I actually think Beautiful Disease (The one that never officially came out) is far superior to Believe In Me.

I've never heard that, but it's funny, and based on my Creed experience I could easily see it:  I saw them about 6 month before they were the biggest band in the world.  I think they had one single starting to get quite a bit of airplay, but that was all.  About the same time, the sodapop "Surge" had just come out, and must have been sponsoring the tour.  The show sold so poorly that if you showed up at the door with two labels from bottles of Surge, they'd let you in.

It was a package tour, Creed/Fuel/The Gandharvas.  I ended up with a backstage pass, and was back there all night.  Watched Gandharvas from the side of the stage, then shot the shit with them.  Which ended up with them and Fuel feeding us beers and shooting the shit with us all night.  As the other two bands were playing and/or hanging out we never saw Creed at all. 

After Creed played, we did run into Scott Stapp for a second.  My buddy says to him, "Hey can we get a picture quick?".  He says "No, I gotta find somebody.", and he walked away. 

Honestly, if he'd have blown us off like that when they were the biggest band in the world, it wouldn't haver bothered me, but for him to have done it when you could get into the show with two $.99 bottles of pop he should have been kissing our ass for giving enough of a shit to ask.
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All that said (and actually on topic for the thread) I've never gotten why Nickelback and Creed get as much shit as they do.  I don't care for either of them, but they're just generic poppy rock bands.  There's been a million before them, there'll be a million after them.  At least they play instruments and write songs, that's way better than a lot of nationally televised halftime shows I've seen over the years.

That's awesome.  I actually saw Chris's solo act about a week ago.  They did two sets each about an hour and a half long. 
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It's pretty awesome standing in a small club watching these kind of guys just do their thing from about 5 feet away.  Didn't get a chance to meet Chris though, so it's great you met Rich.

I was there too.  Faith No More Started at 6pm, GNR ended at 2am.  At 15 I was bitching about all the people leaving early, but at 34 I sorta understand it a little more.

It kinda wrecked me for package concerts for the rest of my life though.  Nothing's ever going to be that cool again.

Also, I don't want to bang Tabatha Soren any less than I did 20 years ago.