Helmet rocks Little Rock

Nov28th
2007
••

I’ve seen Helmet three times in my life now. First at the New Daisy in Memphis, second at the Gypsy in Dallas and most recently at Juanita’s in Little Rock. My friends know how much I love them. Traveling some ten hours one way to see them doesn’t surprise them. Paige Hamilton is what rock is about. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to shake your teeth loose with incomprehensible riffs. It really can be loud, clean and simple to make it work. Thus is Helmet.

I have to admit that when their first album in some eight years came out (”Size Matters”) I was left a little unimpressed. Years of listening to the same albums over and over again, and loosing them and re buying them to boot, beat into me the beauty that is this band. After driving to Dallas from south Alabama to see them play on the “Size Matters” tour, I grabbed the newest album with all mine.

After another line-up change, Helmet brought “Monochrome” to Arkansas. Yes it was a drive. Yes I could have saved four hours going to Atlanta instead. I had a bud coming from north Mississippi and it was time we saw them again.

The crowd of some 300+ people would be small in a bigger venue, but this club didn’t have arena sized room and with the atmosphere of the audience, it fit just right. The crowd was older. The band was older. They were still Helmet and the crowd still responded as if were ten years ago.

In the crowd was my best friend and a mom with her son, their first Helmet shows (have to start them off on the right foot after all). The rest was a mix of people I knew knew every word, and the singing along was proof positive, all the way to others that seemed that they just went because there was a show. Either way, the energy they put off and the atmosphere it creates makes any Helmet show an event to mark on my time line.

Set list from the clip board of Paige himself (thanks Erica):

1. Speechless
2. Swallowing Everything
3. Birth Defect
4. See You Dead
5. Like I Care
6. Crashing Foreign Cars
7. On Your Way Back Down
8. Blacktop
9. Exactly What You Wanted
10. Brand New
11. Give It
12. Wilma’s Rainbow
13. Meantime
14. Driving Nowhere
15. Unsung
16. Milquetoaste

Having the actual set list from the show is way too cool for words!

Much love Paige.

* Image credit my bud casey