Stone Temple Pilots Saturday – October 7, 2000 – UB Alumni Arena
Oct 7th was the STP concert at UB’s Alumni Arena. Danielle and Adrienne came over in the morning so we could get ready for the show. We crimped my hair (it ended up way poofy, very cool looking), I wore my black vinyl pants, my rock star shirt, black jacket and my blue feather boa. Around 3 we left to go to UB to wait outside the arena, doors were at 6:30. It was cold, so we ended up sitting inside the doorway to the arena for a while before getting kicked outside again for the last hour. They had to lock up the building so that they could do sound check and stuff without us hearing.
So everyone was smashed outside in the cold until they finally opened the doors. We had to go through metal detectors, and of course, Danielle and I both beeped so they asked to look in our purse. While she was showing the guy her purse, I pulled out my cell phone, said that was all I had and left without them even looking at my purse. So we quickly got to the door to the seats, ran down the stairs and got front barrier. Eric, Mary, Karl and Kelly who didn’t get to UB until 630ish ended up finding us, and were a few people behind us. So we chilled up in front and waited for Liquid Gang to come on. They started at 7:30 and played for a while. They were really good, and I was really impressed. After they finished, they changed the stage around (and let me just say, they had a really good system. It only took about 10 minutes. The drum set was on wheels, so they just had to wheel it in, the guitars were tuned, and everything was quickly ready for Disturbed).
So Disturbed came on. The crowd got rough. Buffalo crowds are full of assholes. This was the worst show I’ve been to, crowd wise. Everyone was pushing, which is expected, but this was worse than normal. Being against the barrier didn’t help because there was no where to go. There was this really bad asshole between Danielle and David trying to push through the whole time. The guards were going to pull him out just because he was causing trouble but then left him. So the entire Disturbed set, I couldn’t breath, I was falling over without being able to fall because there were so many people all smashed together. Half the set I had a security guard standing in front of me pulling crowd surfers over the barrier (but that was OK, because anytime a security guard stood in front of me, I ducked and covered, knowing a surfer was near), or just monitoring the pit. Most of the time all I could see was a person’s stomach, and I was concentrating too hard on breathing and keeping my feet on the floor. I prayed for Disturbed to end so that I’d be able to stand up straight and breath. No such luck, because even after they were finished I wasn’t standing straight and was still stuck. Disturbed were OK. I was disappointed because I had heard so many good things about their show at Ozzfest, and how they were one of the best band’s there. Their set lacked energy in my opinion, and…how do I put this?…it was very WWF-ish if you ask me…The singer David looks like he could be a wrestler to begin with. The electric chair intro was cool, but very WWF-ish to me. And he was always doing that “suck it” D-Gen X thing. Danielle and David thought their set was amazing… I definitely would not say amazing. I’d say it was all right, better than a lot of stuff out there, but definitely not amazing.
So after Disturbed finished, they changed the stage again and the guys from Liquid Gang walked out in front of the barrier to talk to everyone and sign stuff. Well we were all stuck, unable to move at all. The guys in the band walked over to us, Kelly was able to get her and Karl’s tickets out for them to sign, the rest of us were too stuck to move. The singer Jose came over to us, Eric told him he was on the street team, etc. I shook his hand, and he complimented me on my boa. I ended up shaking all their hands, and telling them they did an awesome job. The guitarist Stinger ended up signing my hand because that was all I could move. He liked my hair. I talked to Chris the other guitarist, and I can’t remember if it was him, or the bassist Eric who had the tattoo on his arm that I asked about. It’s Chinese (or something) symbols, I asked him what it meant and he said basically that he wanted to be a musician. Craig was the last one to go by, and I told him they were awesome.
So then….we waited for STP to come on, everyone pushed the other way so we could all try to be standing straight. Danielle got pushed back and I ended up next to David holding on to the barrier for dear life. Then I decided there was no way I was going to survive so I had the security guards pull me out. I went back in on the left side of the stage and just stood there. STP came on, and it rocked. After a few songs I stood up on a chair in the front row of seats and it was perfect. I could see over the crowd, I could see the entire stage perfectly, and I’m sure it was way better than it would have been if I had stayed at barrier (for one thing, security would have been in front of me most of the show, and I would have died). Everyone else ended up leaving the crowd by walking out (or pushing their way out) instead of being pulled over the barrier. They ended up on the opposite side of the stage from me.
STP KICKED ASS!! They opened with “Crackerman”, they did a couple songs acoustic (“Sour Girl”, “Creep”, “Big Empty” I think), then went back to the normal stuff. They did the new single from “no 4” and “Down”, the rest were off the first 3 albums (only 1 song from “Tiny Music…”) During “Plush” Scott went into the right side of the crowd in the bleachers and let people sing with him. It was very cool. During “Dead and Bloated” (I think) David from Disturbed came out and sang with Scott, and that was very awesome. As an encore STP came back out and did “Sex Type Thing” (I think, god I can never remember set lists lol) and Scott wore an American Flag on his head. Then he decided to tie the flag around his waist and take his pants off. Well, first of all he didn’t tie it very good. Secondly I don’t think he realized that when he lifted his leg to get his pants off, that everyone on the left side (where I was) could see inside the slit of the flag where it was tied. You know what that means… I saw Scott Weiland’s penis…HAHA. At end, Robert (the bassist) went over to Scott and started to untie the flag, so Scott put his hands under the flag and over his balls, and Robert took the flag and danced around with it. Then Scott had to walk off stage naked, so we all got a nice shot of his ass. Haha.
The show kicked ass, it’s up on my list of one of my favorites (despite the bruises, and complete bodily pain everywhere). So after the show, I had to find everyone else. I stayed on my chair and looked over the crowd to find them but couldn’t. The guys from Liquid Gang were behind the side barrier so I went back over there, now that I could move, to get their autographs. I got all except Craig, who wasn’t around there. I got Eric’s signature first (I had to explain that all I had for them to sign was a pad of paper from a Funeral home, they laughed about that), then Jose started playing with my boa and put it around his neck as we were talking. I was getting Chris’s autograph and I asked if I could touch his hair (it was all spiked, tons of gel, very cool). Then I had to chase Stinger up the seats (not sure where he was headed) but caught up to him and got his autograph. I didn’t stick around there to see if Craig was going to come out.
I left the inside part and went to find my friends. We had the possibility of going backstage after the show through a girl who works for 103.3 the edge so I figured they’d be by 103.3’s van. I was right, I found Danielle Adrienne and David, but then we had to wait for Eric and the rest because they went to look for me. So then we went back inside where Eric and them were buying merchandise. After we decided to head around back to see if we could meet anyone else in the bands. It was raining, which sucked, but that wasn’t my first time out in the cold rain waiting to meet famous people. Eric and them were ahead of me and Adrienne, Danielle and David, and we were walking behind the busses, which the area was blocked off with yellow caution tape. So I had the bright idea of going under the tape anyway. I figured what are they going to do? Kick me out? I’ll be no worse off if I do it, I’ll just end up behind the tape again. So Adrienne followed me, along with Danielle and David, and very spy like, we walked in between the busses and stood around with some other people who had the same kind of idea. Eric and them left, I guess. I got to see inside one of the busses finally!
So then a cop/guard came and told us all we had to leave and go behind the tape. So we started to leave but I went in between the busses and decided I wasn’t going to leave. Adrienne and I ended up “hiding” behind one of the busses, while everyone else went behind the tape again. There were pine trees we were standing under behind the bus, and then 5 guys who had the same idea joined us and we stood there talking. Then more event staff and cops came, and they told the people behind the tape they had to make sure to stay behind it. 3 of the guys with us went behind the tape, 2 others hid between the busses again, and Adrienne and I stood there. A bunch of the event staff people saw us there, 2 cops looked right at us, and no one said anything. I kept joking around that if we don’t move they can’t see us, you know, like the Tyrannosaurus Rex. So for about 10 min we stood there without anyone bothering us or asking us to leave. Then finally one of the event staff kids asked us if we had passes. I told him we did, but we lost them. He said if he didn’t see a pass he’d have to ask us to leave. So we said OK, but then just stood there. We jokingly argued with him about bribing him, and he told us that he’d get in trouble if he let us stay there. But we just stood there. We waited for about 5 min, and he kept telling us, “you’re not moving”. I said yeah, I know.
Finally Adrienne and I went behind the yellow tape. We ended up talking to this girl and her boyfriend, the girl was a singer and wanted to sing for Jose. Then there were 3 boys next to us who had caught Scott Weiland’s towel and were waiting for him to come out and sign it for them. They were really cool. Then David from Disturbed came out, he came over to me first and signed my paper I had, and I shook his hand (my hand was freezing). He signed everyone else’s shit, and left. We decided to leave, STP doesn’t cater to their fans much, and it was cold. The 3 guys invited us back to their dorm room to party, but we had to go. We drove home, I managed to get my pants off and inspect my bruises. The show was awesome, but a very asshole filled crowd (most of the people we had been up front with had left during STP, even the annoying kid with the “Still Remains” sign). Definitely looking forward to seeing STP again eventually…and Liquid Gang (they just impressed me beyond belief… and they were so nice).
