debut album and the Red Hot Chili Pepper's 'One Hot Minute' even before the show started! Police were patrolling the parking lot heavily, as I witnessed a group of fans getting busted for smoking pot in their car! The band Prick was supposed to open up, but for whatever reason, didn't play. When the group sauntered on stage, I kind of noticed that Shannon's appearance was strange - he had smeared eyeliner on, and just didn't seem as healthy as he had in the past when I saw the band. Anyway, he told his 'Courtney Love joke' that he told at other stops on the Soup tour, and the band blasted away into "2x4." A great show - although at one point I had my eyeglasses knocked off my head and broken by a crowdsurfing gorilla! Although it's been quite some time since this show, I still have some of the body movments and whatnot that Shannon did that night to the music etched in my brain. Kinda weird. Afterwards, my friends hung out to meet the band again. We got to talk to Rogers Stevens, Glen Graham, and Brad Smith - I managed to give Rogers and Brad a demo of a pretty weird band I was in at the time, with hopes that they would listen to it and offer us the opening slot on the tour (just kidding)! I told Brad that the band shouldn't even bother to worry about MTV's sudden abandonment of the band and embracement of Hootie and to just plug ahead - even he said he 'didn't get Hootie.' Something else that Brad said was that they recorded something like 25/30 (?) songs for 'Soup' -- I wished these unreleased songs would surface already! A kind of sad thing was that there was a huge mob around Shannon, so I didn't bother saying hi or anything, I figured I was going to see the band again in about a month or so when they played Irving Plaza in NYC. As we know, the band never made it that far on the tour. Still, this show remains one of the best B.M. shows I attended. Good memories. |
credit: Anthony Amodeo
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