Show #1 of the Foo Fighters/Serj Tankian/Against Me! SoCal tour. We arrived at Cox *snicker* Arena around 3pm and NO ONE in line. We walked around a bit, hung around the bridge where you look down at the numerous trucks and tour busses. Saw Tom, the lead singer of Against Me! with his wife (dude, she has her own section on the
Alkaline Trio wikipedia page!) and then he sorta rode around on a bike. Later we saw a tour bus arriving with a buncha Foo Fighters members (Dave, Pat Smear, Drew etc). Cox Arena is on the campus of
San Diego State so students kept coming up and asking what we were in line for.
Doors open. With the exception of the lame metal detectors which kept sounding off with no reason, got in without a hitch. Unlike most arenas, there's only one level of seats at Cox (versus say Colonade and Loge at the Forum). But man, going down those longass set of stairway as fast as you can was like a death drop! Got to the closest baricade stage right next to "runway" at the rail (i.e. best spot in the house).
Hardly anyone inside the arena for Against Me! Dude, I seriously love
New Wave and totally rocked out. Sorta surprised they did
Borne since Tegan of Tegan and Sara sings on it. During the little intro to
Stop!, Tom the lead singer cracked a smile when he saw me and my friend totaling bouncing around (we were right in front of him). Then they do that disco intro to
Don't Lose Touch. Unfortunately I hear the opening chords to
Ocean and know it's the end of the set. I asked one of the stagehands for the setlist in his hand and got that. Not too long after, I see another setlist floating in the air and managed to catch it (it helped no one really cared to grab it). Since the sticky side of the tape was still exposed, my friend taped it on the rail in front of her so they'd be kept flat. Luckily a pick--surprisingly a customized one!---was stuck to the tape. Yay! Gotta love the green tape with pink paper look!
Serj Tankian was painful to stand through. A lot of talking that didn't make any sense if you never listened to the whole album. Thankfully the crowd was just as apathetic as I.
All personal space was gone when the Foos got on stage. A couple jabroni's behind us were getting a bit rough--even one of the Foos security guys warned them. I stuck my elbows out towards them just in case. The pit wasn't too bad though. I've been to a LOT worse. The girl next to my friend was puking! So thankfully, she got fished out of the pit. We couldn't see anything when the band moved to the "acoustic" stage so we resorted to using mirrors just to see what was going on behind us. It would have been nice if they would have fed video to the screens on stage. Show seemed pretty short with being blacked out for 5.5 "acoustic" songs and all the solos and jams. Guess there's more of the latter two in big arena shows. But in general not a big fan of them since they take away from the momentum/flow of the show. Had a similar complaint with Green Day arena shows too with all the interruptions (whereas their American Idiot in its entirety shows were friggin' awesome!), but loved the Paris Hilton sex tape nightcam video with Dave and the setlist before the encore. My friend managed to get a Foos setlist, I caught one of Dave's picks. Afterward we drove to a nearby bar. Didja know hard liquor can't be served within a certain radius of SDSU? WTF? I thought this was a party school!
