For Whom The Bell Tolls

(There is no Hemingway in this post.)

• I mentioned, I think, going to Tool last week.
• I went to Dallas, saw them with my sister and brother-in-law.
• Was a heck of a show. Not a single unwanted song.
• Which is always awesome.
• How many times have you gone to a concert they played a song and you thought either, “What? This one? Ugh,” or, “What the heck is this song?”
• Almost every one, right?
• Not all bands can pull that off.
• Metallica, for instance, has never let me down.
• In fact, the answer to the “best concert I’ve ever attended” question you didn’t ask would be a Metallica show.
• I saw them in 1989 (omg, old) at the Pavilion on the And Justice for All … tour.
• Was the first concert I’d gone to without adults, and I can’t remember who all went other than my buddy Steve because we were the only two who stuck together.
• Whoever handled the set-up for the Pavilion was obviously not familiar with Metallica, because they set the floor up with rows of folding metal chairs.
• Queensryche was the opener.
• We arrived early enough to worm our way to the first 10 or 12 rows.
• While the opener played, the whole crowd chanted “Metallica” over and over again, which, if you’re Queensryche, had to stink.
• Then the set-change hit and the place got restless.
• People started pushing forward, crowding the aisles.
• Soon as the lights went out for Metallica, the folding chairs became a sliding sea of metal foot traps.
• You had to push to keep people off of you, fight to keep your feet from getting sucked down into the pincers of chomping chair legs.
• We ended up standing on two chairs that had somehow managed to stay on their feet, right on the edge of the mosh pit, a promontory over a maelstrom of flailing bodies.
• Steve kept pushing people back into the pit with his foot.
• And Metallica played all our favorite songs while the statue of Lady Justice fell to pieces on stage.
• Was pretty glorious, all things considered.
• They sounded the best when I saw them at the BOK center in 2018.
• Bunch of “old” dudes who still got it.
• They are all a decade older than me. I use them as my “what can an X age person still do” barometer.
• I have seen them eight or nine times.
• I’ve lost count. Might be more than that, but not less.
• That’s my band. I’ll go see them until they stop playing. Or the tinnitus wins.
• I mean, I got kicked out of my ninth grade English class for wearing one of their shirts.
• To combine age-related issues with today’s theme, which is concerts … I tested out four different kinds of ear plugs at the Tool show.
• Flare Audio Isolates, Eargasms, Loops, and cheapo foam ear plugs.
• My tinnitus is so bad when things get loud, all I hear is a buzz.
• The Loops were the winners, by far. Did the best job of straddling the line between muffled and hearing, and kept the buzzing to a minimum.
• And since I just did a product review, it’s probably time to stop.
• Have a Wednesday.

(Image borrowed from Getty Images; thanks, Google search!)