Saturday, May 19, 2012

Don't Tread On Paris

WARNING:  This post is about a rock concert and all of the general fun and debauchery that goes along with it.  If you don't want to know, you can stop reading now.  My guess is if you made it this far, you're going to keep going though.  Secretly you are all rock fans.


So the third night in Paris, we went to see Metallica.  For the record, we didn't make the trip to Paris just to see our favorite band--we were already planning the trip to Paris.  The timing just happened to work out.  I like to think of that as fate, or maybe good karma.  We took a detour by the Hard Rock on the way to the concert so I could grab a shot glass for the collection.  As soon as we stepped into the place, I knew we were among friends.  A guy saw our shirts and asked if we were going to the show.  He then proceeded to belt out Nothing Else Matters at the top of his lungs, complete with French accent.  We ate a quick pre-show dinner there, and the entire time they were playing Metallica videos and music.  People were singing and drumming on the bar.  This was a great start to a fantastic evening.  The concert was up in St. Denis at the Stade de France, which is the National Stadium of France.  They play rugby there, as well as football (soccer).  The place holds over 80,000 people.  It was sold out, and it was packed.  There were people everywhere, and it took us a little time to locate the box office.  We had our tickets in hand, but we had to pick up wristbands for the pit.  Tiffany and I had snakepit tickets, which means that we were in a little cut out section of the stage.  Hands down these were the best tickets to have.  We were super close to the band, but we didn't have to fight and push our way around with all of the general admission crowd.  Before we went down into the crowd, we made a couple of other stops.  First, we decided to go ahead and buy T-shirts beforehand.  This was a little bit of a challenge, as the people at the booth spoke very little English.  They certainly weren't mean about it.  There was a lot of pointing and hand gesturing.  I felt a little like I was in a game of charades where nobody was winning.  The hardest part was explaining that I needed an XL shirt.  She kept asking if I wanted small or medium.  I realize they don't have that many fat people in Europe, but there was just no way a small or medium was going to work.  They did have bigger shirts, and we ultimately got it figured out.  The shirts were all updated versions of the Black Album designs from the 90s, which was appropriate since this tour was celebrating that album's 20th (technically 21st) anniversary.  Next we hit the bathroom.  It's always a good idea to go before the show.  One, you don't want to miss anything, and two, you might not ever get back to where you want to be.  The men and women (like many places in France) basically share a bathroom with a small partition separating the two sides.  It's kind of different if that isn't what you are used to.  After we emptied our bladders, we decided to fill them up again with some cold beverages.  Here is an interesting concept that I would love some places in the US to adopt.  They sell you an eco-friendly souvenir cup filled with beer for 8 Euros.  After that, you can refill your cup for 2 Euros.  The initial price seems steep, although not too bad for subsequent fills.  I really just wanted the cup, so I just drank the one.  Also, too much beer requires more trips to the aforementioned bathroom.

There were two opening bands before the main event.  The first was a band called Gojira.  They are a French heavy metal band, even though their name is clearly the Japanese word for Godzilla.  Unfortunately we were still wandering around the stadium when they were playing, so we didn't really see this band.  I have a feeling they were better than the second band, which was The Kills.  We got down into the snakepit just as these guys started playing.  They had about four people banging on these giant drums.  There were two singers--one male, one female.  I don't really know what kind of music this was, but it wasn't the kind of music I wanted to hear.  It didn't really matter.  We got to socialize a little with the people around us, and just take the whole thing in.  We seemed to have quite an international crowd around us.  In addition to the French fans in the snakepit, there were people from England, Germany, and Holland to name a few.  My guess is we weren't the only Americans in the crowd.


It wasn't quite dark when Metallica went on about 9:30.  They have an amazing amount of daylight in France.  The show started as usual with Ennio Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold along with the video footage from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  Then the band came out and put on one of the best shows I have seen in years.  It was a full on rock show with new video, lasers, pyros, and a band that seems to have returned to their glory days.  In what was a stark contrast to the last tour, the setlist consisted entirely of old songs.  They played the entire Black album in reverse order.  Everything else was older than that, with the exception of one song from the current EP.  As I am generally a fan of their earlier stuff, the setlist was great as far as I was concerned.  It was also nice to see some stuff that is rarely played, including three songs that made their debut on this tour.  Being in the snakepit meant that at any given time we had band members on all sides of us.  That may sound distracting or crazy, but there isn't anywhere I would have rather been in the whole stadium.  I don't think they have had the snakepit at any shows since 1993, but I hope they keep it.  This was my 19th Metallica show, and I would probably rank it in my personal Top 3.  I am super excited about seeing them again in June, even though I don't get to fly to Europe this time.

Here is the full setlist:

Hit The Lights
Master Of Puppets
No Remorse
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Hell And Back
The Struggle Within
My Friend Of Misery
The God That Failed
Of Wolf And Man
Nothing Else Matters
Through The Never
Don't Tread On Me
Wherever I May Roam
The Unforgiven
Holier Than Thou
Sad But True
Enter Sandman
Battery
One
Seek And Destroy

I didn't get a ton of pictures.  I am a lot more interested in watching the band.  Also, it's hard to get good pictures of people that are moving around so much.  The pictures at the bottom were taken after the show was over.  The band came out and held up some flags that people had brought.  The overhead shot of the snakepit was on Metallica's website.  I stole it because you can see Tiffany (barely).  She is the one wearing the white shirt holding her arms up to take a picture.



No comments:

Post a Comment