Generally, when I go to a show it ends up being the focus of my whole day. I'd love to only need to drive up the street to a club or the Minot Auditorium to get my live music, but that generally doesn't happen. Usually, I end up driving an hour and a half to Bismarck or almost five hours to Fargo. If it's in Fargo, this means I'm likely to spend most of the day travelling, followed by throwing my bags into the hotel room and speeding to the venue, only to return to said room to sleep for a few hours before getting up and travelling again. Bismarck usually means I can get some work done before I leave, but the day of the ONE Night Stand I decided to try to fill the day with errands for myself and the friend who was accompanying me. Why not right?
Whoops.
It ended up being a day kicked off with a late start, followed by failed attempts to get things done and plenty of infighting between the two of us, and by the time we were beginning to head over to the parking lot of the Civic Center I honestly didn't even want to go to the show. As much as I was looking forward to seeing the reunited Soil, if I had my way we would've turned around and gone home.
Luckily, cooler heads prevailed.
We skipped one of the two local Battle of the Bands winners, a group called , in order to eat, yet another decision I regretted making when we discovered there were food trucks on site. The second, False Advertisement, was setting up as we arrived. I have to confess that my attention wasn't fully on the band, I was scoping merch tents and checking about signings already, but they made me wonder if putting Battle of the Bands winners on a large outdoor festival was a bad idea. They didn't sound bad, but they clearly were a bit lost with the large empty space to try to play to. Attempts at crowd banter fell flat, they basically stood still and looked out into the void that was the Bismarck Civic Center parking lot. Still, like I said, they sounded good. I would've given the music a shot on CD, but they weren't selling one.
When Acidic first started, I had a really bad feeling about them. One of their first songs was a cover of Come Together (if I have to explain whose song that is, you need to stop reading), and I have a rule about new bands covering legendary acts, one that nearly cost Battlecross their shot at any respect from me. Luckily, they eventually won me back. They're an LA band that clearly shows their roots, they admitted afterwards when I met up with them to being heavily influenced by Jane's Addiction, a choice which I picked up on almost immediately. There was also at least one bass intro that I would swear was taken directly from Faith No More, but they assured me it wasn't. This early 90's alt rock vibe especially helped them stand out in a day of post grunge rock bands, not that I'm knocking the other groups...
...especially when one of them was the group I came to see! I first discovered Soil when Ryan McCombs was singing for Drowning Pool and didn't think I'd ever get to hear them at that point given their back and forth in the press. You wouldn't be able to tell from their performance that those remarks had ever been made though. Spirits were high, the jokes were flying, and the only way asshole was used was as a term of endearment. McCombs really went above and beyond with his interactions with the crowd, for example by sticking his microphone up to yours truly and letting me sing a chorus on Breaking Me Down. That's right, I am not only a blogger, I at one point contributed guest vocals to Soil. I swear, I haven't let it go to my head at all. While the heat was really starting to get to people at this point it did not slow down the band at all despite their constant remarks about it, and Ryan even came out into the crowd and sang Halo surrounded by a group of the hottest, sweatiest people in the place. It was release day for their newest album Whole (my review of which can be found here: http://jakespeare88.blogspot.com/2013/08/album-review-whole-by-soil.html), and I usually feel a bit bad for bands that have to spend their biggest publicity day in the middle of North Dakota, but I think we gave them a pretty good time to make up for it. Their single show the next night in Minot turned into two shows, so the reception must've been good.
My friend's desired group was up next. Outside of one contribution to the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack, I'm not familiar with Smile Empty Soul, but she has apparently been a fan for years. They screamed a bit more than I expected, but other than that they sounded about like I expected. I feel bad that I really only have that to say, but they didn't leave much of an impression on me. None of it was bad, but it pretty much came and went without incident. She enjoyed it though, so that ultimately is all I care about.
After a fairly positive day, I began to worry about Taproot within the first couple of songs. The vocalist, to be perfectly honest, appeared to be having frequent attacks of some sort and was thrashing around in ways I'm not sure I've seen a human move before. This is from a metal kid too, and I've seen some strange things in mosh pits. This guy, I don't know. I think Mike Patton probably would've told him to calm down, but maybe that's just me. Luckily, he put on a guitar after a few songs and having something to focus his energy on seemed to smooth out his stage show a bit. The set also seemed to move towards a harder rock sound after a while that began to justify the antics a bit better. By this point people were pretty drunk and were starting mosh pits which was a headache for security, but Taproot seemed to both feed off of it and encourage it. I will certainly keep them in mind if I see them on future bills, and I will do my best to stop confusing them with Trapt.
At this point, our day came to an end. Pop Evil was still to come, but we saw them back in May with Sevendust, and after a day spent in the heat we were ready to call it good. After one more stop at Merch Row (as I called it) we hit the highway. Hopefully there will be another ONE Night Stand next year. North Dakota could use more events like this.
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