Here's where it all started.
Like most metalheads of my generation I started with Metallica. I remember asking my parents to buy me the One video VHS tape (odd I went with that in lieu of an actual cassette, but I'm on odd duck) and watching it over and over. I borrowed tapes of their first four albums from my friends and dubbed them until I bought my own copies. This is where my metal taste was born; I inevitably expanded outwards (Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer, etc.) but Metallica were the originals for me.
Fast-forward to the early 90s; I'm just about to start high school, and the Black Album comes out the summer prior. I was at skateboarding camp (another long story) in rural PA so I had my brother get my parents to take him to the store so he could get it for me (he was 10 at the time, I was die hard). I remember thinking that it wasn't as heavy as ...Justice but I enjoyed it nonetheless. When I found out they were coming to NJ in concert, I begged my parents to let me go.
Picture a line of people wrapped around a building waiting for the local store with a Ticketmaster terminal to open; they're all in leather jackets, denim with backpatches...and my yuppie dad in a Members Only jacket. It was cold so we rotated sitting in the car and waiting on line; eventually the place opened and I got my two tickets ($22.50 plus $1.00 service charge...how's that for mind-blowing?) and I was all set.
Mom and Dad really didn't want to go, so my uncle took me; I had great seats (front-center, one section up) but they were playing in the round that tour so it really didn't matter. No openers, but a 45-minute opening video showing backstage antics. For a first concert, I could not have asked for anything better...they played all the stuff I wanted to hear and were amazingly tight. There was two drum sets brought out so James and Lars could do a "drum off" which ended with the double-bass run from One (which to 14 year old me was the coolest thing ever!). I think I headbanged for the entire 2 hours or so they played (my neck was sore the next day), and I had the time of my life!
It was definitely one of the coolest things I'd ever done in my life to that point, odd that it took me almost 4 years to get to another concert. But that's a story for tomorrow :)
for that tour i went to the Nassau show with my future brother-in-law and Basil. we went for dinner at a hotel, prior. i remember the same thing. HEADBANGING. (wtf was that?!!?) he looked at me laughing yelling "i was not expecting this!" 1/5 into the show he went to vomit. and kept doing so. he had some food poisoning and we left early. next metallic show was with them, G n'R, & Faith No More. I got caught stealing baseball cards that day at Caldor's. So i wasn''t allowed to go.
ReplyDeleteSo i saw Metallica for 20-30 minutes once.
And got to see FNM at Roseland during the King for a Day tour.