StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Another year almost behind us! So, for those of us who go to concerts, post the good, the bad, the ugly, or whatever you experienced this year in live music.

For me, I only went to two shows this year.

Static-X - April 2009 : Awesome show as always. I maintain that they are somehow the loudest motherfuckers on the planet. Looking back, it's a little bittersweet, as Wayne Static announced that the band's going on hiatus for a couple of years so he can do solo stuff. Oh well. I'm glad I saw them when I could.

Metallica - November 2009 : The best live performance of any group I've ever seen. Amazing! They played--no, they shoved metal up your ass--for two hours and ten minutes and sounded great throughout the entire set. It's even more staggering when you realize that they're all in their mid forties. The setlist was awesome, the crowd was awesome, and they were awesome. Hell, their performance of One, was worth the price of admission. I'm hooked. Anytime Metallica's playing within a three hour drive, I'm there.

I went to a grand total of...one, and that was:

Muse: Seaside Rendevous (september?) This was the first time the band had played in their hometown for the best part of a decade, and they played tunes from all of their albums, including the (at the time) new album which was soon to be released. It was down on the seafront of Teignmouth, next to the pier, and the whole town was taking part to make it feel like a festival. The lighting, lasers and other effects were all top notch. Damn good stuff.

Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance - July 2009 - Trumansburg New York
Not really a concert but close enough. 20,000 hippies, freaks and music lovers crammed into a few acres of fair grounds with 4 stages playing bluegrass, rock, jam bands and local music of all stripes more or less continuously for 4 days. This year was pretty awesome. I don't actually remember a significant portion of it but I can only assume that the parts I don't remember were simply too awesome for my mind to commit to memory because the parts I do remember are filled with excellent music, interesting people and loads of fun...

Deep Purple (Tel Aviv, Reeding) - Best concert i've been to - ever!
Small venue (only a few hundred people), so close I could see the whites of their hair, and a kickass performance. One guy in the audience even had a near cardiac arrest! (But he was fine).

Sir Paul McCartney - Israel, Exhibition gardens, Tel Aviv - First concert of this class i've ever seen (it turned out to be a busy year ) - I saw it a few days after Deep Purple - it was great, but I enjoyed the Deep Purple concert far more - Thousands of distance and "good" seats being about half a kilometer away made this a bit of a letdown. (Still really good though).

Madonna - Israel, Exhibition gardens, Tel Aviv - I was in the second tier row, which was very close, which was nice, but thousands of fake tickets resulting in over an hour's wait, a mess of unorganization and the eqe squinting distance made this a bit less of a hit. That, and i'm not that much of a fan of Madonna (really not my style). The production values were exemplary though, best show in town, with dancers, acrobats and sumsersaulting minority bacjup dancers .