The
Main Street Armory loomed ominous beneath a moonless sky Tuesday night as
thousands lined up for the benediction within. It was like a scene out of a
movie, as the soulless shuffled shoulder to shoulder past the bible beaters,
buskers, and street-meat purveyors to the Twins
of Evil circus inside, led by Rob
Zombie and Marilyn Manson. All
that was missing were torches and howling dogs. Last night the Armory was more
of a rock ‘n’ roll abattoir, a fortress of fear, a genuine highway to hell. And
it was Rob Zombie’s night as he commandeered the joint like his own castle
Frankenstein. It was a positively brilliant show.
Don’t
get me wrong, Manson was good, too. It’s just that his darkness seems a little more
serious and consuming. It’s a scandalous spectacle indeed, with the man
challenging decency and deity at every turn. But he seems consumed by it, as
well. His sound was a lot more full-on rock than the
last time I saw him. But his brand of showbiz lacks Zombie’s irony and humor.
Zombie
roared out on stage with “Jesus Frankenstein,” and I’ve got to say, the stage
set alone was straight out of my teenage dreams. Robots and flaming cauldrons,
and confetti, and smoke, and skeletons, all before projected loops of classic
horror clips and stag reels (which led me to wonder, when is
Zombie going to do a Russ Meyer remake?). The setlist
only had two White Zombie nuggets, “More Human Than
Human” and the crowd fave “Thunderkiss
’65,” where guitarist John 5 kicked out the jams at lightning speed before
morphing into Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out.” What a mob, what a crowd, what a
scene, what a show.
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MUSIC INTERVIEW: Rob Zombie
This article appears in Best of Rochester 2012.
yes we did line up………and waited over an hour and a half to get in.we most of manson. main st armory is def the minor league.the bands were great, the fans,,,,were awesome.but the venue and staff suck.
May the staff in charge of admittance be struck by the crabs of one million prostitutes…. and may there arms be to short to scratch
Went here last night to see a show that I wanted to forever see, was pretty excited. Last time I went to the Armory was to see Korn and that went well. However when i went to see the Twins of Evil.. doors were suppose to open at 6, yet I was still outside in the cold at 9pm. The staff told the people with tickets to move to a back door so when we all went, thousands of people were turned down back there and told to go get back in line. After already standing in line I refused to go back to the end of the line for another hour after the staff were being a bunch of morons and being rude. If anything after a two hour drive and being so excited this show turned out to be the biggest disappointment I have ever seen. Paid well over $70.00 to see this show and missed half of it standing outside. Thanks a lot to the staff of the Rochester Armory, I will never buy tickets there along with many other people I know, it is the biggest waste of time.
Three hour drive and we saw two songs of MANSON. The armory should be very disappointed about their poor planning. I have been to over one hundred shows and I have never missed anything because of a wait to get in line. Disgusted! !!!! I will never go there again and I will let everyone know my experience with the Armory!
I completely agree with everyone here to a tee. I’m from Buffalo and drove 70 miles to see Manson. I experienced the same problems as everyone above did so I’ll try not to mention those and bring up other points. The problems first started with driving around for 30mins for a parking spot because the venue was not proactive enough to know the twins of evil tour had a large quantity of semi and buses that took up the parking for the guests who were forced to elsewhere, mind you i didnt mind paying for parking but all the places that nearby doing that were filled. So I had to park faraway in a sketchy neighborhood. This show was originally posted to be at the Blue Cross Arena but quickly changed to this ill equipped venue. If you look elsewhere the majority of this tour is in arenas and amphitheaters… or at least at venues that have their shit together. There are 3 entrance/exits to this venue and only 1 was being used while one was opened then shut on people as previously mentioned and the other for smokers,All this while Marilyn Manson was well into his set. I was told that it was the securities 2nd gig at the venue and they didnt have radios to communicate each other… oh im sorry I know high school volunteer av kids that use radios and the security cant? (which is somehow our fault) I was told the security couldnt arrive on time because there was no parking. When I went to complain at the box office, I told tix taker i was doing so and i was coming back and the kid turned out to be some punk that gave me attitude. Rob Zombie said that this place was too small to fit everything on stage. They were also allowing people smoke inside the venue. We should all get some what of a refund and start a petition against the venue or promoter who is behind this and for not taking proper steps of action to try to make this run smoother.
Directly from the Main Street Armory Facebook…We have been receiving a fair amount of complaints concerning the Twins of Evil tour that took place Tuesday 10-16-12. Long wait lines and over occupancy seem to be the main concerns. Most blame has been pointed in our direction, but these issues aren’t our fault and are instead a combination of errors. As many people may have heard Rob Zombie said, “the stage is too small.” The truth is, according to their production the stage was the correct size. We received their production layout months in advance and made the stage to their specifications, which was 60’ wide by 40’ deep. The actual problem was that they needed 3 steel trusses to hang their assorted equipment from. This aspect was not detailed in their production layout, and never in 7 years of hosting events have we been asked to accommodate three trusses for rigging. We set the stage to provide them with two. When they arrived Tuesday morning, their head of production told us that this was an issue and attempted to cancel the show. We offered to move the stage forward, so they could have 3 trusses available, but the fire marshall determined that moving the stage that far forward would cause occupancy issues. It was then decided that we would go forward with the show without the extra props considering it was close to a sold out show. Their head of production then found fault in our stage saying it wasn’t stable enough and wanted to cancel the show again. We have had some amazing national touring acts and have never had an issue with staging. But again we offered to accommodate their wishes by bringing a palette of plywood sheets and securing them to the entire decking of the stage. The head of production was unsure if the plywood secured to the decking would solve the issues and wanted to consult with the head rigger. Instead of quickly giving an assessment and response, he waited hours before giving the ok. Because of his lack of a timely decision, setup was pushed back past the opening of doors. Production didn’t want the doors open until they had finished their stage setup, which resulted in a long wait for the fans. Opening the doors on a timely matter is crucial for our venue. We have done crowds just as large without any issues. When opened on time, we get people in quickly and efficiently. Unfortunately, these circumstances made this impossible and for that we are sorry. We are currently making other adjustments to make our venue more accommodating. We will be removing the balcony behind the stage to allow for our third truss to be accessed and to allow the stage to be moved back further. These adjustments will allow such giant productions as Rob Zombie’s to have no issues in the future, as well as make more standing room for those of you in the crowd. We deeply apologize for any issues that may have occurred to you, or your accompanied guests. We will continue to listen to your concerns and devote time to resolving any current and future issues. We hope to have your continued business and promise to continue to bring some of the best national touring acts to our hometown of Rochester.
as a crew member on this tour let me tell you all how sorry we are for the problems with this show. trust us it was a bad day for us all. When we arrived at 8 am that morning ready to start loading in, we were disgusted to find the state of the venue. The stage which they claim has had thousand of artist on it showed its age. we tour with 1000’s of pounds worth of equipment and the legs on the stage were not equipped to handle the weight of our set. the decking on top of the stage was rotten and uneven. Now moving on to the rigging points, The armory says they have never seen a tour require three trusses (which is a complete lie) however it would not of been a problem and we could of made it work however the fact there was no rigging points from the midstage to the back of the stage which is never ever ok. (no place to hang back lighting, backdrop curtains, and video screens. so in essence the stage was cut in half which is why rob had to say the stage was to small since we only used half the stage . The tour had to bring in a structural engineer for the building as the management could not provide the riggers with any blueprints that stated how much weight could be hung from their building. Needless to say as a crew we sat around twiddling our thumbs for over 7 hours before it was decided that the show would go on. next problem was they had 1 forklift for 8 trucks and the forklift was made for inside and could not drive outside where the trucks were parked since the venue has no loading docks. So again we sat around waiting until new forklifts arrived that were capable of handling the gravel and dirt parking lot we were in. The whole experience was terrible for every party involved and again I would like to apologize for the terrible experience.