White booty, “Black Magic”
. . .
(See this in fullscreen to get the full effect.)
I watched this video on repeat for probably half an hour yesterday. What I thought was a white belt turned out to be the young lady’s midriff. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt.
My buddy Robert took this video from Saturday’s Big 4 concert in Indio. Indio is in the middle of nowhere, so evidently the racists were out in full force. Robert’s report:
Metallica opened with 4 of 5 songs from… Ride the Lightning! “Creeping Death”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, title track, and “Fade to Black”. Big Four shirts had this super-ugly guitar pick Big 4 logo colored as the American flag. $35. I opted out of that expense.
The crowd was super-weird. It had this very non-metal drunk party [vibe]. I still can’t quite comprehend the enormity of the whole thing, but it really felt like the crowd by and large didn’t give two shits about Big 4 and just wanted to see Metallica. Slayer was good – not my favorite set list but sounded huge. Holt played guitar for pretty much the whole set, and then Hanneman came out and played “South of Heaven” and “Angel of Death”. But there was no pause or introduction of the switch.
Would you have paid $100 (+ $20 Ticketslavemaster fees) for that?
For that video…maybe.
. . .
That’s fuckin hilarious. I had a similar experience when I was coerced into seeing Metallica last year… a middle-aged woman in the seat in front of me kept clocking me in the face with her hippy-dancing arm movements.
Not gonna lie, the way she was dancing made me think about the rhythm of the song differently
True! I’ve seen other chicks bellydance to metal…it actually works pretty well.
WAH WAH! Over 50k people show up for a metal concert (thanks to Metallica) and people still manage to complain. This was probably among the bigger (biggest?) paydays for Anthrax/Megadeth/Slayer in a very long time and easily the largest American crowd they’ve ever seen in their careers.
They were able to sell large amounts of merch and get their music heard by people who may have heard of them before but never took the time to listen…and now may actually go see them in the future. Over the weekend, I wondered what the hipster metal contingent would think of this show and figured they’d find some unimaginable way to put a bad spin on it. Congrats.
Oh shit, the infamous white-girl dance to Slayer. There is almost always at least one.
At least Slayer played Black Magic…
I’ve seen that sort of white-girl-booty-dance at a Dying Fetus show, actually. It’s always weird when it happens, especially in a location otherwise packed with large, sweaty, hairy dudes.
Haha when I saw the Megadeth/Slayer tour last summer my seats were right next to an elder version of one of these things, and she danced just like that for the ENTIRE show. Despite looking and moving like somebody had just transplanted her in from a Dead show, she knew a lot of the words and actually said she had been to the original Clash of the Titans tour. She also went nuts during ‘A Tout Le Monde’ and ‘Peace Sells…’
I do recall a drunk girl doing the running man while Destruction was playing back in 2007. For those too young to know, a running man goes like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpZRPCZfz_E
@Tony I don’t think anybody was complaining, I think Cosmo just thought it was funny.
I found it tantalizing and even a little bit sexy
You watched a :44 clip of…this…for half an hour? You laughed so hard your stomach hurt? Seriously? Damn son…
I went. A friend got the tix cheaper for 80 each. He covered mine and I payed back via driving, gas, food/beer/supplies for both of us. Had a great fucking time. Yea, I think overall more people were there for Metallica, but admittedly without Metallica probably half of the people there wouldn’t of been. Crazy to think this was probably the biggest Metal concert ever done in the USA.
I love how the women scurry as soon as the guy in the black tee-shirt tries to get more involved.
@Tony — So it was a success because a group of affluent musicians managed to sell a lot of tickets and shirts? I don’t follow. I wasn’t there so I can’t judge but I hope the show was worthwhile. Also, I have to think that most people who paid that kind of money for a ticket were familiar with all of the bands.
@Anghrist –Dying Fetus…really? That must be pretty interesting. Hard to imagine people getting down to a song like “Praise The Lord.”
Had a great time. Missed most of anthrax b/c of the slow lone to get in. Megadeth and Slayer both sounded fucking great, voice wise, everything. They played their hearts out. Metallica came in on a helicopter and had firepots…
My friends kept asking if I was gonna go. Honestly, it barely even crossed my mind. Trying to enjoy anything in a giant field full of assholes is pretty hard for me, never mind the $100 pricetag. I’d rather see Slayer or Megadeth at a smaller venue, and I’d rather not see Anthrax or Metallica unless there’s a time machine involved.
For reference, this was held at the same place as Coachella the week before. No thx.
@wash
for the size of the crowd, the sun and the level of drunkiness, people were chill. I didn’t see any fights. Most people seemed stoked for the show. ticket was steep though. felt worth it. tom araya is a fucking goat!
I would have paid, about a buck…
I’m sure if I was there I would have enjoyed myself, I’m just leery of the typical audiences these monster-shows attract. It’s not the violence (necessarily) so much as the mentality.
I got a free ticket to Mayhem Fest two summers back and went mainly for Slayer. I’m sure the crowd was a bit smaller than this thing, but even still, the night turned almost apocalyptic once the neanderthals discovered fire: they started these massive, roving bonfires of burning plastic. Not content to merely poison the crowd with fumes, they made torches and “fireballs” out of trash, which was then thrown at unsuspecting strangers. I saw a lot of burning hair that day.
@Wash –I’m with you all the way. I think massive crowds bring out the worst in people. I’m also leery of being around such a large amount of people if something bad were to happen. I was at Ozzfest 99 for the much-anticipated Black Sabbath reunion. There was a guy who was so fucked up that he passed out in the middle of the lawn. When we came across him he was covered in beer cups, condoms, cigarette butts, etc. His “friends” had left him shirtless and he was sunburned to the point that medical attention was necessary. Most people in the crowd treated him like a fucking pinata instead of calling a medic. At Ozzfest 04 I noticed similar antics with fire and also a group of people smoking crack at 10 am.
That was it for me. Pretty much the only large event I’d go to now would be MDF and that’s only 3,000 people. Even then when Mayhem played in 09 the barricade totally collapsed and people almost rushed the stage.
The worst example of this, of course, is the rapes and fires at Woodstock 99. Crowds combined with drugs, alcohol and sun leads to bad things.
On another note, hope you are keeping with the KB drills.
During last night’s Amon Amarth concert, there was girl dancing/whipping her hair/shimmying like Shakira, you’d swear “You Shook Me All Night Long” was playing. I kind of loved it, kind of laughed, kind of scratched my head.
A agree with the above comments about these large crowds. I was at Woodstock ‘99, and it was a complete disaster. Being around that many people is just unsettling to begin with, and when you add booze, drugs and people who don’t seem to know how to respect others, it just turns into a big mess. This experience has broke me from attending these large shows. I try to stay away from anything bigger than a mid-sized venue.
Every now and then I do hit a bigger show, but I usually regret it. Last year, I went to the Slayer/Megadeth/Anthrax show, and lo and behold, drunk knuckleheads ruined the entire experience. If you want to show how poorly you can hold your alcohol and just get into fights with your friends, please do it in the privacy of your own home.
Too many people show up for the spectale and to drink, and they could give a shit about the music. This is where the problems start.
I should have known that some clever Metallica fan would uncover my nefarious hipster plot to undermine the Metallica money making machine…..by sending Cosmo a video of girls dancing to Slayer and complaining about the ugly guitar pick logo. I knew when I showed up at the concert with a sleeveless Hirax shirt, I should have opted for the beard and Baroness combo. A note about the video – that is actually the end of their dance. They did this for the entirety of Raining Blood.
Man, I got tickets and went to the wrong place! The Melody Inn in Indianapolis. The Big Four – Stone Magnum, Maax, Earthen Grave, and The Gates of Slumber. Best seven bucks I’ll spend all year, no doubt. Tiny place but with lots of friendly locals and you know it’s gonna be a good night when you walk in and Karl Simon is DJaying Sloug Feg off his ipod nano five feet to your left. I shook his hand and get the scoop on the setlist. I wouldn’t have missed it for an all-expenses-paid trip to Indio, I can tell you that right now.
Depends on how attractive the chick dancing is. This? No thanks.
Paying to watch these four washed up nostalgia acts, and dealing with that many people to do it is sheer craziness…I don’t care how you attempt to justify it. 50,000 people in attendance and 49,763 of them are drunken, racist, football playing dirtbike bros or middle aged, drunken trailer trash meth-heads…the small number of actual decent, cool metal fans had to be so staggeringly low that you could probably walk from one end of the Polo Grounds to the other without seeing each other and exchanging a high five without getting called a faggot by a dude who looks like he’s a member of the Kottonmouth Kings. I guess not wanting to pay $100+ to feel like a duped asshole in a sea of retards makes me a hipster then!
We plainly have differing ideas of the “middle of nowhere”.
Blythe is maybe the middle of nowhere. Tonopah is REALLY the middle of nowhere. So’s Bishop, in another way. (Arguably moreso, not being on an Interstate.)
Indio’s a frickin’ suburb of Palm Springs, and maybe an hour from the south end of LA if traffic’s not bad.
I know that, and I don’t even live in California.
That shit was hot. and she was doing it Black Magic. This chick = true metal.
I used to go to a lot of bigger shows and after a while, they just stopped being fun due to all of the reasons listed above. I’m fortunate to live in a city that gets great touring acts on a weekly basis. I rarely pay more than $10 or $15 bucks to stand a few feet from the stage and hang with a respectful crowd of people whose idea of fun is not pretending you’re a drunken MMA pit fighter. The last arena-sized metal show I saw was Slayer and Judas Priest in Marysville, CA and it was filled with drunken assholes yelling “white power”, throwing trash cans, puking on everything, starting fights and lighting stuff on fire. At that point, it isn’t about the music and not worth $40-$50.
Hey, if wanting to spend $100+ on records by interesting bands who are making cool music on independent labels now instead of helping subsidize James Hetfield’s Armani habit by standing in a crowd of drunken fuckheads, watching bands whose best work is largely behind them on giant video screens makes me a hipster, well then hand me my beard and Jesu shirt.
(No, seriously, my Jesu shirt is in the other room, could you get it for me? Thx.)
Having gone to this and fully enjoyed myself, I’m mostly just seeing a lot of bitter asses here trying to rip on this so they feel better for not having gone. Great job, internet egos.
Metallica’s setlist was almost perfect (save for like 4 songs):
Creeping Death
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Fuel
Ride the Lightning
Fade to Black
Cyanide
All Nightmare Long
Sad But True
Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
Orion
One
Master of Puppets
Blackened
Nothing Else Matters
Enter Sandman
Encore:
Am I Evil? w/members of Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth
Hit the Lights
Seek and Destroy
Dude, be fair…most of the folks nay-saying this show saw all four bands when they were still making worthwhile music, living in the moment, and just don’t care about paying $100 to see the washed up, infighting version amongst 50,000 SoCal wannabe redneck assholes. I think the “bitter” comes from not seeing these bands when they actually mattered…or at least when 22,000 Slayer fans threw beer cups and nearly heckled Alice In Chains off the stage!
Astral Zombie’s comment reminded me of when I saw System of A Down open for Slayer in Philly in ‘98 or so (not sure on the date). They were heckled so badly with “Slayer” chants that the guitarist literally broke down in tears and started screaming “fuck you guys, we’re bigger Slayer fans than all of you assholes”…..absolutely hilarious. In fact, Unsane was the only band that I saw open for Slayer with grace…they just started chanting “Slayer” with the crowd until their set was over!
These days, Metallica live is like the Black Sabbath reunion with Ozzy: the same f%*#ing setlist over and over. You know they’re going to start with Creeping Death and finish with Seek and Destroy. Boring as all hell.
As someone who rarely has over $30 to spend on a show, I tend to avoid these big-drunk-crowd extravaganzas. As it is, I would have gone for this show minus Metallica, but I would never actually go and see Metallica out of disgust for 90% of the people who like Metallica (hint: most of them have only heard stuff from “Load” onward). Big concerts=overrated.
Oh, and @ Justin: she did it to “One Shot, One Kill” and “Kill Your Mother, Rape Your Dog”, and then nearly beat the shit out of a dude who’d accidentally bumped into her while moshing. Couldn’t make it up if I tried.
@Wash “Trying to enjoy anything in a giant field full of assholes is pretty hard for me …I’d rather not see Anthrax or Metallica unless there’s a time machine involved”
“I’m just leery of the typical audiences these monster-shows attract. It’s not the violence (necessarily) so much as the mentality. …the night turned almost apocalyptic once the neanderthals discovered fire…”
I couldn’t agree more with you. By the way, I laughed my ass off reading your witty comments. You should try and write for Invisible Oranges once Cosmo departs. Seriously.
It would have been difficult for me coughing up a hundred bucks to see bands I saw in their prime. Meeting Megadeth in early 87 on Piece Sells your at the old Living Room in Providence. Priceless! Standing in the hot sun all day while mouth breathing mongoloids chugg 12 dollar beers? None for me thanks. The idiot behavior is difficult for me to stand. Ozzfest 05 with Maiden one knuckle dragger decides its a bright idea to throw clumps of sod onto peoples heads in the seats and before you know it 1000s are doing it.
Reading some of these comments reminded me of one of the funniest things I witnessed (other than the rump shaker dance off). I was observing said MMA mosh pit bravado during Slayer and I commented to my friend that I was displeased with the nature of the pit. Then this young chubby dude turned to me and said “man the pit will be so much better for Metallica!” Therein lies the problem with the crowd (and humanity in general). That aside, I had a pretty good time once I got over the crowd issues. The sound was impressive and I heard countless songs that were my life’s blood once upon a time.
I’ve seen this phenomenon at other shows, both metal and non-metal. People want to dance, but not all music is conducive to dancing. At Terrastock in Louisville a few summers ago, some dude with a mohawk danced the whole time as if he were at a Phish concert, even though nary a dancable song was played during the entire festival (which mostly consisted of drone, noise, and out-there psychedelia). It was a confusing sight to behold, but I don’t begrudge someone trying to have a good time.
Someone throws mud (or worse, fire) at me, on the other hand, and I’m going to be fucking pissed off.
@steve
I knew I should have gone to that Gates of Slumber show. I saw a flyer for it at the Fuck the Facts show at the Melody Inn last Thursday, and was strongly considering driving to Indy for the second time in a week. Being broke sucks.
Did you not see Orodruin?
Saw a girl practically belly-dancing to Nile. Not just during mid-tempo sections, but full on blasts as well. You’d think that’s odd at first, but the oddest thing was how fitting it actually was.
I was there and had a great time. The crowd:lotso metalheads in black concert T’s and camo shorts, mostly white or latino. Alot of women! Some super hotties but mostly not so hotties. People were friendly and talkative, the food was good, beer was only 7$ (thats fucking good for an event like this) parking lot party was fucking cool, met tons of great people, smokin weed and drinking shots, jammin to Pantera, Meshugga, Celtic Frost, circle Jerks, Voi Vod, the whole works. The bands were all fucking tight and gave full throttle performances but only Anthrax had a good sound. after that, it seemed the soundboard guys couldn’t get the mix right and you would hear instruments dropping out, missing kick drums, volume swells…Mustaine actually commented that they were experiencing technical difficulties. Oh, Metallica is always great, but Lars’ drum fills were phoned in. He didn’t even try to replicate the records, and I love all those fills and odd cymbal crashes. Slayer were by far the most entertaining, playing through and not talking shit, just going from song to song. Scott Ian was talking his ass off like a premadonna. He should shut the fuck up and let Joey be the front man. Joey sounded awesome and Anthrax kicked ass. Megadeth’s set list fucking sucked ass. they opened with “Trust”?! I was like, you gotta be fucking kidding me…..nope
ha ha this is cool, the slayer extended dance mix 50 000 people that is mad. Metal is alive and well in these here times!
Props to these chicks. They’re into it and not standing around like some too-cool zombies afraid to move for being called out on their non-metal cred. The Big 4 was so refreshing because it was an opportunity to escape the elitist, hater vibe of this weird hipster bohemian scene that’s infecting metal shows right now, at least the ones in SF. It was a friendly, diverse crowd, likely due in part to the lack of skinny jeans up peoples’ asses and bushy, new-growth beards covering any potential (though not likely) smiles of camaraderie. And why are some people giving women shit for being hot? Is it better to look bored?