This is a the worst title for this blog because Banglore may have had the real concert but the Gudgaon one is still more fun to talk about. I see you are still reading it, so if you aren’t a friend whom I have begged to read or another human being who just happened to have time right now then I totally love you. Now i'm not only a bad marketer but also a slut. Anyway, the concert was worth every penny including travelling costs and as kickass as any concert for which I had to wait 20 odd years because I have been listening to Metallica since I was 1 year old (that’s not true but Hetfield kept saying it, so I take it as patthar ki lakeer). I know it’s too late in microblogging years to blog about the concert now but see I had to archive it somehow, especially when I hadn’t taken many pictures and when I was one of the few (~25000) who actually made it to the concert and how! [A subset of the ‘how’ part is covered in my previous blog]. So, yeah, the concert was mind blowing. They played all their best songs, which are basically their old songs, like ‘for whom the bell tolls’, ‘sanatorium’, ‘enter sandman’, ‘fuel’, ‘fade to black’, etc. For a brief gap, the members went off stage and then Hetfield returned with a small chair for our friend Kirk Hammet who entered with what looked like a semi acoustic in his hands. It was one of those moments when fans turn to each other and say, “dude I think he’s gonna play nothing else matters”. And ‘nothing else matters’ they played indeed. But no one expected a breathless stretch of the most incredible songs that followed, namely ‘one’ and ‘master of puppets’ back to back which if I try n put in the simplest possible words, gave us the fucking trip. Kirk Hammet looked high on acid with whitish eyes and a Hendrix like gaping mouth throughout, throwing random solos here n there. Hetfield as expected owned the place and gave constant goose bumps from the moment he entered. Lars Ulrich I like to believe gets his kicks from some kind of monstrous (see wat I did there) cocaine + red bull mixture because the guy is like a wild boar. Madness. Sheer, brain shearing madness. Well, that’s about it, because no one really cares about Robert Trujillo (the ugly bass guitarist, who’s getting chicks solely because of Metallica).
Now, ‘not caring’ brings me to the harder part of the concert, the part that the organizers (DNA) were supposed to take care of and which is more or less talked or trolled about in this: [ https://www.facebook.com/notes/jonva-madding/sad-but-true-what-happened-at-the-metallica-bangalore-gig/10150430713280240 ]. DNA didn’t care about security, which was practically less than half the size of a college fest contingent for an attendance 10 times of that; they asked the fans to keep their bags outside because they didn’t have the conscience to check the bags and let them in, which was required because they didn’t care to keep a cloak room in the first place; they clearly didn’t care to put any amount of planning into this whole thing because despite the above mentioned lack of security checking, it took the crowd in entry line at least 4-5 hours to move from the main gate to the ground; and surprisingly I can’t even say they cared about making much money either. There were only a handful of food and drinks stalls. No points for guessing that their stock got over before Hetfield could say ‘thank you, good night’. There were around 25000 hungry metal heads (some of them in munchies) after such a draining concert, ready to give away a limb for some food or water in a city where every restaurant closes by that time, and what do you do as an organizer? You don’t keep any food stalls! Apart from the thefts and the traffic mayhem, I must congratulate DNA for causing food riots in the few places that were open (like Empire), not to mention stomach ulcers to drunken rockers who slept hungry.
Now I don't know if it was the collective karma (spamming the twitter timelines of those not attending) but somehow the city wasn’t exactly helping the situation there. I know we should’ve known about the 11pm curfew, but come on man, it’s India. Plus somehow miraculously all the mobile networks just refused to work right after the concert, which was basically when ppl needed it the most, to locate their lost friends in all the mess. And no, 25000 ppl calling simultaneously doesn’t explain it. Anyway, on a more selfish note I say aaal ij well that ends well and I for one got drunk and had enough food but had to hunt the fuck out of it.
Abrupt ending.
Now, ‘not caring’ brings me to the harder part of the concert, the part that the organizers (DNA) were supposed to take care of and which is more or less talked or trolled about in this: [ https://www.facebook.com/notes/jonva-madding/sad-but-true-what-happened-at-the-metallica-bangalore-gig/10150430713280240 ]. DNA didn’t care about security, which was practically less than half the size of a college fest contingent for an attendance 10 times of that; they asked the fans to keep their bags outside because they didn’t have the conscience to check the bags and let them in, which was required because they didn’t care to keep a cloak room in the first place; they clearly didn’t care to put any amount of planning into this whole thing because despite the above mentioned lack of security checking, it took the crowd in entry line at least 4-5 hours to move from the main gate to the ground; and surprisingly I can’t even say they cared about making much money either. There were only a handful of food and drinks stalls. No points for guessing that their stock got over before Hetfield could say ‘thank you, good night’. There were around 25000 hungry metal heads (some of them in munchies) after such a draining concert, ready to give away a limb for some food or water in a city where every restaurant closes by that time, and what do you do as an organizer? You don’t keep any food stalls! Apart from the thefts and the traffic mayhem, I must congratulate DNA for causing food riots in the few places that were open (like Empire), not to mention stomach ulcers to drunken rockers who slept hungry.
Now I don't know if it was the collective karma (spamming the twitter timelines of those not attending) but somehow the city wasn’t exactly helping the situation there. I know we should’ve known about the 11pm curfew, but come on man, it’s India. Plus somehow miraculously all the mobile networks just refused to work right after the concert, which was basically when ppl needed it the most, to locate their lost friends in all the mess. And no, 25000 ppl calling simultaneously doesn’t explain it. Anyway, on a more selfish note I say aaal ij well that ends well and I for one got drunk and had enough food but had to hunt the fuck out of it.
Abrupt ending.
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