Rob Zombie
November 9, 2007 by John in Entertainment
I found out Wednesday night that Rob Zombie was doing a concert in Great Falls last night (Thursday the 29th). He’s touring with Ozzfest, which is playing tonight in Billings, and for whatever reason decided to do a side gig in Griffals.
I sorta wrote it off - I figured it would be sold out. Ozzfest sold out in Billings in less than 24 hours. Also, I already had something going on - the volunteer appreciation party for the hospital gala. But Thursday morning, the day of the Great Falls concert, one of my buddies called to say he had an extra ticket. WAHOO! SCORE!
Turns out it wasn’t sold out and the Fenskes were able to join us. I left work early and rode up with with Jason and Naomi. Gene was up in Havre on business. Nancy had to work late. We all just converged on Great Falls and it all just kinda came together at the very last minute.
Oh. My. Effing. God. What a show. They even played “Black Sunshine”! It was awesome. Zombie puts on a great show. They brought it, too, the pyro, the smoke, the big hellhound head on the front of the elevated drum platform, they even had a guy (probably some poor roadie) dressed up in a giant AstroCreep robot costume for “More Human Than Human.” They played a few more White Zombie songs, mostly from the Astrocreep album. Then “Dragula” brought the friggin house down (and during the song they played footage from The Munsters episode with Dragula on screens and TVs around the stage). I think there were only two songs off Educated Horses, which is good because that album didn’t do much for me. I counted four songs just off Hellbilly Deluxe. All in all Zombie played for about 2 hours without a major break. It was a pretty small venue compared to other places I’ve been (MacNicols Arena in Denver, the Billings Metra and the MSU fieldhouse). Maybe Red Rocks is smaller capacity but I doubt it. Compared to where I’ve been it was downright intimate.
BTW, some people criticize Rob’s singing but he sang much better than the opening act. I can’t even remember their name but think Evanescence mixed with Bif Naked, so a hard rock band with a screeching Gwen Stefani look-a-like on lead vocals. Yikes. When she wasn’t screaming like a banshee I did get the sense that the lead guitarist had some chops, but just just couldn’t hear him when she had her mouth open.
All in all, if you’re a Zombie fan at all and you haven’t seen him in concert, it’s well worth it.
Addendum
I already knew he was a graphic designer and an artist and draws his own album artwork. But I looked Robert Wolfgang Zombie up on IMDB and I learned a couple interesting things. He’s married to the woman who graced the cover of the “American Made Music to Strip By” album. He was born Robert Cummings. And he’s a vegetarian.
Addendum Addendum
So we’re walking down the stairs from the top of the bleachers and everyone stops in front of me just as I looked away. At that exact moment I stumbled and tripped on the steps, tried to catch myself by grabbing the railing, but at just that point there was a break between railing segments and down I go. But rather than bounce off Nancy and knock all my friends down like dominos, I managed to careen left, bounce off the next bench to the left and land on my back on the bench below that. I whacked my knee pretty good on the initial impact. It was skinned up under my jeans but not even enough to bleed and only the size of a quarter. I’m not even sore this morning. I guess a bit of those many years of ninja breakfall training are still with me. 