Last nite was the big Skinny Puppy show at The Vic Theatre here in Chicago. I wasn’t very excited about the show until I read some reports from the first two and saw the set list. The show was very well done, but different from the Puppy shows back in the day. They had less in the way of props and more in the way of video, and they had a bigger band, 4 people, and it felt more “rock show” than they used to be, but it was still really good. After they played 4 new songs, they went thru a very fine selection of their older material, including some songs that I’d never expect them to play! The visuals they had were pretty damn cool and the sound was super loud, almost too loud in spots.
It was a weird feeling being there. Gone was the magic feeling I had at all those shows back in the day. I guess it is a combination of 12 years passing, and being much older, plus the absense of Dwayne, a lot of fog, and the Tgore props but as good as the show was, it didn’t grab me the way the ones did in the past. Was it worth the money? Hell yes! Am I looking forward to seeing them again tonite? For sure! But like I said, it is a different experience this time out. It was a lot of fun waiting in line with my old pal Ryan and reminiscing about the Puppy shows of the past we attending together, which I think really added to the fun of this one. It was also weird to notice that the average age of the people attending was the same as the average age of the ones attending 12 years ago! So this younger generation, who were in grade school when I was seeing SP back in the 80s and 90s were all there, with a lot more facial piercings than what you saw back in the day. It made me wonder how they got into the band, they obviously weren’t around back then, and there wasn’t much in the way of promotion of the band in the last 12 years since they were broken up.
So tonite is round two, and I can’t wait. Money well spent, and they didn’t end up tainting their legacy.
Drove from Fort Wayne, IN to see my first Puppy show in Chicago, June 15. I’ve been waiting 10 years to see them live. Couldn’t make it the second night, would very much like to have seen The Choke and Smothered Hope. The show was excellent, blew me away. Ogre is by far one of the best performers I’ve seen.
Does anyone have a complete ordered setlist for the June 15 show at the Vic???
was the encore the only set change on the second night?
To 20 more years of SKINNY PUPPY!
The main set was the same on the second nite. They just changed the encore to be The Choke, then Smothered Hope instead of Convulsion and Testure.