Saugertes, NewYork
August 13, 1994
Review:
By John Metzger
The Music Box
Blind Melon -- while trashed by many critics -- was one of the best performances of the festival. Their high energy set reached out and drew the home viewer into the emotion of the happening in Upstate New York. The music blasted out by Blind Melon seemed carefully calculated to take the listener on a psychedelic journey as well as make a statement about the festival and those in attendance.
Everything seemed to click for the band during a newer song called Soup as singer Shannon Hoon began to escape from this world into a state of higher consciousness by chanting "And now I'll close my eyes really, really tight and I'll make you all go away, make you all go away, make you all go away." Singing the frustrations and pain of a generation, Hoon added, "Well I'll pull the trigger and make it all go away."
Between songs, Hoon made numerous social and political statements. At one point, he commented, They're [the media] telling me you all have really distorted behavior. Well for $135 a ticket you should be able to distort whatever it is you want to distort!" Blind Melon continued the journey through the vortex as Hoon's surroundings began to alter and melt through the strange song Wilt.
The set peaked during the pairing of No Rain and Time. Hoon and company seemed to lose total grasp of reality and sanity as Hoon sang the slightly altered lyrics, "All I can do is read a book to stay awake. It rips my life away, but it's a great escape (and every one of you people need it!). All I can say is that my life is pretty lame, but I got this fucked up point of view from all of you!"
All hell broke loose during a blistering Time, and the band spun faster and faster through the vortex before crashing through the other side. Hoon turned this one into a statement as well, chanting "Who do you think controls you?" as a wake-up call to a generation. Did the audience get it? It certainly didn't appear so. While there should have been "500,000 fed up faces", all anyone seemed to see was the "pretty pretty colors" Hoon chanted about.
To quote Hoon, "It seems like all that they keep doing is comparing
this Woodstock to the last one and all the protests and all the things
that surrounded it in 1969. And now in the ‘90s it's hard for us to sing
about what's really wrong because there's so many things wrong today. And
no one knows where to really start." Amen, Shannon. There are a lot of
things wrong today, and it is frustrating. But they aren't going to get
better if people don't take a stand that is different from the status quo!
By Derek
In the early summer of 1994, the event commemorating the 25th anniversary
of the original Woodstock festival, masterfully titled Woodstock'94, was
shaping up to be the concert event of the year. It seemed like every musical
generation and genre was being represented. Some of the featured acts were
Blues Traveler, Traffic, Nine Inch Nails, Salt 'n Pepa, Crosby,
Stills, and Nash, Green Day, and the list went on. People I knew all
began asking me if I planned to attend as I had a reputation for seeing
everybody live and had blazed an admirable concert trail already that year
that included Pink Floyd, Blind Melon, Tool, the Melvins, Soundgarden,
and Pearl Jam to name a few. However at this point, BM was not part of
the impressive roster and I saw a concert of this magnitude as something
I would have to deal with rather than enjoy if I were to go. Even after
Blind Melon was confirmed as one of the artists for the event, the idea
of going all that way and exhausting all of that time, energy, and money
seemed foolish. That is until that Friday afternoon when WBCN in Boston,
who was broadcasting from the concert site in Saugerties N.Y., announced
that after ill-fated attempts to stop gatecrashers, the show was now a
free for all. My girlfriend suggested that we go when she picked me up
from work that afternoon and, throwing
caution and responsibility to the wind we were off. We justified our
decision for going on this seemingly ridiculous jaunt (because we had to
make sense of it for our own piece of mind) by concluding that since we
had made a last minute decision the night before to see the Eagles and
had a great time, we would most certainly have one in doing this as well.
Looking
back however, I think subconsciously for our own personal reasons,
namely what the band and their music meant to us, we both needed to be
there. At least I did. I don't think either of us imagined that it would
be our last time ever seeing them live or else we would have braved the
figurative storm and stayed for the entire set.
When Blind Melon finally took the stage at Woodstock '94 around 2pm,
more than an hour after their scheduled set time, the size of the restless
crowd in front of the north stage had multiplied considerably. So much
so that I couldn't even get a breath of fresh air. As for the music, despite
what you may have read or been told, the sound was horrible. Nobody's instruments
were loud enough, Shannon's voice sounded hoarse and fatigued, and there
were feedback and microphone problems throughout their performance. None
of the guys were smiling, nor did any of them seem particularly elated
as they tore into the set opener and the first of 3 new songs, except
for maybe Shannon who wore a white dress and had his hair in barrettes.
Not even the sound problems could mask the dark and foreboding sound of
Blind Melon's new composition "2x4." It was almost as though,
specifically for Woodstock, they were trying to bury their neo-hippie
image with songs that were a deliberate far cry from the ear candy on their
debut album. While the set included crowd pleasers like "Tones of Home,"
and the obligatory "No Rain," new songs like "Wilt" and "Soup" demonstrated
clear move into deeper, uncharted musical waters. Even the usually lax
"Time" was put to the test and offset by a surreal instrumental section
that featured Shannon molesting a conga drum with a microphone before hurling
several congas into the audience. The increasingly hostile crowd,
which seemed to have a total
disregard for human well-being, forced my companion and I into a hasty
retreat toward the end of "No Rain." Even though we could still hear and
see (and could finally BREATHE!!!) from several hundred yards back, the
frustration of the whole affair beat us down mentally and physically and
we opted to leave, thus abandoning the remainder of the set that included
"I
Wonder," "Deserted," Soak the Sin," "Paperscratcher," and "Change."
That would be the last time I ever saw Blind Melon perform live in person.
You may think that I was a bit hasty in saying that the band sounded bad
having only seen a portion of the set, but I watched a tape of the pay-per-view
several times after the fact and stand by my assessment.
Please send questions, comments, and/or opinions to: dnemirow@worcester.edu
Information:
Soup from this show appears on the Woodstock '94 cd and
the Letters from a Porcupine video. Time from this
show also appears on Letters.
Set List:
