In Defense of Metal

A friend of mine recently wrote to say he had “tried” metal and didn’t “get it”. I have forgotten which bands he had seen and I deleted the email as not worthy of a response. But in thinking about his criticisms; about it not having a rhythm or interesting vocals or complexity or whatever it was he said, I thought he may be right as I didn’t know the bands he had seen. I often have the same criticisms of particular bands or subgenres, but nevertheless I still consider myself a Metalhead. And, as a Metalhead I am a defender of the faith and owe him a response defending, if not all, at least my own shortened list of preferred metal bands and subgenres.

First and foremost, I am a Metallica fan. That is where my journey to becoming a Metalhead started – like a lot of women, probably, with a then-boyfriend asking me to listen to a song or two off the Black Album. I wasn’t impressed enough at the time and I don’t know which songs I heard – probably Nothing Else Matters or The Unforgiven which resonates with me – but I remembered the album years later and gave it a true listen. I was blown away by the rhythm, by the complexity, by the lyrics and because I could hear and understand the lyrics. My picture of metal suddenly changed when I listened to that band. A decade later I’ve seen 20 Metallica shows in 4 countries, 6 states – large settings and small and will continue to travel anywhere to see them play. Where else can you see circle pits where black-clad tough guys ringing the pit are singing along to the love song, Nothing Else Matters.

Although my journey into the world of metal began with Metallica it has stretched far beyond: there are subgenres I just don’t care for such as death and black metal. I just don’t find the music complex and interesting and without lyrics I can understand I must steal my nephew’s term for it: Cookie Monster Rock. If you just sing “I want a cookie” in time with the music and distorted lyrics you pretty much have the song, but it gets rather boring after a while. For all the bands I don’t care for, there are so many more that have interesting elements. Volbeat, a Danish metal band influenced by Johnny Cash, has the most amazing staccato vocals – hard to sing to but that doesn’t stop their loyal followers – and this from the former lead vocalist for a death metal band. Alice in Chains brings tuned down guitar/Seattle grunge with harmonious vocals. Alice Cooper still puts on the most theatrical of shows and he’s been doing this for 4 decades. Rob Zombie – his music is more on the industrial side of the subgenres, has interesting themes to his lyrics (one song is based on words from the Clockwork Orange) and he puts on a pretty amazing show, thoroughly engaging his crowds. And Zakk Wylde, who ranks up on the list of virtuoso guitar performers occasionally breaks out a keyboard and wows the audience with his soulful lyrics and music.

Because I was curious about the music genre as a whole, having missed it as it was happening – I grew up listening to country music off KRAK radio in Sacramento, I explored early metal band influences Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and listened some to American thrashers where speed is king (Anthrax, Testament, Machine Head) and even some punk bands (Greenday and the Offspring) along with a lot of other styles and types. These days I have narrowed my focus: I want clean vocals with lyrics that I can understand and resonate with me; I want interesting musical choices with some complexity; and above all else I want to see the very best guitarists show off their hours of practice and developed skills. Regardless of whether I have a full appreciation of the catalog of a band, I have made it a point to see some of the best electric guitarists around: Satriani, Vai, Malmsteen, the twin axes from Judas Priest and even the whining Dave Mustain from Megadeth.

So, what I say to my friend who has written off the entire genre of Metal – don’t be so quick to write off this varied music. Have a listen to Metallica’s Black Album (sold under the title Metallica if you are looking for it on I-tunes); check out some power or symphonic metal (think Trans Siberian Orchestra or Nightwish); listen to some Volbeat (Live Beyond Heaven & Hell is one of my favorites to put on my old Ipod and go skating); check out some fringe folk metal bands (Finntroll who is Norwegian but sings in Swedish); or some good old timers now thought of more as rock and roll such as AC/DC or KISS. Sacramento’s Tesla will be in action at the Capitol Park on June 28 and that band clearly has two great guitarists in Frank and Dave – always a fun show.

After that, if you want to say you don’t like Metal, then you have given it a fair test. Keep in mind you probably won’t like the new country music, either, since it sounds a lot like old school metal or hard rock (thanks, Eric Church).

Orion Day 2

Given how tired the crowd looked going into Day 2 as we dragged around the earlier part of the day, I was worried that the main draw might be less well-attended or might be a bit flat — so wrong.  I don’t know how Metallica does it, but they turned it up to 11 with a rampage through Blackened and continued through I Disappear, and my personal favorite Carpe Diem and the more usual standards.  It was an old school show — like the ones I first saw them give in Europe in 2007. A little pyro, some fireworks during One and a lot of flying fingers.  By the time they got to the second encore  and Seek & Destroy it sounded like the crowd was roaring back lyrics at nearly the same decibel as the sound system.  No doubt it was heard in downtown Detroit.  Think of the fear that could strike into the heart of an enemy camp just before battle.

Because of the transportation snafus the day before (some people queued for 3 blocks), I left the hotel early so I could avoid a potentially long wait but I found no lines and got the festival grounds shortly after it opened.  I had seen all of the attractions the day before so opted to hang out on the soccer pitch that hosted the 1994 World Cup, listening to different bands as they came onto the 3 stages nearby.

The comment of the day was made by FIDLAR front man Zac Carper while his band was setting up on the Damage, Inc. stage while Dillinger Escape Plan could be heard screeching from the Fuel stage about 150 yards away: “What’s he so angry about?”  Good question — there is nothing angry about FIDLAR’s surf-punk style and it was even more entertaining than the album as Zack bounced around the stage, keeping the sign language interpreters busy imparting the energy and excitement of the performance as well as the lyrics.  The three women who traded off during the show only added to the fun as FIDLAR, which stands for Fuck It Dog, Life’s A Risk took us through a too-short set.

I enjoyed Cauldron’s trad metal set but was really impressed with Fu Manchu — although long billed somewhat as stoner metal, the set was filled with a bit of funk and southern metal. The guitar player was screaming good and if anything was really absent at this Orion Festival, it was memorable guitarists.  But, like Metallica, the Orion Festival imparted a complexity to the music served up and I heard no one who was unhappy about the variety of music. 

Orion: Day 1 Kills ’em All

For anyone who thought they could skip out on day 1of the Orion + More festival because Metallica was only scheduled as the closer for Day 2 — oh, you missed out.  You missed the boyz taking the Damage, Inc. small stage at 4 p.m. to play the entirety of the Kill ’em All album where it all started.  The scheduled band was something called dehaan but the band that went on was officially called what Metallica long ago wanted to name its first album: Metal Up Your Ass.

I had been enjoying the Dropkick Murphy’s show on the main stage complete with kilted piper and Boston-Irish themed songs when the lead vocalist announced that Metallica was playing old school music on another stage.  Fans, beers in hand, went into full out sprints to the other end of the festival grounds.  Hetfield even commented during the show they were worried that no one would know and show up for their set — yeah, right.  If they play, we will come.  I doubt that will ever change.  They were just finishing up Hit the Lights (the first song on the album) when I arrived and they proceeded through the album in order.  For me, the highlight was RobertTrujillo playing Anesthesia — the song that Cliff Burton was playing with James and Lars when they first saw him play in the early 80s.  It was quite the tribute to the departed bassist.

As I think back on the entire day, bass playing was the most noticeable aspect on the day: Infectious Grooves (Trujillo, again, adding the funk) to Silversun Pickups (Nikki Monninger) to the Red Hot Chili Peppers with Flea captivating the stage, despite nice performances by Josh Klinghoffer who has replaced Frusciante.

The festival, is as promised, much more than just cars.  This year I managed to check out the cars — Rick Dore is “the guy” in car resto — the motorcycles, artwork, two motorcyclists going around in a largish hamsterball — most impressively to me, these guys look to be in their 40s at least, so I guess hamsterballs are the safest place to ride.  I also checked out the Museum with the guitars and for some reason the tuxes worn by the boyz in the Load/Reload days.  I should note here at the end of the Kill em all show, Hetfield said “next up Load” — wouldn’t that be a kick.  Someone at the festival said they had heard them practicing Carpe Diem.

The only downside to the entire day is the festival transportation — school buses take us from the convention center to Belle Isle,
Yesterday I had about 3/4 of a block wait for bus transportation, but others coming 2 hours after me said it was up to 3 blocks long.  So, I’d normally wait to go over until later today but with that in mind, I’m going to head out early.  Unfortunately, the same will probably be true for all the other metalheads.

Danish Rockers Close Out Reno’s St. Patrick’s Day

Volbeat, a Danish metal/rock/rockabilly band touring the US, might seem like an unusual choice to see on St. Patrick’s Day but this is  group well worth seeing almost any time.  I can always catch an Irish jig at a local pub but when the Danes storm the US they do it with such intensity you cannot help but headbang and dance right along with them.  And, the band has even captured one of our own Americans to play lead guitar, Rob Caggiano formerly of Anthrax.

I don’t think this was one of their best shows.  Twice now I’ve seen them on Sunday nights and I just think the crowd isn’t quite as energetic as it should be — especially not after a long day of drinking the green beer in Reno.  The response of the fans is really what makes this one of the most entertaining shows going, however this night the front was into it as usual.  I managed to find myself about 1/3 of the way into the long narrow venue, just ahead of the sound boards.  Unfortunately, for me it was right in the path to the toilets and I got jostled left and right all evening, distracting me from really being able to get into the music.  The fans behind the sound board were just lightly nodding their heads to the music so I didn’t want to move further back toward the door.  By the end of the show I had moved mostly out of the pathway which seemed to coincide with Volbeat really gelling.

The band was late arriving, leaving fans standing outside in the cold sobering up for a couple of hours. And, that clearly didn’t help the mood.  It certainly didn’t help mine as I arrived half an hour after the doors should have opened,  and still waited in line for about 2 hours to get in, missing the first band.  I also have to say that if I can avoid it, I will not visit the Knitting Factory in Reno again.  I really dislike the venue and this night did nothing to improve it — from being outside long after the doors should have opened to what felt like an overly sold-out crowd, with minimal security.  It has been a long time since I’ve been to a show where I just didn’t feel safe.  The Knit, with that many people jam packed in, doesn’t look to have adequate escape routes.  In small venues with lots of people I try to stay fairly close to an exit — and there were two near the front and the one at the back entrance. It is a long narrow venue,  with no way for me to move forward and pushing my way to the back would have been a challenge as well.  So, I stayed put well into the show with the soundboard fence in my back, getting squished against it as people passed by.  I pushed back on quite a few who didn’t have enough room to really pass by — there was this one short very overweight guy who passed by the group of us standing at the fence 5 or 6 times — dude, get your prostate checked or stay in the toilets.

Despite the venue, the late start, and the packed house, Volbeat did what it could to make me forget those issues.  They also had at least one good intro band in Danko Jones.  The music from the Canadian 3-piece has some similarities and was a good choice to tour with Volbeat.  Danko could lay off the soap box a bit more and have a much more effective 30-minute set, but he is a talented vocalist.  I will have to give a listen to the lyrics a bit more closely to see if they have any depth.

I don’t really have any other music outings planned until I head to Detroit in June to catch Orion Festival with Metallica and the ‘Peppers.  Looking forward to visiting yet another town where the Metalheads can class up the joint, like the same festival did last year for Atlantic City.

Vai delivers the entertainment

You never quite know what you will find at any rock or metal show, but you really don’t know when you walk into a Steve Vai show.  So an opening act with a bluesy Beverly McClellan, sporting a shaved head, a voice somewhere between Tedeschi and Joplin, and with skills on guitar and keys wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility.  She was mostly unaccompanied except for one of Vai’s guitar techs provided some backing guitars on a couple of songs.

The surprise to me was that McClellan was capturing a good part of the audience. That’s rare for an opening act to have that much fan attention and I was sorry I missed a few minutes of her opening act.  She is a bit rough on her show-wo-manship yet she has that indefinable “it” factor of an entertainer who could even reach into Vai’s typical crowd that leans toward guitar shredder lovers on the edge of the metal world.  You probably won’t see her opening for Slayer any time soon, but she can definitely hold her own with opening for most genres.   Kudos to Vai for giving her a chance.

Vai’s set provided the “I’ve never seen that before,” element, also.  First time I saw him, he introduced me to the electric violin with the exquisite playing of Ann Marie Calhoun.  Last night at the Ace of Spades in Sacramento it was an introduction to the electrified harp.  Yes, that most gracefully of played instruments was electric and played by Deborah Henson-Conant.

Steve Vai certainly doesn’t need gimmicks to set himself apart, as his mad, mad, mad guitar skills always do that, but he wants to be sure his audience has the best possible show that he can give us.  So for 2 ½ hours (half the time he jokingly promised, but way longer than most headliners) he did that with instrumentals, a few vocals, interesting clothing choices (really, what was up with the Space Ace suit and the type of face shield Dr. Mallard wears on NCIS when he cuts into bones, all dolled up with Christmas lights?).

I don’t play guitar and can’t begin to explain what Vai does from a technical sense – or even give the type of music he plays a genre name for you to compare it – I can only tell you what he does with a guitar is all his own, no one else sounds like Steve Vai and it is magical brilliance.  Like with the other virtuoso guitar players of his generation (Satriani, Malmsteen, Johnson, Schenker, etc.) his sound is immutably his own.  So don’t be looking for Friday night’s cover band to be doing a Vai song.  Or, if you do hear it, take a close look at who is playing because it is likely to be a virtuoso, but still no matter how good they mimic, I promise you it will sound ever so slightly different.

What his music did remind me of is Jet Blue.  For two years as I traveled back and forth to New York a couple of times per month I would grab a seat in an empty row at the back of the plane, stretch out and put on my mix of the virtuosos which always included a heavy dose of Vai.  Those were good times and so was the show last night.  Can’t ask for more than that from any entertainer.

If you want to catch a Steve Via’s performance, look for his Club Nokia in Los Angeles gig that will be live broadcast on AXS TV this Friday, October 12 at 8:45 PT/11:45 ET! Visit this page to see which channel AXS TV is listed as in your area: http://www.axs.tv/subscribe/

Next up: undecided…will see what pops up.

Gone Country [for a night]

I was country when country wasn’t was cool, as Barbara Mandrell would say, and maybe it isn’t again.  I don’t know.  But, I’m talking about way before the heavy metal sound slapped me upside the head and got my attention.  All of which is to explain why I was sitting in a shopping mall parking lot venue at a Lonestar/Charlie Daniels Band concert Friday night.  I was country back in the day when Charlie Daniels was considered “the new kid” in the country scene and long before Lonestar appeared on the scene 20 years ago.

CDB

While I always enjoyed some of Lonestar’s songs, I was really there to see Charlie Daniels and to see one of country’s most bad ass fiddle players ever.  He is best known around the world for The Devil Went Down to Georgia, a smoking fiddle tune that really put him on the Country charts in 1979.  Watching him play fiddle was pure joy; he has a 6 piece band plus a guy who sat at the back of the stage restringing Charlie’s favorite bow and returning it throughout the first couple of songs.

CDB put on a show that clearly showcased the talents of all the band members, including Charlie as he switched over to guitar and played some pretty mean solos.  Overall, it was a lazy and confusing effort with two very long jazz-fusion sounding instrumentals and an incredibly boring drum solo in the 75 minute “opening act.”  Sadly, it added up to a not very interesting show from a band that had an unclear musical identity but has been around long enough to do better.

I understand Charlie Daniels is 75, has been touring for years and had a stroke from which he appears fully recovered as his music skills demonstrated, but he has a lot more catalogue from which to draw.  Pick a year, pick an album and just play everything from that if you have to, sit through the whole show, not just the first part, as BB King has been doing now for years,  but give your fans a better show in between the on-fire opening and the devil of a closing.

Lonestar

As for Lonestar – there is a band that absolutely deserves to be playing shopping mall parking lots.  The first 45 minutes of the show was a lackluster, mail-in performance.  From the Gen Admin bleachers at this 2500 seat temporary venue I had a good view of the crowd, which is mostly what I watched.  The front man wasn’t the most interesting and the keyboardist/sometime guitarist was more engaging but often stuck in one spot.

Throughout the show, a few people would get up to dance in front but the security guard would easily shoe them off to the side.  Finally near the end of the show, the crowd must have gotten so bored it rushed the stage, finally getting some engagement out of the band.  However, by then, Lonestar with its radio-friendly crossover sound and absolute lack of stage presence was a lost cause for me and a few others who were leaving the show.

Despite Lonestar’s performance, I have to say the venue at the Sunrise Marketplace is a nice 2500 seat open air stage with floor seating and general admission grandstand.  Plus it has the added bonus of being within a couple of miles of where I live.  And, despite the more than 100 degree temperatures during the day it cooled nicely for the evening performance.

Orion Music+ More Festival kicked (a lot of) butt

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people dragging out of a hotel as there were this morning after two consecutive days at Metallica’s music festival in Atlantic City.   You really didn’t need to see the wrist bands or black t-shirts to know if someone had been at the shows.  If they looked as exhausted as I felt, it was a god bet they spent the weekend headbanging and rocking with some awesome bands.

If possible, Sunday’s bill seemed a bit better.  Of course, any billing that has Volbeat, the Danish rockers who combine Johnny Cash/Elvis with metal to provide a fast-paced hard rocking show,  is guaranteed to be fun.  I had a great spot near the middle until the band started playing and I was pushed back and caught between two circle pits.  There was just a thin line between the two pits and I finally gave up and moved out to the side.  The sound was better, if not quite as wild a show.  I will go see them again and again — they are that much fun.

Before Volbeat came on the stage I was riveted to Gary Clark, Jr.’s how — holy moly.  How have I missed him, I don’t know.  He looks to be one the up and coming guitar virtuosos.  He can give Clapton a run.  It was goo bad he was up so early in the day and that more people didn’t get to see his show.  A lot of people will be regretting those few more minutes on the beach in years to come.

Ghost was on the main stage when I arrived.  Nothing like seeing Death, wearing a white robe and a papal hat, when you first arrive at a festival.  His bandmates were all swathed in white head to toe clothing.  The music was interesting enough to see and interestingly, they were all calm.  You wouldn’t expect Death to be running  around the stage, but rather they all conducted themselves in a regal manner.  This was the only band (besides Metallica) to play Download 2 weeks ago and I’m sorry I missed the full set in both places. 

Country performer Eric Church puts on a hard rocking show, which surprised me.  Mixed music festivals are always interesting to see performers work crowds not familiar with their catalogues.  While Metallica could easily have chose to put ECB on the second stage and put Avenged Sevenfold on the main stage because of the relative sizes of the crowd, I liked that they gave ECB the main stage and their fans, if they wanted a good position for the Met show, were hanging out.  I’d definitely go see an ECB show.

I tried stage left and ended up talking to a couple of guys whose combined total of shows seen dwarfs my paltry 15 shows.  One of them had just gotten Lars Ulrich’s  autograph tatooed on his arm.  They and their wives were a wealth of Metallica info — like why Hammett was doing the intro to Nothing Else Matters when every other time I’ve seen them, Hetfield does it: because that was the way they did it in 1992 when the Black Album was first played.   I wasn’t as impressed with the Black Album at Download as I was last night.  I suspect it had to do with where I was in the audience (front section) versus further back in the crowd.  The crowd energy does matter.

So, now I’m off to do a little sight seeing in Philadelphia before I wrap up the vacation and head home tomorrow.

Orion Music+ Festival is one class act

When you think of a heavy metal band putting on a music festival words that might pop into your head are “chaos”, “destruction” or “mayhem.”  You certainly wouldn’t think “detail oriented”, “well thought out” or even “classy”.  But, those are the words that describe the first day of the Orion Music+ Festival put on by Metallica in Atlantic City.

For a first-time festival event, I am gobsmacked, to use the British vernacular as nothing in American English quite does justice to how well organized this event is, down to the small things.  For example, in order to encourage recycling of plastic water bottles (and keeping people hydrated in the hot sun), they have provided free water refilling stations.  The festival owns the beverage concessions and rather than sell water at a profit or more beer for when they run out of water, someone has made the “right” choice of putting fan comfort and overall experience in front of bringing in an extra buck by encouraging free water consumption.  In a setting like Atlantic City where the food prices are outrageously high in the Casinos, I had a great sandwich at the park for less than at a deli in the Tropicana where I am staying and the festival food is competitively priced with other event food.

Not only is this a music festival, but Metallica has gone out of its way to share the interests of its band members.  So, if you want a break from the music on the four stages, you can check out a hot rod and custom car show(Hetfield); watch a skateboard exhibition (Trujillo); visit a horror collection (Hammett); see some films (Ulrich) or drop into the Metallica Museum.  The grounds are clean and while Atlantic City wouldn’t be my favorite site, it has a large collection of rooms within reasonable distance so they didn’t have to worry about the additional infrastructure required to have camping on site.  The downside to that is the attendance probably wasn’t quite as good throughout the day as if you had an audience captured in the middle of nowhere, such as Bonnaroo.  However, it does allow whoever Metallica hired for this event, to concentrate on making it the most positive of fan experiences.

While not perfect – a long walk to the hotels and little option for transportation because of the congestion on the two main drags of Atlantic City and probably less people came than Metallica would have liked (I’d guess 25-30K were at the show last night), it is a great start if they want to continue with doing a festival.  I like the smaller numbers and hope that Metallica keeps it at under 50K.  Both Download and Bonnaroo have between 70-100K and that make is harder to provide the type of experience that the Orion Festival showed me on Day 1.

So, what about the music?  Like the venue, the musicians seem to be chosen by the band members and it is an eclectic mix.  To further emphasize Metallica’s interest in this event, the band members were each coming out and introducing the bands and comedy acts.  I saw parts of 8 different bands in addition to seeing Metallica’s complete set that included the Ride the Lightening album and Jim Breuer’s Heavy Metal Comedy Tour.  Tops of the 8 were bands with animal names:  Modest Mouse, Artic Monkeys and Cage the Elephant all put on good shows.  Gaslight Anthem also was good.  However, I think a lot of metal fans were a bit surprised at the rock/punk influenced bands and didn’t “get into” the music as much as they could have.  I would be happy to see each of those bands again and, particularly, with fans who know and appreciate their music a bit more.

At the festivals where I have seen Metallica play I have always been struck by what a different experience seeing them there is to seeing them at one of their own shows with their fans.  They seem to have to work harder to bring the crowd in — and that was what was happening to the other acts  here yesterday.  Metal fans are a tougher crowd — we want something hard rocking, so when you give us something with melody and no guitar solos we may not be convinced.  However, capping it off with a good Metallica show makes it worth the day in the sun.

Gotta get going for Day 2.  There is a band on stage rocking the house already.

Post-Download Festival

I picked the perfect spot for a day of recovery after a weekend of standing, trudging through mud and headbanging with the Middelthorpe Hotel outside of York.  The converted Manor House first built in 1699 has a beautiful garden that was just perfect for giving a little more peace, quite and solitude than I had experienced over the previous three days.  The fact that a busy highway was next to the garden, which seemed about the same size as the Donington festival grounds, was a bit of a detractor but given where I had come from it seemed rather tame.

British gardens always seem to be built with a bit of surprise in them — you walk through a gate or around a corner and you come upon something you never expected.  Whether it is a sunken fence that marks the formal lawn from the “park”; or a stunning display of color as you walk through an archway, it is just lovely to go explore and see if you can find the designer’s intent.

All of which brings me back around to the primary reason I was in England, at all: seeing just how the Brits, who really gave us Rock N Roll and heavy metal, go about doing a festival.  Donington was the site of the Monsters of Rock festivals through the 80s and was revived about 10 years ago in its present form of Download Festival.  Like other the Scandanvian concerts I’ve been to, there is a much more lax atmosphere at the festival than I found even at Bonnaroo in the US.  Security may or may not pat you down or check your bag; directions inside the venue and out are hit and miss; seemed to me fewer security and only around the stage and at the gates.  It was a definite go with the flow kind of experience — actually what I would expect.  I saw no fights and the only time security got involved seemed to be when crowd surfers got close to the barriers or one guy in an American Indian headdress got over the security fence.  Other than that, it was a safe and fun environment where a lot of people came to party — and boy did they do that.  Alcohol sales were probably down on Friday but Saturday when it stopped raining and Sunday when the sun came out, were events to be celebrated.

People watching was primo here.  I gave up trying to take photos with my phone (the one thing the festival wasn’t lax on was the ban of SLR cameras) as there were just too many subjects.  Costumes were in frequent supply: various animal suits (bears and lots of tigers), hot dogs, teletubbies, skin tight red or blue suits (someone should have told the red one to go commando as the striped briefs showed through), a giant penis.  Then there were the men dressed as their favorite rock star outfits– whether Alice Cooper or the Steel Panther trios (very funny to see guys with guts in spandex and wigs) — and others in dresses, aprons and tutus, plus the guy in a hospital gown.  But, my personal favorite was shirtless bloke who had a roll of toilet paper on a bungy cord strapped around his waist.  You can never be too prepared, I guess, and since TP was in short supply in the toilets it made sense.  However,  he took it off and left it with his mates before wandering away.  Perhaps the girls wouldn’t dig it???

Now, the girls — few costumes; mostly the interesting ones wore short shorts with either tights or netted stockings and “wellies” — rubber boots.  Except for the woman on Sunday I saw in a white skirt and white platform heels  trying to make her way downhill through a mud bog to the toilets.

And the music — I got to see 18 full performances and a few other randoms snatches here and there.  It is a great venue for finding smaller bands that I might not otherwise get to see in the US and for catching some acts I have just missed.

Most surprising:  how much I enjoyed the Megadeth show.  I like a few songs but have long disliked Dave Mustain’s whining.  He is a great guitarist and he made me  want to take another listen to his music.  I would definitely go see him perform again.

Biggest missed opportunity: Black Label Society’s sound mixer should be fired.  Clearly, the sound guy wasn’t prepared for a show with 30-50K people as it wasn’t loud enough to be heard in the back and even 1/2 way down the hill you couldn’t hear Zakk Wylde’s vocals over the guitar.  I moved around the arena trying to get a good spot — admittedly  I couldn’t make my way to the front, but what an opportunity for BLS lost to introduce its music to a lot of people.  Many there know Zakk as a former Ozzy guitarist but his music can and should stand on its own.

Best not following the schedule:  This is a rock festival and everyone seemed to be exactly on time and following the program — until Sebastian Bach.  He is the former lead singer for 80s band Skid Row and Seb had the crowd going so he played a little longer than his allotted 40 minutes.  Good for him, it was a fun show.

Best videography: all shows now come with big screens so more people can see the musicians.  Metallica brought its own stage and big, big screen.  To Download’s credit, they took feeds from Metallica’s big screen for 2 of their 3 screens and it was much better fare than what appeared on the screens throughout the festivals.  The worst was Black Sabbath where Tony Iommi would be playing an amazing solo and they would show Geezer Butler doing a bass line — OK, bass fans may have thought that was cool but I wanted to see the guitar god do his thing.

I’m in Edinburgh for a few days before I head back to the states.  Will likely turn my music posts into a travel blog for a bit..

For some photos, please see:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2227533304041.64554.1719080774&type=1&l=e51821d345

Download Over and Out

The 10th anniversary of the Download Festival at Castle Donington Park closed out with the band that is responsible for much of the sound developed by rock ‘n roll bands and certainly by all heavy metal bands.  Sabbath, let by Ozzy Osborn, put on a decent show.  It is a tough spot — Sunday night closers for a festival that had been on-going since Friday; many campers arrived on Wedensday or Thursday.  I know I was exhausted and had it been a band of lesser importance I might well have skipped it.  But, I am glad that I got to see Guitar God Tony Iommi, who recently has been battling lymphoma, and finally got to see Ozzy.  He has such a different style than Ronnie James Dio, who led Sabbath in many of the years intervening between Ozzy stints as lead vocalist. 

I will have more thoughts about the shows and weekend later.  I am fortunate that I am only tired; so many of the festival partakers partook of way too much (and many) substances.  One of the funniest texts posted on the screen between shows on Friday said:  “Bill – good/bad news.  Your mum called and you have a job interview and (urine) test Monday.”   Not many of those I saw this morning are likely to make an employer proud tomorrow!

Off to York then Edinburgh before I head to the US east coast and Metallica’s Orion Festival in about 2 weeks.