by: Robert Pasbani
The day after the Golden Gods Awards, Opeth were playing their final 20th Anniversary celebration show at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, CA. Seeing as we were in town, we went to check it out. The mood was obviously much different than the previous night. After waiting forever to get in, we got our tickets and walked into the auditorium moments before the first notes started. I was very impressed by the venue. I always love scoping out out-of-state venues and this was a one classy auditorium. The sound here was fantastic. The band kicked right into Blackwater Park, and stormed right through it with little interruption. There was no time for Mikael's trademark stage banter here. There was three hours of music to get through.
After finishing Blackwater Park, the band took a little break and returned to play a set of songs off their other albums, playing one song per album in chronological order. This is where I had to step out and take a seat as they started playing some of their earlier stuff. I started thinking about the article I wrote two years ago about how Opeth is not to be missed, and how pumped I was to see them at the time, and then I realized how jaded I am now. I was kind of bored at Opeth! What happened to me? It may have had something to do with being burnt out from all the partying the night before. Luckily, as Opeth reached the Deliverance portion of their set, performing Wreath, all was right with the world. The rest of the set was stellar. The band is sheer perfection.
The real story, for me at least, was the crazy amount of musicians in attendance at the show. Granted this is Los Angeles and a lot of these guys live here so why wouldn't they come out? I spotted Phil from As I Lay Dying, Paul Masvidal of Cynic, Adam Jones and Danny Carey of TOOL and the biggest celebrity spotting at a metal show ever: KENNY FUCKING G! Yes, that dude with the sax! I was tipped off by a tweet from Cosmo Lee of Inivisble Oranges (who wrote his own recap) who was standing 10 feet away from the dude. Towards the end of the night, I was hanging out in the smoking section and was introduced to Dokken's George Lynch, who is a total character, and as we're speaking guess who walks by: KENNY FUCKING G AND HIS SON WHO HAS IDENTICAL HAIR. It was a hilarious night capper. Apparently, his son is a huge metal fan. Here is a photo of them with half of Megadeth. Crazy!
