Seattle, Dec. 7, 1996

By MATT BOWEN

Deck the Hall Ball is a musical Christmas festival put on every year by a Seattle radio station called The End. This year's Deck the Hall Ball consisted of The Eels, Fun Lovin' Criminals, Stabbing Westward, Luscious Jackson, silverchair, The Presidents, and Orbital. The Presidents and silverchair were co-headliners, but The Presidents got to have the longer set.

At 5:00 p.m. a DJ for The End, Bill Reed, introduced each band with a pause between each of them to hear the applause from the audience. When he said silverchair, the crowd erupted. silverchair got twice the response from the audience than the Presidents did. Nothing went on schedule -- silverchair was set to go on stage at 8:20, but Luscious Jackson wasn't finished until 8:30 and then they setup silverchair's gear. Surprise guests Super Deluxe came on stage and played three acoustic songs through Daniel's amps. When they completed their set, the technicians began setting up the rest of silverchair's gear. It was taking a while and I could tell there were guitar problems.

Finally silverchair was introduced but they didn't come on stage. Reed was trying to keep the crowd entertained by shooting a super soaker and telling jokes. He finally told the crowd, "There is technical difficulty, technical guitar problems, they should be on in about five minutes." Well, it took longer than that. After 10 minutes, he said, "They are getting on the plane in Australia and they should be here in about 12 hours, no, just kidding, really, they are here!" After the long eager wait, Reed introduced them for the second time by saying, "OK, now here's silverchair, for real this time!" It looked like they weren't going to come out again because it took a while, but after a couple of minutes Daniel walked on stage, followed by Ben and Chris (with his newly shaved head).

Daniel didn't look very happy. He walked on stage rather quickly, and without any words they began Madman. Halfway through the song Daniel stormed across the stage at full speed holding his guitar like it was a machine gun, and his guitar cord fell out. Technicians ran on stage and 20 seconds later Daniel's guitar was plugged back in. Ben or Chris kept playing the song without Daniel.

After Madman, they played Leave Me Out, which was a little bit different than the other live versions I have heard. Daniel played more lead guitar, imitating the rhythm with lead. It sounded very good, but there was a lot of vocal distortion. Still without any words said to the crowd, they played The Door. This was a definite crowd pleaser, but there was still vocal distortion.

After The Door was over, Daniel said, "Sorry for taking so long to get our shit setup. This song is dedicated to all the people backstage," and then they played Suicidal Dream. The techs finally figured it out and turned the vocal volume down and the distortion was gone. Then Ben and Chris left the stage and Daniel played Cemetery, which sounded absolutely amazing. The pit was still crazy -- there was a very large circle pit during the song, which I couldn't really understand since Cemetery is a slow song.

When it was over, Ben and Chris came back on stage as Daniel was saying, "Thanks, thank you very much, keep jumping around, it's very inspirational, YEAH! This song is called 'Yesterday,' it's dedicated to you." Daniel slightly changed the lyrics to Tomorrow by saying "the water is did you know well very hard to drink." Before the next song, Daniel said, "Thanks, now we're gonna play well. The next song is our second single here, and our first single everywhere else in the world, off the new album, it's called Freak Show and it's not very good, this is called Freak."

The pit was fucking crazy, everyone rocked out to this one. I had only heard one other live version before this, but it was a lot different than the other version I have heard, I'm not sure if it was intentional or if it was a mistake, but I will explain what I mean.

Before, it went like this: "No more babies, your babies got rabies, sitting on a ball, in the middle of the Andes. Yeah, I'm a freak, of nature, yeah, I'm a freak. Try to be different, well get a different disease..."

And now it went like this:

"No more babies, your babies got rabies, sitting on a ball, in the middle of the Andes. Yeah, I'm a freak, of nature, yeah, I'm a freak. If only I can be as cool as you, as cool as you, body and soul I'm a freak, body and soul I'm a freak, try to be different, well get a different disease..."

The words are the same in both versions, but the song is now completely rearranged. During the song, Daniel was singing "as cool as you, as cool as ALL OF FUCKING YOU!" and pointed to the crowd, which got them going even more -- something which I thought was impossible.

Without a pause they went into Faultline and the pit remained heavy. After Faultline they played Slave and the pit was as big as it could get. Slave rocked as usual and there wasn't much of a change between this and the other live versions I've heard except that the pauses were a little longer and there was no "GO!" at the end. I don't know the exact lyrics to Slave; I read a while back on the Israel's Son website that this certain part was "a place where I can't die..." but anyways, when Daniel said that he raised his arms in the air and eyed the ceiling, like this was the place.

After the loud and powerful ending of Slave, they played Pure Massacre and after it Daniel said, "Thank you all very much. Yeah! Seattle rocks! See now here we're having a good time with the crowd, in South America, Ben told the crowd they're all fucked and then we got, kinda, bottles thrown at us, etc. etc. YEAH! All right, go!" Then Chris began Israel's Son with a very distorted fuzz bass. They ended the song with a lot of noise as usual, and Daniel walked up on the the pedestal that the drums were on and began hitting Ben's cymbols with his guitar. Ben walked out and mooned the crowd and walked off with his shorts at his knees. Chris and Ben left the stage, but Daniel was making weird sound effects with his guitar, and then he put his guitar down and began crawling on the stage very slowly. He acted very worn out and out of breath. When he finally got up he went over and gave his guitar a couple of kicks and walked off the stage.

This was my first time seeing silverchair in concert and I was truly amazed with their live act. I've never seen anyone run around the stage dancing and headbanging like Daniel. He went absolutely crazy, he was shaking a lot, not out of nervousness, just shaking really fast and using all the energy he had. During Madman he went up to the amp and did this dance that looked like he was humping the amp -- it was hilarious!

Their sound was even better than their act. Five bands went before them and two after them, but silverchair's live sound blew every band away. The bass and bass drums were so powerful and the guitar sounded so clear. There were bands that didn't turn the volume on their amps up loud enough, and there were bands that cranked it too much, like Stabbing Westward. They were so loud that all I could hear was a blur in my ears because of all the distortion, but silverchair's sound was just right.

The Edge broadcast six songs from the show live on the radio: Tomorrow, Freak, Faultline, Slave, Pure Massacre and Israel's Son.

Set List:
Madman
Leave Me Out
The Door
Suicidal Dream
Cemetery
Tomorrow
Freak
Faultline
Slave
Pure Massacre
Israel's Son