“No more can they keep us in
Listen, damn it, we will win
They see it right, they see it well
But they think this saves us from our hell”
On this day, July 3rd, in 1988 I attended my very first concert, EVER, the Monsters of Rock tour at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas. Wow! Talk about an amazing experience for the first time. The venue was about 11 hours from my house and the concert itself was nine hours, give or take. Attendance was over 55,000 and some say it was as high as 80,000, to put that in perspective for today the Taylor Swift Eras tour averaged 50,000 to 70, 000 per show in the states. I am not comparing anything but attendance totals for both of these tours so keep your comments to yourself.
The following bands were the line up for the day:
Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken, Metallica and Kingdom Come.
I enjoyed Van Halen, even though Sammy was having voice problems and promised they would come back and play a concert in Dallas for free (three years later in 1991 they fulfilled that promise but sadly I was not in attendance for that). Scorpions and Dokken were excellent. I didn’t really get to see much of Kingdom Come because we arrived a little late. But one of the things I remember most from that day was the sheer dedication of the Metallica fans.
The field did not have seating so from the stage back to at least the 50-yard line was just full of people all crammed together. This was true for each band and people would just rotate out from the field to their seats in the stands throughout the day. Not for Metallica though. When they were done playing, I watched as a lot of their fans not only left the field but left the stadium altogether, they were there for one band and one band only that day. Now I wasn’t an idiot and I knew Metallica and several of their songs. I had several friends who were very much into them but I wasn’t at that point in my life. After seeing so many people just leave after they played, that changed my opinion and I decided to start listening to more of their music and boy was I glad I did. I learned then that there was something very calming to me internally when I listened to metal music, there is something about screaming lyrics and loud music that I find very therapeutically calming still to this day.
P.S. I chose this particular song not only because it was on the setlist for this tour but also because of its Metallica approved usage in the HBO documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. If you have not seen this or the two follow ups, I strongly recommend them, they are not for the faint of heart but they are an excellent look into how being an outsider as a teenager in a small town can make you a target when something bad happens. It is also an interesting look into our judicial system…….still waiting on justice for the West Memphis 3.
Larry’s Perspective:
Well, well, well. Shannon was a headbanger. For the record, I have seen Metallica as well - I'm pretty sure it was at the Nutter Center in Dayton, Ohio on the And Justice For All tour. But I can't find a ticket and I'm old, so I'm probably wrong.
I had the exact opposite opinion of Shannon's during the concert experience - that's just not my cup of tea. I enjoy some of their songs and I followed them until the Black Album. Anything after that I lost interest in. And I have some pretty strong negative opinions of Lars - both around drumming as well as Napster.
In any case, I'm glad Shannon at the age of 16 was able to make the trip to Texas to see some devil music playing bands. Very much the exact opposite of any of my 16 year old experiences...
30th Anniversary
Our Story - Shannon's Perspective
Our Story - Larry's Perspective
Ghost of a Chance (Rush) and why?
Ghost of a Chance 