Life in Beta

So. I survived my first rock fest.

This post is going to be mostly photos (and video) and not so much on the words. ‘Cause it was really all a blur. (A very, very fun blur.)

We were really excited and to be there. Can you tell?! Mike was really pleased with our seats too. (Totally made my day to see him so surprised!)

We got to meet Corey Taylor and the rest of the guys from Stone Sour. I got the cover of their CD single autographed.

The Jägermeister stage featured: As Summer Dies, Hail the Villain, New Medicine, Airborne and HellYeah. Hail the Villain was freakin’ amazing. They’re big in Canada but haven’t made as much of a name for themselves here in the US yet, unfortunately. As Summer Dies (a local Buffalo, NY band) was pretty great too.

The main stage was: Halestorm, Stone Sour, Avenged Sevenfold and Disturbed.

I liked Halestorm pretty well; Mike and I agreed their drummer, Arejay Hale, is freakin’ amazing and SO fun to watch.

Stone Sour, sadly, fell a little flat. Still totally worth seeing … but somehow they seemed sort of disinterested in performing? Maybe it was just me.

A7X flat out stole the show. Check out how they opened their set…

(Uh, yah. That may have been me screaming when the guy jumped out of the rafters there.)

A7X’s tribute to The Rev was a tear-jerker. Mike Portney (the drummer from Dream Theater) really held his own though, and it was great to see fans giving him a warm welcome.

While I think A7X could have easily carried the show themselves, getting to see Disturbed was just a bonus. I can’t believe this year marks the 10-year anniversary of The Sickness being released.

Yup. Happy times.

P.S. There are more photos on my Flickr photoset for Uproar Fest – here.

In case you haven’t seen it all over Twitter or Facebook (heh), this is where I’m going next Sunday with Mike…

I am SO. FREAKING. PSYCHED!

This will be Mike’s 10th time seeing Disturbed. (Not necessarily on purpose; they have just happened to play at several festivals — Ozzfest, Mayhem, etc. — that he’s been to over the last several years.) He promised me about 5 or 6 years ago (when he’d only seen them maybe 2-3 times) that he would take me to see them. For a whole variety of reasons, it never happened.

It was really purely a whim when Mike told me to check the dates that Avenged Sevenfold and Disturbed were playing. (I don’t think he realized it was a “fest”; I know I didn’t.) When we saw all the bands that will be playing … well, it was just a MUST.

Sunday, we stopped at Giant Eagle’s Ticketmaster counter to pick up the tickets. Mike stayed in the car with Little Man (we were on our way home from church) while I ran in to get them. Again, on a whim, I asked the clerk to check if there were any good seats left at a reasonable price (I was assuming most of the good tickets would be gone with only a week till the show). We would have been just as happy with lawn tickets, but I managed to get seats in the front of section 200 (dead-center)!

The best part? Seeing Mike’s face when I went back out to the car and told him the seats I got. Total jaw-drop reaction. It completely made my day!