Hi my name is Rannie and I was at the silverchair concert in Houston,TX on May 6,1997. A date I will never forget because it ahd to have been the best day of my life. It all started out pretty normal. My sister and I were going to the silverchair concert...butterflies in my stomach and tickets in hand. We arrived at the small amphitheatre at around 5:00pm since the doors opened around 6:00. After waiting in a line with teenies for about 30 minutes, they let us in. Even though we were pretty far back in line, I ended up in the front row since it was General Admission. I lost my sister VERY quickly as I was jumping over people to get to the front. Well...there I was...front row and right in front of the microphone. I was set. Automatic was the first band out and I have to say that they truly rocked. It only took them 1 song to get the mosh pit going, and crowd surfing started as soon as they played their first chords. It was awesome. Matt (the singer) came out barefooted and took pictures of the lucky ones in the front row with his camera. He was really nice.
Next up was Local H. I only wish I could have gotten to enjoy more of their performance, but I was EXTREMELY busy protecting my head from jerky crowd surfers. It got to become really annoying after a while. But I wouldn't move for the world from my front row-center position. Local H got the mosh pit going so crazy...I can't even begin to describe it. Joe( the drummer) threw about 10 bottles of Evian water because we were all thirsty. They were AWESOME.
Right after Local H finished, things cooled down and I felt a tap on my shoulder. My sister had made her way to the front to tell me that she got backstage passes. OH MY GOD!! I was freakin'. The sound guy from Local H had come up to my sister and introduced himself. He invited her to watch the entire show from the soundbooth. He gave her two backstage passes. COOL. Then I got thinking: since I'm going to see everybody backstage anyway, I might as well save my life and give up my position in the front row. I had already gotten my neck snapped so I was hurting pretty bad. Well...I watched the rest of the show from further back, which was still close because the place was so small.
silverchair finally came out and rocked the mosh pit really good. Ben was sporting his new hair, and was wild as ever! After a few songs, Ben dissapeared and came back wearing a bright red BRA!?! It was pretty damn funny. Daniel explained Ben's fixation on large breasts :) Then they started playing Local H's song "Bound for the Floor" except instead of singing "Born to be down...", Daniel sang "Born to suck DICK!!" then the stopped and said "OOPS!!that's a Local H song!" it was hilarious! silverchair gave a rockin' show.
The time had come...backstage!! The place cleared and we waited for Paul (Local H's soundguy) to come out and get us. The security guard almost sent us out, but Paul came out right in time. We went backstage and Automatic was sitting on the steps in front of the door to where everyone else was. Paul introduced us and we sat down and talked to them for a real long time. Then Paul brought out Ben Gillies and Chris Joannou and introduced them to me (my sister doesn't really care for silverchair). I was like "hey". It didn't really hit me at first who they were because they looked pretty different up close. I didn't recognize Ben with his shaved head, but ladies, he looked damn good. He was sporting a Billabong t-shirt and Billabong shorts. He was fresh out of the shower so he smelled like AWESOME cologne. WOW...My sister took a picture of us together, and he put his arms around me. I was in heaven :) I then took a picture with Chris. He was VERY shy but also really nice. We all sat down on the steps with Automatic and talked. Then Automatic said "bye" and went onto their bus. Chris went on his bus too, but Ben stayed around. Well, I had seen everyone but Daniel Johns. I refused to leave until I saw him. Then all of a sudden, the door opened, and I saw a heap of blond-stringy-wet hair. He had just gotten out of the shower, and was heading quickly for the bus. I walked after him and siad his name. He turned around quickly. I said hello and he took a picture with me (he had his arm around me while he flicked the camera off with his free hand)> I told him to have a nice trip and good luck. He said thanks and walked onto the bus with Chris. WOW!! what a day. My sister exchanged phone numbers with Paul and we quickly left. We spent about an hour backstage. On the way out to our car, the guy at the t-shirt stand gave me a free poster. As we got into our car, silverchair's tour bus pulled out next to our car and they stuck their heards out the window and waved to us. We drove down the street next to them, and the name of the street just happened to be named "Newcastle" What a story huh??? I swear it is all true and I will never forget it!! Ben was awesome, and look out for Automatic in the future because they will be BIG!!! That night, I also got an autographed sticker and CD from Automatic. I FEEL LIKE THE LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE!!! SILVERCHAIR LIVES ON!!! I VOW TO TAKE MY SISTER TO EVERY CONCERT THAT I EVER GO TO!! Don't get too jealous about my perfect night because something bad DID happen: none of the pictures came out except for one of Automatic. A word of advice: DON'T EVERY BUY A DISPOSABLE CAMERA IF YOU ARE GOING TO TAKE IMPORTANT PICTURES BECAUSE THEY'LL SUCK!!!
Here's a little more detail on the silverchair concert in Houston on May 6, 1997.
First of all, AUTOMATIC KICKED ASS!!! But it wasn't easy for them. The lead guitarists Gibson Les Paul seemed to keep going out of tune, and at one time, he walked off of the stage in the middle of a song and got a new guitar and kept playing. They were supposed to have it fixed for the next song, but in the middle of the next song, the strap came undone. He was trying to fix it during a guitar solo before he had to sing again, but couldn't get it fixed. He just dropped the $1000+ guitar down and began singing. Luckily, Les Pauls can take a beating, but not as much of one as Daniel's Paul Reed Smith did (I'll explain later). Overall, Automatic was a mosh magnet. Every song was moshed to. What a way to open up a concert.
Local H... you would never guess that they're a two man band if you just heard a song on the radio and didn't know anything about them. They sound even better live. I could swear I heard a bass guitar coming from somewhere. But there was no bass in site. I can't believe the drummer didn't throw up or fall off of his throne, because his head was going everywhere, about twice as fast as normal. It made me dizzy just watching him jump around. I never knew you could jump around that much and still play the drums normally with very, very little mistakes (I don't really think there were any). Local H put on as good of a show as I expected. They could easily headline their own tour.
silverchair... I'm sure you already read the other review on the Houston concert, so I'm just going to add a few stuff into that write-up that wasn't mentioned there. A little correction, Ben had the red bra on the minute he came onstage. Daniel announced his obsession with breasts. "Ben likes to play with breasts... especially his own. And sometimes, if he gets really bored, he plays with mine." Everyone cracked up. Then, as far as Bound For The Floor, they didn't start out with it. They played about 3 songs before they played it. And they played it because Local H played Abuse Me during their performance. One thing I forgot to say about the Local H performance, they just stopped and the lead singer said, "That was a silverchair song... now we're going to play one of our sucky songs." Well, about silverchair playing Bound For The Floor, he did sing the words "Born to suck dick..." rather than "Born to be down..." He sung this, "Born to suck dick. I think I've said this before now. Born to suck dick..." and then the lead singer for Local H came out and acted like he was strangling Daniel. Daniel, throughout the show, would say he was going to play a certain song, but would play something else. But he did play Paranoid by Black Sabbath. He does at every show. The Local H guitarist came out and played the guitar part on Daniel's silver PRS while Danile took care of lyrics. At the end of the show, after playing Israel's Son, Daniel went wacko on the guitar, and went a little overboard. He began humping his PRS into one of his amps. Proof that PRS guitars can take a beating. Daniel even stated once that he plays PRS guitars in concert rather than Les Pauls because PRS guitars can take more of a beating. Well, that's just about all I have to say about the silverchair concert in Houston.