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Jul. 22nd, 2002 06:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wickedfleaI was just thinking about the time I was driving to Jackson with my friends to see a Metallica concert. We had lovingly used white shoe polish to decorate my GLC's back window with a warning to everyone else on the road:
"WE'RE GONNA SLAM LIKE FUCK."
You have to understand that we were Mississippi kids who were starved for extreme music. And this was early 1989, in the days when Metallica was still a great band. Yes, kids, I know it's hard to believe, but there was a time when Metallica was a reaction against bloated, ridiculous, corporate rock and not the perfect embodiment of it.
Actually, at that point, signs were beginning to appear that Metallica had entered a decline. Their stage show had begun to feature a lot of pyrotechnics, and they were beginning to do that call-and-response thing with the audience. You know, the "I can't hear you" bit. And speaking of the audience, it had started to become a typical arena-rock crowd, with girls flashing their tits and guys throwing empty whiskey bottles at the stage. As it turned out, we didn't even get to do that much slamming at that show because the rubes there didn't know how to slam. (This was in the days before there were pits showing up even in Motley Crue videos.) It was Fist Banging Mania. Outside the arena, the scene was even more embarassing, with a crowd of rednecks doing their own rendition of the Wizard of Oz "oh-eee-oh" thing from . . . I dunno, whichever song on . . . And Justice for All that was. Oh yeah, "Frayed Ends of Sanity."
By the next time I saw Metallica in 1991, it was practically over. I was severely disappointed by their self-titled "Black" album and thoroughly sickened by their seemingly endless string of videos, many of which (particularly "Nothing Else Matters") could have easily been mistaken for one of Bon Jovi's. When I heard that they were coming to Jackson again, I never seriously considered buying a ticket. One night, however, I was listening to the radio (a rare occurrence) when they were giving away two tickets for the show. What the hell, I figured, and called in. Sure enough, I won, so Wes and I borrowed Melissa's car and went down for the worst concert of our lives.
We were under no illusions about what this concert was likely to be; the pretentious "An Evening with Metallica" printed on the tickets were one signal that we were in for a load of crap. Sure enough, we got to the coliseum just in time for a half-hour movie that substituted for an opening act. Yes, a movie, in which we were treated to such compelling sights as thousands of Metallica CDs moving down the conveyor belts down at the old Elektra plant.
Then, as if the movie weren't bad enough, the band came on. A more perfect example of overblown, passionless, by-the-numbers bunch of arena rock I've never heard. It was just terrible. The only good part of the whole show was when they broke into the opening riff of the Sabbath chestnut "Symptom of the Universe" -- and then they fucking stopped! Hetfield said, "What, would you rather hear Black Sabbath than us?" Wes and I responded by screaming, "YES!!!" (This earned us nothing but disbelieving stares from the cretins around us.)
Sometime early in the show, Wes asked me if I wanted to leave. For some reason, I said no; I think I wanted to be convinced beyond all shadow of a doubt that this was, in fact, the worst band on the planet. It didn't take long. In the middle of "Seek and Destroy," the band broke down and did the call-and-response thing with the audience -- for fifteen fucking minutes. It was now official. Metallica had become Spinal Tap. That remains the only show I've ever walked out of in disgust.
"WE'RE GONNA SLAM LIKE FUCK."
You have to understand that we were Mississippi kids who were starved for extreme music. And this was early 1989, in the days when Metallica was still a great band. Yes, kids, I know it's hard to believe, but there was a time when Metallica was a reaction against bloated, ridiculous, corporate rock and not the perfect embodiment of it.
Actually, at that point, signs were beginning to appear that Metallica had entered a decline. Their stage show had begun to feature a lot of pyrotechnics, and they were beginning to do that call-and-response thing with the audience. You know, the "I can't hear you" bit. And speaking of the audience, it had started to become a typical arena-rock crowd, with girls flashing their tits and guys throwing empty whiskey bottles at the stage. As it turned out, we didn't even get to do that much slamming at that show because the rubes there didn't know how to slam. (This was in the days before there were pits showing up even in Motley Crue videos.) It was Fist Banging Mania. Outside the arena, the scene was even more embarassing, with a crowd of rednecks doing their own rendition of the Wizard of Oz "oh-eee-oh" thing from . . . I dunno, whichever song on . . . And Justice for All that was. Oh yeah, "Frayed Ends of Sanity."
By the next time I saw Metallica in 1991, it was practically over. I was severely disappointed by their self-titled "Black" album and thoroughly sickened by their seemingly endless string of videos, many of which (particularly "Nothing Else Matters") could have easily been mistaken for one of Bon Jovi's. When I heard that they were coming to Jackson again, I never seriously considered buying a ticket. One night, however, I was listening to the radio (a rare occurrence) when they were giving away two tickets for the show. What the hell, I figured, and called in. Sure enough, I won, so Wes and I borrowed Melissa's car and went down for the worst concert of our lives.
We were under no illusions about what this concert was likely to be; the pretentious "An Evening with Metallica" printed on the tickets were one signal that we were in for a load of crap. Sure enough, we got to the coliseum just in time for a half-hour movie that substituted for an opening act. Yes, a movie, in which we were treated to such compelling sights as thousands of Metallica CDs moving down the conveyor belts down at the old Elektra plant.
Then, as if the movie weren't bad enough, the band came on. A more perfect example of overblown, passionless, by-the-numbers bunch of arena rock I've never heard. It was just terrible. The only good part of the whole show was when they broke into the opening riff of the Sabbath chestnut "Symptom of the Universe" -- and then they fucking stopped! Hetfield said, "What, would you rather hear Black Sabbath than us?" Wes and I responded by screaming, "YES!!!" (This earned us nothing but disbelieving stares from the cretins around us.)
Sometime early in the show, Wes asked me if I wanted to leave. For some reason, I said no; I think I wanted to be convinced beyond all shadow of a doubt that this was, in fact, the worst band on the planet. It didn't take long. In the middle of "Seek and Destroy," the band broke down and did the call-and-response thing with the audience -- for fifteen fucking minutes. It was now official. Metallica had become Spinal Tap. That remains the only show I've ever walked out of in disgust.
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no subject
Date: 2002-07-22 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-22 04:27 pm (UTC)Funny you should mention that...
Date: 2002-07-22 04:45 pm (UTC)Funny YOU should mention THAT....
Date: 2002-07-22 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-22 04:14 pm (UTC)Their contemptuous behavior, like we were eating off their plate, just made me realize how far they'd swung from where they were originally. What BS.
no subject
Date: 2002-07-22 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-22 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Yes. That is latin pop sensation Ricky Martin in the middle.
I like to call that photography "Proof that Metallica really is homosexual."
no subject
Date: 2002-07-22 05:14 pm (UTC)That's perfect -- three of a kind!
Date: 2002-07-22 05:28 pm (UTC)(And this reminds me of your post from this morning linking to your John Mayer drama. Don't you hate that -- when there's something you love, and it just gets all . . . FUCKED UP?)
no subject
Date: 2002-07-24 03:06 am (UTC)Hopefully there's no live footage from the afterparty on that one!