Hairball Brings Their 25 Year Celebration to San Diego

Heather Vandemark
Apr 10
2 min read

Hairball rocked The Observatory North Park On Saturday night! The Observatory is my favorite venue in San Diego. The parking garage is right across the street and usually free for events. If you park in the garage, you will walk by the tour buses to get to the entrance, so you may happen to catch a glimpse of a band member out there. We see the big tour bus with the Hairball logo on the back and people taking photos next to it. Walking into the venue, everyone is awesome, security is always easy and friendly.

I will confess I don’t normally go see tribute bands, but Hairball is celebrating 25 years and selling out shows, that’s amazing! This was such a fun show with a lot of Gen X’ers, and those Gen X’ers brought their Gen Zs (me and Kaiya). It is truly an all ages show. Kaiya is 23 years old and is always saying that she wishes she grew up in the 80s, because we got to see all the iconic bands. We did! While some of those bands are still touring, it’s not quite the same. Hairball takes you on a time travel to those iconic 80s shows, where they have the voice and the mannerisms down that you forget it’s a tribute band.

The band consists of Brian HBK on bass, Billy on the drums, and Happy on the lead guitar with rotating vocalists Kris Vox, Dave Moody, and Patrick Stone. Patrick Stone (Budderside, Sweet, and other projects) ) recently joined the band taking the part of Steve Perry, Axl Rose, Ozzy, and Vince Neil. He absolutely crushed each one!

It’s not the same show every night. On this San Diego night, we got 2 hours of Motley Crue, Kiss, Alice Cooper, Journey, Queen, AC/DC, Guns N Roses, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Twisted Sister, and Ozzy. In the middle of the set, they asked two veterans to come up to honor them. They handed them each a flag, one American flag and one Wounded Warrior flag. Hairball has a long history of working with the Wounded Warrior Project. While the two veterans stood on the steps of the drum kit, Happy played the national anthem on guitar. With everything going on, I may have shed a few tears, it was absolutely beautiful.

Hairball hits a lot of cities on this tour. Buy the ticket and escape to the 80’s for a couple of hours. The mannerism and talent is great, you wouldn’t even know!