No Dredd-shirts?!? Then why am I wearing one?? You must've been drunk out of your mind! They were in plain view, displayed both front and back, before and after the show!
The show itself: Great! I think I remember most of the songs (but not the order in which they were played, though...) ATL, Got the time, caught in a mosh, NFL, AIR, Medusa, Metal Thrashing mad, Madhouse, Antisocial, I'm the man, Be all, end all, indians, I am the law, deathrider, A New Level (!) with Scott singing (mostly) AND... (drumroll....) an impromptu version of Running Free!! From my point of view, it seemed like charlie was just goofing around a bit, he did the first two bars of "another life" of the killers-album, then went into the unmistakable running free-groove. Frankie joined in, and off they went! Some guy that was standing stage left came in and sang the first verse and shared the chorus with joey. It seemed only Joey knew who this guy was.. ("Chris" or something..)
As Mr. Wu said, the place was sold out. I heard it had a capacity of 450, so it was very intimate, but the crowd was very loud and passionate, and you could see that the band were enjoying themselves, especially Joey and Dan, and Frankie seemed to be in a great mood as well.. It was a bit harder for me to see Scott, since I was closer to the left hand side of the stage (my left). Dan got so into it though, that he stole Scott's line when the band was introduced!! Joey introduced everybody, and Scott started to introduce Joey, but Dan took Frankie's mike and did the introduction
Scott seemed mildly surprised
I wish they would have played some more songs from POT, but... You know, there are always ten songs you wanna hear that they're not gonna play...All in all, a great gig, BUT; They shouldn't make Joey sing deathrider... I'm sorry, but I gotta be honest.. It just doesn't work. He was actually great on all the other songs, but deathrider just wasn't the same....
Which brings me to my conclusion... I took this trip from Oslo, Norway to see this gig in Oxford. And to me, it really was worth it. It was a nice trip, Oxford was great, met some very nice people at the Hobgoblin (the nearest pub to the gig), the gig was fantastic, and it was... you know, nostalgia-galore! And if this is it; if it's just this tour and a dvd, that's fine! But if this is the future of Anthrax... Well, then I've had my fill. There's no doubt: the band was great and the songs are great, but to me Anthrax is something more. Anthrax is also the band that made music from 1993-2003, and if they're just gonna scrap all the great songs from that era and never play them again live... Well... Then this was the last time I ever needed to see them.. Most of you probably know where I'm coming from: Caught in a mosh still sounds great with john bush on vocals, but how would What doesn't die or black dahlia sound with joey singing?...
Ah, well... We'll just have to wait and see. Bottom line: They were great! Every member of the band that was on stage thursday were fantastic, and it was worth plane tickets, trains, buses and a hotel room! They ROCK!!
(but i really, really wanna see and hear john again soon... )
