concert reviews
June 10, 2000 -
311 continued to tour after the release of 'Soundsystem' and I caught their show during the summer tour at Nissan Pavillion. Two things other than 311 made this show great for me: 1.) incubus was opening. 2.) Jimi Haha from Jimmie's Chicken Shack came out to watch 2 skinnee j's perfomance. He stood right next to me! The concert was like a gathering of all my favorite musicians, a dream come true. Anyways, back to 311. Nick's voice was perfect (so I heard, I was in the pit where the sound quality is not great, and for the most part you're not paying full attention to the music.) This show was the 10th anniversary of their first real show opening for fugazi, so in celebration they played all of music in it's entirety. This was awesome because I had always wanted to see 'Paradise' live. The only thing I have to say about the show that is less than positive is that they opened with 'Omaha Stylee' which they opened with the last time I saw them, but still overall the greatest 311 show I've ever been to. Happy 10th Anniversary 311!
November 6, 1999 -
I went to the 311 show at Nation, in DC on Saturday, November 6, 1999 (Soundsystem tour of course). I had seen them once
before at the Nissan Pavilion, and was really excited because I knew that they were great
in concert. They opened with 'Omaha Stylee,' which was cool for two reasons: It's a kick
ass song, and it gave them time to walk on stage in the dark while the introduction
played. (To those of you who have only heard it on Live, get Grassroots! Now!) Since
they were playing the small clubs, the crowd got into it a lot more, and there was a lot
more energy in the air. (Maybe it was cigarette and pot smoke?) Anywise, I'm 15, about
5'6", so it was pretty brutal in the pit, but the entire place was a pit, so I had no choice.
Don't get me wrong, it was great, and I wanted to be there, but it was rough. As you may
know, the new album is a little bit harder, so there were some harder fans there. I went
along with the other guys from my band, of course when they
started to play, we got separated immediately, but we met back up again during What
Was I Thinking. We jumped so high in unison during that song we could tell we caught
Nick’s eye! Since we all know the songs so well we immediately recognized the beat
and just jumped away! This was a great experience for us as a band because we learned
a lot about stage presence and performance.
The songs they played from
Soundsystem are as follows:
Freeze Time
Come Original
Large in the Margin
Can’t Fade Me
Life’s Not a Race
