Last Night’s Concert

I’m glad I saw the Police back in 2007, so that I wouldn’t have to choose “which was my favorite concert of the year” between that show and last night’s Metallica gig at Nassau Coliseum.
Holy. Fucking. Crap.
It was a setlist designed to appease… to make amends with veteran fans from way-back-when who were as much in denial about the existence of Load and Reload as Highlander fans are in denial about Highlander 2. In their two hour setlist, not a single song featured on the “Load”s appeared, nor did anything from their album after that, St. Anger.
All the setlist had in it was what could best be called “classic” Metallica tracks, from the black album prior, as well as “new classics”, songs from their recent release, Death Magnetic, which was a clear return to their roots.
I’ve seen plenty of Metallica shows in my day. When they toured in support of the black album, I must’ve seen them a dozen or more times. There was a point in time where Little George and I could’ve talked ourselves through the inter-song banter, “insert-city-name-here”ing ourselves through two hours of great tunes.
Last night’s show? Quite possibly the best show I’ve ever been at. The setlist was filled with tons of rarely heard classics: Phantom Lord — only the second time since 2003 that song has come out of the vault)… The Thing That Should Not Be — holy crap what a rush when they started into that….
I ended the concert completely dehydrated (major props, by the way, to the Marriott front-desk woman, who when I asked her to break a $20 so I could find a vending machine and buy some bottled water, just went into the back and got me, Big George, and Mark three bottles for free even though she knew I wasn’t a guest… great service!)… my neck still hurts, and there’s still a little bit of hoarseness in my throat from singing and shouting all night long.
The boys are definitely back. Felt like old times. Almost enough to make me forget the decade of crushing pain in between “then” and “now” …. 🙂