The Concert Hall It's Almost Summer Already? Q101 Jamboree 1998! Creed

Entertainment Aveneue May 23 1998

All seemed to be going well until Wendy Snyder and Bill Leff, the morning radio team from Q101 hit the stage. Why? Well, Wendy commented how nice the weather was. “Kiss of death,” I thought to myself. I could picture the storm clouds growing over the horizon, ready to make their assault on the masses, but for now, I was at least happy that if torrents of rain did start to come down, I was under the protection of the pavilion for a band that shocked the hell out of me. That band was Creed.

Why was the hell shocked out of me after seeing Creed? Well, it was a combination of many things. One, alright, like I said before, and might even say again in this article, I really didn’t know a damn things about Creed. Q101 has been playing one of their songs on the radio, and it really, in comparison to the set Creed played, is really not a good representation of the band. Two, I found that traditional, heavy-metal posing is not dead, but alive and well and living in a band called Creed. Three, much like Eve 6 reminded me of how much I liked the punk style, Creed reminded me of how much I still like guitar driven, heavy-metal sounding, head banging, drop my voice and octave and try to sound scary style of music. This band didn’t seem like it belonged at this music festival, but the boys of Creed sure seemed to pick up some new fans.

Coming out, it was a full blown assault saying to me something like “Grundge is dead. Metal is back! Long live metal!” With the standard guitar blasting, bass riffing, and fuck-em all let God sort it out attitude, Creed first had me standing there almost in shock, and then admiring the guitar posing, solo posing, and watching Scott Stapp, the lead singer dude, making eye contact and waving at the girlies. Suddenly I had dreams of being in a heavy metal band again! The people in the crowd began to turn to Creed’s way of music, begin to bang their collective heads, and suddenly seemed to find themselves liking the band even though they had no idea what the songs were that they were playing.

So, for Creed, it’s TWO BIG OL’ THUMBS UP from me. And although somewhat gentle looking at times, I’m kinda afraid that if I didn’t give them a good rating, well, they’d hunt me down, find me, and kick my ass.