Summer Sanitarium tour, July 15, LA Coliseum

Ok, here's my report on the Summer Sanitarium concert I went to on July 15th at the LA Coliseum.

System of a Down

First of all, we got there a little late so we only saw the last two songs by System of Down, one of which was sugar. System of a Down was alright, but only about 1/4 of the audience was there to see them play.

Powerman 5000

Next was Powerman 5000. The lead singer wore some weird space suit and you could not understand what he was saying 90% of the time. They played "World Collide," "Nobody's Real," and about three other ones I didn't recognize. They played for about 45 minutes and did a decent show.

Kid Rock

Next was Kid Rock and sorry if I have a biased opinion but I do not care for Kid Rock. The people that were sitting around us totally agreed too. Anyway, they put up this huge American flag and they had a "Kid Rock" sign in front, which looked cool. They played "Bawitdaba," "American Bad A**," "Only God Knows Why," "Cowboy," and a couple other songs. The performance had a little fireworks and was okay, but I really wanted to see Metallica perform. Oh, I forgot to say at one point Kid Rock went around and played all of the instruments on stage one at a time, which was pretty cool. The band played for about an hour.

Korn

After a half of an hour of changing the stage, Korn came on. They transformed the stage to all silver and the was a "Korn" sign hanging in the back. Korn first played "Falling Away From Me" and the stage looked pretty awesome because of the colors that were projected onto the silver backdrop and the occasional use of strobe. They also played "Blind," "Shoots and Latters," (Jonathan led into this with the bagpipes, which brought a lot of cheering from the crowd) "Adidas" and quite a few others I didn't recognize. They played for a little over an hour and did a pretty good job.

Metallica

It took about forty minutes for Metallica to set up and get ready. (In the mean time people decided it was funny to throw beers around and needless to say I got drenched). Metallica... was... just awesome. James said that it was good to be back and something else about his back injury (it was hard to hear). They save d the best sound and lighting for last because Metallica's performance left the others in the dust. The back drop had each of the four members faces in sections on one layer and the Metallica logo on another. I don't know how they did it, but the different drops would appear with differnt lighting and sometimes together so the logos were on each face. Anyway, Metallica played the following songs: (they are somewhat in order)

Creeping Death

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Seek and Destroy

Sad but True

King Nothing / Master of Puppets / Welcome Home (Sanitarium) medley

Fuel

Battery

No Leaf Clover

(I think there was one other song I didn't recognize)

Then, they went off stage and the audience kept cheering and cheering (I contributed a lot) and they came back on starting with Kirk on guitar playing the intro to "Nothing Else Matters" as the other members came back. They played:

Nothing Else Matters

I Disappear

One (I had been hoping they would play this since I bought the ticket)

This performance was awesome and everyone was so enthusiastic they kept cheering and cheering so more. Metallica came back on after about five minutes and played:

Turn the Page

Enter Sandman

Metallica stayed on stage and walked around, gathering more and more cheers. At one point James went up to the camera, made the "rock out" symbol, picked his nose, and pretended to eat the buger. Yeah! Anyway, after a little while, we sucked two more songs out of them:

So What

Die, Die, My Darling

Metallica was pretty tired by now (they played almost two and a half hours), but walked around some more then finally left. It was sad that the concert was over, but Metallica gave an awesome performance. They used some fireworks and cool lighting effects, especially in "One" (the beginning is gun shots and the y had fire burst around the stage) and in "Enter Sandman." Whenever there was fire shooting up on stage, though, James was far away (he had an accident with fire a long time ago).

Overall, I thought the concert was really good and Metallica rocked! I could say a lot less for about half the audience who was probably too drunk or high to remember the performance. I guess, since this was my first concert, I'm just not used to these things.