This is Hi-Fi

Tonight was a night of many firsts. This was the first open stage concert that I've attended (crowd on all sides). This was my first concert with a rotating stage (maybe it's par for the course for open stage concerts). This was my first concert from box seats (I've been in box seats for a Chicago Bulls game). This was also my first Metallica concert.

Wow. This was the best concert that I've ever went to. Period. Energy levels were crazy high. The crowd was engaged. The band was awesome. The pyrotechnics, lights and special effects were great. The sound guys did a terrific job. I'm sure that my words don't even come close to describing how awesome it was. Up till now, the highest energy concert that I had attended was No Doubt, and this absolutely blew it away. Not even in the same zip code. Not even in the same time zone. Not even in the same hemisphere.

Going in, I wasn't a huge fan of special effects and lighting at concerts. It's usually sorta random and unnecessary. This time, the lights and special effects were absolutely incredible. For example, when they played One, they setup pyrotechnics in such a way that it looked like there were helicopters firing missiles, as well as machine gun fire and explosions every where. For all of the songs, the lights were timed very closely to the music. It was almost as if they had tapped into a spectrum analyzer the way that Media Player and WinAmp visualizers work. For most of the songs, the lighting was also completely different to match the mood/tempo of the song. Simply incredible.

I actually made the mistake of forgetting my earplugs, but we had box seats so we weren't right on top of the stage. The sound guys did a bang up job. My only 2 complaints are pretty minor. The bass wasn't quite as tight as the level of Audiophile's stereo. On The Four Horseman, you couldn't make out the double bass drum hits that sound like hoofbeats. They also could have used a tad more vocals in the mix, but overall it was excellent. Considering how diverse and powerful their music can be, this was no small feat.

After Godsmack and before Metallica hit the stage, a couple of the other people in the box mentioned that there was a girl, 2 boxes away, sitting all by herself. Being the helpful soul that I am, I went on over to invite her to come watch the concert from our box. As it turns out, she was part of the security detail and was there to make sure that nobody climbed into that box. Oh well. At least I got props from the others in our box for having some balls. I thought about going back over to ask for her number after the concert, but she was gone by the time that we were leaving.

The opener, Godsmack, was pretty good. I've never seen multiple drummers from the same band on the stage at once. However, I almost felt like giving them the old school Metallica treatment just for kicks. Back in the day, Metallica fans would stand with their back to the opening acts and simply give them the finger until they left the stage. How dedicated was that?