It took something like 36 years but I finally saw King’s X live. They played at a bar in Foxborough, MA. I spent the day working in our Foxborough office so that I could get there when the doors opened but I got slammed by a highway closure and was super late to work, so I worked super late to make up the missed time. 

I got to the venue a after the doors opened but a little bit before the opening act was scheduled to go on. I sat in the car eating dinner and watching that day’s new episode of Star Trek Strange New Worlds and I didn’t get in until about 7:15. The opening act was supposed to go on at 7:00, but when I got there they announced that they had one more song. Apologies to the band. Their name was Third Knuckle. 

During the one song I managed to hear I learned something important. The bar, which is called Six String Grill and Stage (I think) might be the single worst sounding room on the planet Earth. Seriously. I couldn’t hear anything. It was all bass and mud and nothing else. I could see that the band was working hard but I couldn’t hear any evidence of it. I could not see the sound board to see if the engineer was freaking out. I was pretty sure that it was the room itself. Brick walls and odd shape and a wooden floor. Just lots of weird choices for a live music venue. I wrote something on Threads about hoping King’s X had a sound crew who could make things work. They did… sort of… almost.

King’s X came on at 8:00pm and opened with Groove Machine which was what I expected (though I don’t really know why, other than it’s a killer opening song). The sound was definitely better than the first band but it also was not good. Most of what I could hear was just bass frequencies bouncing all over the room. Big booming bass rumble washing out the entire low end. The vocals were sort of getting through it, thankfully, and the lead guitar was also sort of audible, but the bass guitar, the kick drum and the toms and most of the rhythm guitar were just gone. 

For the first half hour of the show it was clear the band was struggling. They were playing fine. Excellent, even, but it was obvious that they couldn’t hear anything. They kept signaling the monitor guy and asking for changes but it never seemed to work. Eventually guitarist Ty Tabor spoke to the sound guy directly over this vocal mic and more or less begged for help. The next song started and almost immediately bassist Dug Pinnick actually stopped it. He went back to his amp, which he had already done a number of times, and did something that seemed pretty drastic. I don’t think he turned down, but he might have cut out all of his low end. It helped a little. They restarted the song and it was better. Over the next few songs the sound guy started to figure things out and the sound impoved some, but it was never good.

I think what we witnessed was a group of pros handling a really shitty room. That is the impression I got at least. I tip my hat to all of them. Had I been on the stage or working the soundboard I probably would have lost my shit and just given up. That’s why I am not a professional. That’s the difference.

Dispite the rough sound the band played great. They are all top of the line musicians and they’ve been playing together since the dawn of history and by this point in their careers they can probably lock in with each other in their sleep. They were as tight as a tight band can be. 

Dug Pinnick is an excellent bass player. Jerry Gaskill is an absolute animal on the drums. I mean, I knew he was good but he was so much better than I expected. Ty Tabor is pretty much the perfect guitar player in my book. He’s definitely a guitar hero for me. Gaskill and Tabor are also excellent singers and they both nailed everything. Dug Pinnick though… holy shit. He may be the best male rock vocalist I’ve ever heard. He’s 75 years old and I am not going to say he’s as good as he was 30 years ago because that’s probably not true. I will say that I’ll put 75 year old Dug Pinnick up against any singer in any rock band and Dug will absolutely destroy them. He’s just that good.

I mentioned in a post the other day that there are a bunch of songs in their catelog that I just don’t like, usually because the lyrics rub me the wrong way, and there are a couple that really piss me off. Fortunately they didn’t play any of them. It was almost as if they read my mind while picking the set. I was honestly relieved. There were a lot of somewhat recent songs in the set which I was really happy about. They could have played a show that never got more recent than 1994 and it would have been fine, but they didn’t. Their most recent record is a few years old now but they played three songs off of it, including my favorite song from the record. 

In guitar gear nerd news, Ty Tabor played a Les Paul for most of the show. It was gold with humbuckers but I doubt it was a 1957. If it was a standard it was probably a reissue or something. I hope it was a good custom shop model because he deserves top of the line stuff. He played a Fender Stratocaster for a couple of songs too. I couldn’t see his pedal board so I don’t know what sort of toys he had, but he was playing through a couple of Orange half stacks. I’ve never used Orange amps before but I’ve always like what I heard. The one cool thing was an e-bow. Is it e-bow or ebow? I am not sure. He’s only the second person I’ve ever seen use one. Eric Bloom from Blue Oyster Cult uses one for that super long sustained note coming out of the guitar solo on Don’t Fear the Reaper and I’ve seen him using it in person twice. Ty used it for a solo instead of using a pick. I’ve always been curious about those little suckers but I’ve never thought about actually buying one… am I going to have to think about it now? Maybe.

So in summation, the sound ranged between bad and really fucking bad. I think it was the room’s fault and everyone worked really hard to make things work. The band was fantastic. The performance was fantastic. The set was fantastic. It only took me 36 years to see this band but I am really glad I did.

Now a few pictures. Every shot I took sucked. Not surprising. It was dark in that room after all. Lots of blurry pics. I set the camera to burst mode so once in a while I would get four blurry nightmares and one marginally focused shot. I’ll take it.