You know how you build up expectations about an event, and you know it can't possibly live up to everything you wanted, but you hope it's just a small thing or two that's not quite right?
That's NOT what happened with the Metallica concert. It was unbelievable! It was everything I could have wished for, and THEN some!
***
Some years ago I fell in love with Metallica's S&M release, recorded live with the San Francisco Symphony. On it, the audience sings the refrains on "Master of Puppets," and it's hard to understand the words. Of course I looked up the words, but the audience was in such a frenzy, I thought: *I* want to go to a Metallica concert and sing "Master of Puppets!" I want to be one of those people who know, when that particular chord progression is struck, that this song is starting!
I did. They did. We did. I bellowed "Master of Puppets" at Hetfield, who was maybe 30 feet away from me and facing me, house lights on.
***
I had the sweetest concert tickets anyone has ever bought! We were in Row C, in what I had thought was the middle section, from the seating chart. Au contraire: it was the bottom section, rinkside (this is the hockey arena when metalheads aren't rocking the rafters). And Rows A-B were kept clear for Security. WE WERE IN THE FRONT ROW, just high enough to see over the heads in the mosh pit, facing the microphone and extended ramp that Hetfield used most! Hammett and Trujillo traded off facing us, too, and it was like they were in our living room. I got to see the dueling guiltars more clearly than if I had been watching a professionally videotaped event. No video monitors in the place: just this huge stage, in the center of the arena.
It was very intimate, for those of us in the *ahem* front row. Maybe not so much for the folks up higher.
***
LIGHT SHOW! The coffins scattered about the ceiling were lighting fixtures (this was the Death Magnetic tour). At the beginning ("Call of the Ktulu") they dropped low and cast black light on the stage, and then fixtures around the stage sent many pinpoint beams of green light in parallel lines to make walls all around the stage - Lisa called it "String Art!"
Just after "The Memory Remains," and just before "One," the whole band left the stage and it went dark - and then, suddenly, these eight-foot jets of flame shot up from various points in the stage. I had seen little pilot light thingies while the crew was still setting up, but thought I must have been seeing lighter flames from anxious floor fans. No no no. I think there were six of these enormous torches, and we in the VIP seats could feel the heat from them!
Later - during "Fight Fire with Fire" - some different torch-type flares shot up out of a raised platform that they had taken turns strutting along (but not while flaming). These were four different colors, but still hot.
***
THE CROWD. I had expected a young, facially pierced, black-leather-clad, surly crowd of Goths. But I was surprised. We were by no means the oldest people there. It was a mixed crowd, but generally trending older than I would have thought - plenty of us Gray Panthers (and Cougars) - although younger than the Pink Floyd crowd, in general. And the young people were not all belligerently cool - in fact, they were pretty dorky, in the aggregate. We felt very much at home.
I wonder if it's depressing to be Metallica and see your fans in their 40s and 50s?
***
THE SET LIST. Lots from the new album, Death Magnetic, but plenty of favorites, obviously. "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" and the title track from Master of Puppets; part of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" as well as "Ktulu" and "Fire" from Ride the Lightning; freaking EVERYTHING from the Black Album - no, that's not true. They didn't play "The Unforgiven (The Lemonade Song)", for which I am grateful.
Okay, honestly, Black Album songs: "Sad But True," "Wherever I May Roam," "Nothing Else Matters," and "Enter Sandman." From other albums: "The Memory Remains" (with audience singalong, "Dance, little tin goddess" and associated na-na's), "One" (yeeeeaaahhh!) and encore "Seek and Destroy."
On many of the songs - including "The Day That Never Comes," which Sara calls "The Song That Never Ends" - they did curtailed versions, to keep the energy up. But I think I could have managed to stay energized while watching the lights flash off the guitars, and the body language of the performers. (Hetfield strutted, Hammett looked like a sweet girly-man, and bassist Trujillo kept planting his feet wide apart and humping his guitar.)
***
THE PLAYERS. Lars Ulrich, the drummer, was first onstage, and first to be introduced. Asshole. We hate Lars, because of his position on P2P file sharing. One of the Sweet Young Things who works with me was hauled into court for file sharing, and she blames Lars. And I'm on her side. <chuckles> He is very creepy - his crowd interaction consisted of spitting big fountains of water into the mosh pit - but one hell of a drummer.
Hetfield was in good voice for a live concert - more growling and hollering in tune than the silky singing he manages on the newest album. Incidentally, I can call it an "album" without your mockery, thank you, because it was released on vinyl. Anyway, it was great, considering the audience was bellowing right along.
I guess if I had to find one way in which it wasn't ENTIRELY perfect, it would be the bass. I couldn't hear Trujillo kicking ass on the bass licks. Yes, I had earplugs in, and yes, they had it cranked to where you could feel it vibrate in your tummy and your teeth. It may be the way they had it mixed, or it may just be that nobody is Cliff Burton. Or the doublebass section of the San Francisco Symphony.
***
UPDATE: Here is the Post-Dispatch review. Man, I wish I wrote that.
It's the absolute BEST when not only does the concert performance live up to or even exceed your expectations, but you have kick-ass seats to boot!
Glad you had an awesome time.
Posted by: Nicole | November 20, 2008 at 02:18 PM