We’re heading out to the concert and we’ll be taking pictures with our camera phone live from the Metallica concert and sharing at my moblog: pix that make you go hmm [9/10/07 9:26am PST: Textamerica linkrot] Also, I am writing sort of a mini-diary / review of the concert that I’ll be sharing here soon. Here’s how it starts (still in somewhat rough form):

Before the Metallica concert: I’m writing this part three hours before leaving for the Metallica Live concert. The last time I saw Metallica was in the 80’s at a musky club in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The funny thing about Metallica at the time is that they were just one act of three, and not even the headliner; W.A.S.P and Armored Saint was touring with them.. A year or so after seeing that concert the building burned. I remember how the group, Metallica, all thought the band nobody had really heard of rocked and how lame it was that the guitarist for Armored Saint jumped into the audience. And W.A.S.P? Blackie Lawless twirling his fake hair with the skunk white stripe.

In the eighties I saw many other concerts: Judas Priest, Quiet Riot, Kiss, Great White, Ozzy, but I would rank Metallica’s performance up there. I remember that they played most of the songs from Ride The Lightning and several from Kill ‘em All. Honestly at the time I thought the Metallica and Armored Saint parts of the show were going to suck and I was only half right.

Tonight’s show I have different expectations than I’m sure many of the younger fans. Wow, 20 years ago I saw Metallica. Long before Napster, before they really had achieved any significant degree of commercial success. I’m looking forward to the old stuff. I want them to play stuff from those first few albums.

From reviewing the set lists of the shows so far on this tour it looks like there are some things that can be reasonably predicted:

1) They are going to open with Blackened and Fuel.
2) Kirk is going to have two guitar solos
3) They will likely play Welcome Home (Sanitarium) or Fade to Black but not both after the first of Kirk’s guitar solos. I like the the former, but I’d be more psyched to hear Fade to Black.
4) They will play St. Anger and Frantic from their new CD. Good choices, in my opinion, as these are the songs I’m most partial to on the new CD.
5) They will play 20 songs in total.
6) One will be played in the second hour of the show
7) Total time of the concert will be around two hours
Within a couple days of the show we’ll be able to buy the soundboard recordings in either FLAC or mp3 format from http://www.livemetallica.com/
9) Their encore will feature a song either rarely played on this tour or something they haven’t played in a few years. Song I’d most like to hear them play: Escape from Ride The Lightning.

Well, it’s less than two hours before the concert and time to get moving. We’re taking our camera phone to grab select shots to moblog at tdavid.textamerica.com [9/10/07 9:26am PST: Textamerica linkrot] Something else we’re taking that I’ve never taken to a concert before:

Protection for our ears.

I still remember the pain. Three days after that extremely loud concert twenty years ago I remember not being able to hear very well. We’re taking something to put in our ears just in case it is dangerously loud. Either this is a sign that I’m getting old, or I’m just a heck of a lot smarter than I was twenty years ago, or both. We’re also taking our Pocket PC so I can write something about the experience at the concert, while waiting for it to happen. No acts I’ve ever seen start on time. It’s usually anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes late. I’m not expecting anything different tonight so I’ll be able to write about the experience while waiting.

We didn’t get the more expensive tickets where you could be right near the stage. From the seating chart on the web I’m not sure how good the seats will be. We’ll see how it turns out … [to be continued]

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• Livemetallica.com
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