On This Day (11/13): Down
11/13/2007; The Meridian, Houston, TX
This is yet another complicated show for me to talk about because of circumstances that have occurred since. So let’s flash back to 2007. I was a young metalhead and, of course, like any other good teenage metalhead in Texas, I loved Pantera. I worshiped Phil Anselmo and his subsequent projects as well, including Superjoint Ritual and Down. I just thought Phil was so fucking badass and cool.
Of course, nowadays we know he’s a lunatic and a racist, and most of us an inkling about that back then too, but we kind of just overlooked it. I don’t know. The mystique of Pantera overwhelmed everything else, and it was a different time. Back then if there was plausible deniability that one of our heroes was an idiot or an asshole, we let them have a pass. We’re much less forgiving these days, and that is probably a good thing. I’m proud of the progress I see among my peers. I’m proud of the fact that younger kids are waking up to this nonsense and refusing to worship people like Phil.
But man, I loved Down back then. It was the closest I was going to get to seeing Pantera, and it was just such a wild time. A totally different feel than most shows I had been to at that point. You had that craziness of Texas fans, just losing it for Phil and Rex, women ripping their bras off and crowdsurfing, everyone just drunk and going apeshit. It was incredible. I’ve rarely seen a show like that again, to be honest. There was just a different vibe to it. It was so much fun. It was so dirty. It was like the stories of Guns n’ Roses shows in the late ‘80s packed into a tiny club. This just doesn’t happen anymore.
Regardless of anything Phil has done since, Pantera and Down put out some amazing music and this was a great night for the awkward, teenage nerd that I was back then. It was a taste of a world I hardly knew I was missing out on. I’ll never forget it, even if I can’t stand who Phil is now.
