Live Review   Phoenix Melt down
Saturday June 17, 2006.

I was in attendance for a show called “Metal Up Your Ass ‘06”.  I show up just in enough time to prepare to perform.  However, when I approached the stage, carrying on equipment, The first thing I notice is the stage is shaking immensely from side to side.   Disregarding life and limb,  my band decides to try and “bring this son of a bitch down”.  With that being said, we get all the band’s gear up there and just as we got everything setup, it was time to sound check.  After sound check, we introduce ourselves and well, what follows that is just insanity.  When we started to play, I noticed our head-banging was carefully rocking the stage in the direction our heads were going.   It was a big distraction to me because my foot pedals were moving out from underneath me. 

After we finished performing, I go outside to break down my equipment and while doing so, people came up to me and said “wow, I’ve never seen that stage get rocked that hard, literally!”  After my equipment is fully broken down and in it’s  cases, I return inside the venue to sign photos and hang with our merchandise chick.  The band that followed us, on our stage, took the stage and began to play.  About 10 minutes into their set, the whole place goes completely black.  A breaker had flipped. Not just the breaker to whatever it was that flipped it, but to the whole building, but with the exception of a single plug on the opposing stage.  After sitting in the dark for a bit it came clear to me that something was wrong besides just a flipped set of breakers.  One of them had to have melted ‘cause it took 10 minutes, 15 tops, to bring the power back up.  During that time, I was just using a camcorder light as a way of  being able to see. 

All I can really say about this  is that over all it was  a good show for all the bands, but for the booking agent I heard it was his  last show at the venue, and it sure went out with one hell of a bang…

 E .Dalton
contributing writer

Dallasmusic.com