[2Stonedbirds]

Pantera at the corral, 2001 on their Reinventing the Steel tour. Wasn't like it was 95 for them anymore, but still an incredible show and for me at that time there wasn't a bigger band.

Rush at the SaddleDome, 2005-ish? I believe it was the Snakes and Ladders tour. Amazing show, SaddleDome was around 30° inside, sweating our asses off but was still awesome.

GWAR always seemed to come to Calgary around my birthday, friends and band mates always made a point of going every time. Even if they didn't play music, the stage show was worth the price of admission. Met David Brockie outside the last set of doors into Mac hall once, freind and myself introduced ourselves, he was super gracious. I asked him if he broke 80 yet, he lit up and said "you read my ####ing blog!? You golf?" LOL said he was really into people watching, and hardly anyone would approach him in street clothes, so he'd chill and see what kind of riff raff comes to the shows. Asked my freind and I if we had any requests for the night, I asked if they could play Whargoul, and they did which was pretty cool.

I'm a huge Cynic fan, so catching them at Mac Hall was pretty special as well.

Those are the standouts.

Edit: Noctis Festival at the Mac hall. I forget which one... the organizers booked some Australian band as the opener for the headliners Suffocation who I was there to see. Still my favorite death metal band. Anyways apparently this Australian band used to be a white power band, I'm sure they "gave up" their BS for more commercial success. Anyways right before they played, all these skinheads showed up. I mean real jackbooted, red suspender wearing, swastika tattooed ass holes. So they are up there hailing this Australian band. They finish, and Suffocation comes kn the stage, who happen to have black band members. It got more than a little tense for a while, Frank with Suffocation is up there with his heavy NY accent telling them to "Get da #### outta here" and they wouldn't. Thought it was gonna go sideways but eventually the idiots left and Suffocation killed it.