I got a last minute call from my friend Dan on Friday, he’d scored two tickets to Street Scene in San Diego, I couldn’t refuse. After a nice long drive, traffic wasn’t too bad, we got in around 9 and the place was packed. I heard that it used to be in the Gas Lamp District, hence the name, “Street Scene,” but ths year it was in the Qualcom parking lot.
There was a variety of bands and acts set up for the two day event, yet we showed up at 9, which was fine in my book, I only wanted to see two performances that night, Bad Religion and Wu-Tang Clan. Of course, they were scheduled to perform at the same time, but Bad Religion was on a little earlier so we thought we could get a little bit of both.
Before I describe the night, let me let anyone know that though I own almost all the albums of each group, I’d never seen them live. This is the opposite of Dave Matthews Band, I didn’t own any of their albums and my first experience was a concert, I was sold after that and saw probably two shows a year for about five years. I was pretty stoked to see both groups in the same night.
We headed over to Bad Religion first, they started earlier than Wu-Tang and the Wu was a bit late anyway, so we wanted to catch a bunch of songs before we headed over to the other stage. I was blown away, I’d seen some old local bands such as Pennywise and Farside around here back in the day, but Bad Religion went off, they’re still just as good as they’re albums, they did “You,” “Generator,” and a couple from the newer albums, but the energy was intense, a couple of pits in front of the stage and a bunch of people floating with a little help from the crowd, I was just signing along with the songs like it was ten years ago.
After a bunch of songs, we had to head over to the Wu stage, you need to understand I’m a huge fan, and I missed out on a concert about ten years ago when they were supposed to perform with Rage Against the Machine, before Wu-Tang dropped the LA shows, I sold my tickets after that.
Damn, they rocked the house! Everyone was there, with the exception of O.D.B.(RIP), they had the crowd singing along with all there songs, and it wasn’t limited to the groups’ somgs, they did a couple of Meth and Raekwon’s songs, it was sick! The whole crowd was into it, they has such a presence on stage. Kanye West came on after them, but it was a hard act to follow, Kanye’s got some talent, but I’m sick of him saying how great he is. Wu-Tang doesn’t need to pull that, they are one of the greatest, it goes without saying, and it’s obvious when they’re on stage. “Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothing to fuck with!”
All in all, it ws a great trip, I got to see a couple of legends on stage. It was funny, a friend of mine didn’t care about Bad Religion, he said, “I don’t want to see a bunch of old guys still trying to rock,” how wrong you were, they both rocked the house and next year I need to be there for both days.
Never miss a chance to see your favorite artists on stage.
