Attended a very interesting and surprising good show at the Paramount on Saturday, October 16th. Roz and Marissa needed a ride and offered to buy my ticket if I were to drive them into Seattle, and who am I to pass up a free concert. I was surprised to see that they can actually move all of the seating out of the lower portion of the Paramount and made it all GA standing room…we of course found a nice quiet spot in the back to take in the show, so I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures.

This was a pairing of a couple very good Asian Metal Bands. The Hu are a Mongolian rock band who play traditional Mongolian instrumentation, and Mongolian throat singing, which if you have never heard before is quite mesmerizing and hypnotic to listen to. Paired with the amplified and distorted traditional instruments made for an excellent show…I was very pleasantly surprised on how much I enjoyed it.

Babymetal is a band I have heard of before and is very popular in Asia, generally selling out huge arena. They put on a great show, but I think the limited size of the stage at the Paramount stifled their stage presence and ability to put the show that they are known for.

Another Epic Metallica show last night at the Save Mart Center on the campus of Fresno State University in beautiful downtown Fresno California.

Toni and I flew down from Seattle early Saturday morning and had a very relaxing time flaking out in the hotel in a town boarding Fresno called Clovis. We didn’t do much other than flake at the hotel and go out to eat up until showtime.

We did have VIP (Whiplash Experience) which we had done the last time we saw Metallica in Seattle, and would definitely recommend. You are able to get into a pre-function prior to the show where they serve some pretty good hors d’oeuvres. They also give some pretty decent merch such as a show specific concert poster and t-shirt. A great way to pre-function prior to the show.

Metallica came on pretty late (around 8:30-8:45) which gave way too much time for the pre-show with Jim Breuer who was funny for the first hour, but after two hours just got annoying. I came to see some metal after all, not a comedy show. The only thing the guy said that was worth while was when he warned “older” people not to participate in the mosh…if only the old guy who got knocked down and had to be carried out would have listed. This wasn’t the only incident that happened around us either…a guy down our row had to be physically removed from the arena due to his belligerency and some doped up loser assaulted a female security person, knocking her to the ground for not letting him do things he wasn’t;t supposed to…I just can’t understand why people just can’t come to a show to enjoy the music. Why they must be such a-holes.

When they did finally come out, they came out as powerful as ever, opening with Hardwired and Atlas, Rise!. They jammed out a great set coving their whole history from their latest album to their old stuff such as Hit the Lights. My favorites of the night were Fuel, Seek and Destroy, Sad But True and Ride the Lightning.

Metallica will always be a must see show, and I will continue to put up with the dorks in the crowd to hear and see them perform.

A great one day trip down to L.A. to one of our favorite venues for one of our favorite bands. Bullet was awesome as ever, sounding great in this historic theater.

Another heavy metal icon band that I hadn’t seen before. Deep Purple put on a great show although the crowd had significantly decreased in size after Judas Priest left the stage. I am not sure why people decided to leave before the headline band came on, but I suppose most of them must have been Judas Priest fans…although to be a Judas Priest fan and not appreciate the music and 50 year history of Deep Purple is beyond me, but it did leave a lot of elbow room with empty seats around me.

I did the meet and greet with Deep Purple and I have to say that this was one of the most disorganized VIP experiences I have ever done. All I got was an email saying pick-up the tickets and more information at the ticket counter when I arrive. When I went to ticket counter, they had no idea about any VIP experience so I decided to do what I usually do when I can’t get good instructions, I waited to see what other folks did. Unfortunately this VIP group was very small and I wasn’t able to observe any further direction. After waiting for about an hour and asking a number of different venue staff, I was told to go inside and meet the VIP host, which of course was nowhere to be found… I was able to find other VIP guests and collectively we found out where and when to meet. Once we got organized, it was very nice meeting the members of Deep Purple, having them talk with us, sign our badges and take photos with us.

Judas Priest came on around 8:30pm I think and played for about an hour to an hour and a half. They played a lot of music off of their newest album and then saved all of their classics to a massive set at the end of their show. Rob Halford still sings and screams as he used to and the band (minus K.K. Downing and Guess Tipton) rocked as usual. Every time I have seen these guys, I am always blown away by their power and performance, last night was no exception. I enjoyed the classics like Living After Midnight, Hell Bent for Leather, You Got Another Think Comin’ and Breaking the Law, but it seemed the crowd favorite was PainKiller.

Deep Purple didn’t come on until around 9:30, but also put on a great show. This was the first time I had seen them and it started off great with them opening with my favorite sang, Highway Star. I really enjoyed the keyboard solo by Don Airey…such an amazing sound. I think one of my favorite songs of the night Lazy and Space Trucking’ although Knocking at Your Backdoor and Perfect Strangers were also awesome and then of course their all time classic Smoke on The Water was pretty incredible.

All in all, a good show…not great, but worth the trip down from Seattle.