Deft and Peppered

Freakin' exhausting, yet max satisfaction back-to-back gigs.

Deftones@Manchester Academy 100706

Me being the smart alec, we were 9 mins late for the concert!! Missed Hexagram, but the rest of the songs were just so brilliantly executed that made my night an unforgettable one. Been my dream to see the real Chino (Moreno) since I first heard Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away) 8 yrs ago. Chi creating the dark atmosphere, Abe's pounding beats, Steph's vicious riff-raffing. But above all, Chino's melodic screams and gibberish really brought the house down. The varied setlist was also impressive: crowd-pleaser My Own Summer (Shove It), heavy metal Korea, threatening Bloody Cape, moody Change (In the House of Flies), Sade cover No Ordinary Love, and the 'sucky' ending 7words. At the end of the show, me and Phing hung around for some celeb-spotting, except that I wasn't wearing specs and she doesn't know how Defts look like!! Long story short, Chino WALKED PAST US!!! and we were too dungu to do anything bout it. Nevertheless, simply wonderful gig for one of my all-time fave bands. Too bad they didn't play Digital Bath or Teething (all-time fave 'noisy' song).


Red Hot Chili Peppers@MEN Arena 120706

Simmering anticipation from the very start after we collected our tickets from the box office. Sitting around, chick-y Nando's staff were distributing (advertising) free wings, wearing t-shirts printed "Red Hot Peri-peri Peppers", and the amusing captions "give it away, give it away, give it away...now" haha. More laughs ensured after the doors opened and we were seating in front of the stage, with 4 inflatables bouncing around the crowd, or onto the 'beer guy'. A really bad group with a horribly gay frontman were opening, I thank them for spoiling the mood quite abit. Flea and John started jamming around 8.45pm, to mark a pleasant entrance to a fantastic opening set. Can't Stop, Dani California, Charlie, Scar Tissue, 21st Century, Otherside..as if that wasn't high enough, they followed with some more happening jams, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, then Me and my, me and my, me and my Friends. Any remaining gig chi left from the Defts gig was now totally gone and sapped to my bone's core. For the next hour, I was basically trying to keep my balance, wipe other ppl's sweat off my brow, and enjoy a musical journey with the Peppers. Blue-cap Chad and pixie-suit Flea were at their pumping best, and soulful John dishes out his orgasmic solos with careless abandon. The dissapointment of the night was Anthony though, he looked fatigued throughout and was unable to complete most of the popular choruses. Still, it was an insignificant letdown by the time By the Way came around, where the crowd was at its absolute rowdy madcap. The sing/dance-along encore of Under the Bridge and Give It Away was awesome, and tired Anthony left the stage early for the rest to round off the gig. A crowd-pleaser and fantastic concert from the legends, how proud I am to say I've seen them twice.