15 December, 2003, The Boardwalk 350, Sacramento, CA.

review by Kylee

Where to begin? I made a trip out of Mark Lanegan's 3 California tour dates. Along with visiting a couple cities I'd never seen before, I was blessed with the opportunity to see my favorite musician three times.

The Sacramento show began a bit later than the final two shows. Enemy went on stage well after ten and played their standard set, which was outstanding on the parts of all three members. Troy is a lot more animated as frontman, joking around with the crowd, and moving around more. For example: after the set, before Kellii and Eddie could even get off the stage, Troy got down into the crowd, pretended he was a crowd member, and yelled, "You guys suck! Get the fuck off the stage!"

While the crowd for Enemy was sparse in the beginning, the guys proved their stuff and by the end there were more folks up front. This included a couple of idiotic women who actually WROTE their "requests" on a few of the set lists while the people setting up weren't looking. Have some respect, people. By the time Lanegan was due out, the crowd, while still very small, was standing up waiting. For reasons unknown to the crowd at the time, Lanegan took his time coming out. At one point a crew member came out and crossed some of the songs off of the set list.

Finally, Mark came out... ...

and disappeared into another door. Within a minute, however, he was climbing up the steps to the stage. The band got situated and the opening notes to Pendulum began. Up until that moment, I'd never had the opportunity to see Lanegan solo -- only with Queens of the Stone Age. While it was definitely spectacular to see him live, it became obvious immediately that something was wrong. He did not look well (as well as he usually does, at any rate).

If I recall correctly, they played Pendulum (foregoing Borracho, which had been crossed off broke my heart), Message to Mine, One Way Street, Sleep With Me, (foregoing Don't Forget Me, which hadn't been crossed off), Wedding Dress, Little Bit of Rain, No Easy Action/Miracle, Creeping Coastline, Death Don't Have No Mercy, (foregoing On Jesus' Program, which hadn't been crossed off, again breaking my heart!), (forgoing Because of This/Hotel, which had been crossed off), I'll Take Care of You, (foregoing Skeletal History, which hadn't been crossed off at any show but was never played at any California date), and Methamphetamine Blues.

The band exited, while the stage was prepared for the acoustic songs in the encore. It was not to be, however; after a moment they simply began breaking down the setup, with no encore. This was a disappointment, but the crowd took it well and simply began filing out. I was speaking to someone near where we'd been standing up front for the show, and Greg Dulli and Troy Van Leeuwen came over for a bit of a chat. They also explained that Mark had the flu very badly (as it had gone through the whole band throughout the course of the tour) so this was why the show ended up being comparatively short. Neverthless, it was definitely special to finally be seeing Lanegan's solo work live, although I did feel bad for him because he obviously felt like hell during the show. He's a trooper!