I enjoyed Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime and Empire. However, I really didn't care for their earlier albums. Geoff obviously had a voice, but his screaming and cheesy lyrics on the earlier albums just killed them for me. I was very skeptical about Operation when it was released and it took a bit, but Queensryche finally won me over as a fan. That still feels weird for me to say that after hating on them for years. That means that although I did want to see Queensryche, I was REALLY excited to see Suicidal Tendencies and ST persuaded me to buy tickets.
Suicidal Tendencies was riding high on their Lights...Camera...Revolution! album at the time and they were getting surprisingly good MTV airplay on You Can't Bring Me Down and Send Me Your Money; but had been a fan since I first heard Institutionalized years earlier. Join the Army was one of the first albums that I bought with my own money at the local record store when I was in sixth grade. I thought ST would be one of those bands that I liked but would probably not ever get to see in concert - too heavy and too weird for Iowa.
I was once again joined by my friend Steve and we both highly enjoyed the ST set, although this was back in the day when opening bands often didn't get to use the video cameras and screens that the main act used...so although they sounded great they were hard to see really well from our seats. It just took some of the energy out of it for us.
Between sets we went out to the never-ending circular hallway and hoped we would see something humorous like the puke slip and slide we witnessed at the Poison concert but no luck. I'm not sure if it was longer than normal or if it just seemed that way after being pumped up by Suicidal Tendencies...but the switchover between bands felt like it lasted an hour. I was totally bored by the time Queensryche came on and it took me a while to get back into the music.
Queensryche opened with Resistance which is decent, but not one of my favorites and didn't quite get me out of my boredom. Followed by Walk in the Shadows from the Rage album (which I hated), definitely didn't lift my mood. I was starting to think I had made a mistake coming. Luckily, things really started picking up with Best I Can and Empire. By the time Jet City Woman hit a couple songs later, I was fully back into the concert mood. I am not sure if it was the performance, the energy of the crowd, or just my mindset finally locking into place, but Jet City Woman was very powerful to me that night and became one of my favorite Queensryche songs (I considered it just ok before the show). It remains in a top spot to this day.
Operation Mindcrime was then played in full. I wasn't really expecting that and was very pleased. I was expecting about half of it broken up with songs from the first two (disliked by me) albums. So hearing Operation Mindcrime in its entirety made a much bigger fan out of me than when I went in. It also made me appreciate it more because I don't think I had ever listened to it when I wasn't driving, and so probably had not heard it non-stop. Driving to school, I would usually only get 2 or 3 songs so it was hard to get into the entire concept.
I went away from the concert happy to have gotten the chance to see Suicidal Tendencies and a much bigger Queensyche fan than I went in.
Setlist by Setlist.fm
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