LETTERS FROM STEVO: Caught in a mosh? Not quite...

I've been listening to heavy metal since I was an early teen. I had been around it since I was very young, thanks to a couple of older cousins who would listen to the likes of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motley Crue and AC/DC. I never got into the hair bands...unlike one of my brothers who shall remain nameless, but you can probably guess which one it is because he's such a BIG softie! My first metal band was Metallica, who I consider to be the entry level band into the genre for pretty much everybody. You start listening to Metallica, next thing you know you're listening to other metal bands, it's the natural progression. Before long, I found myself listening to Pantera, Slayer, Danzig, etc. This music fits my style and was theraputic in my rebellious, turbulent, testosterone filled teen years. Big Dave and I never got to see Metallica (or anyone else for that matter)because we lived in a small market... Reason #565 why growing up in a small town sucks is that you never get to go to concerts! I was finally able to see Metallica for the first time about 10 years ago in Utah of all places! However, Big Dave had still not seen them...Ahh! That's something we'll have to remedy now won't we!

Well, this past Tuesday, Big Dave saw Metallica live! Add one more to the bucket list! We found out a few months ago that they were coming to Denver on election night, so we got our tickets. Once Ma Busch found out I was going, she exhorted me, "you better behave yourself!" What initially was going to be just Dave and I ended up becoming a posse of 7. We had myself, Big Dave, Craig "He-Who-Thought-He-Would-Get-A-Headache" Thornton, Brother Cory, Dusty, Dvecchio and ACK! We had a blast! Metallica is so old now, they attract a more "mature" crowd to their concerts..."mature" translates to "lame" in my vocab. It was a pretty tame crowd. We watched the first band "The Sword"...they're pretty good, I like them. The next band was "Down" one of my favorites. I made dvecchio go with me and see them last year. They are composed of guys from other bands who originated in New Orleans. The lead singer, Phil Anselmo was the lead singer of Pantera and I seriously idolized that guy in high school...I'm not kidding! I warned Paw-in-law he's pretty outspoken and there's no filter with what he says. He's a pretty entertaining front man and by the end of the show, I could hear Paw-in-law saying, "I like that Anselmo guy!" I found that amusing because earlier that day, he was asking me if he was going to get a headache at the show...as if I know the goings on in that man's head...nobody knows what's going on in that man's head! During the show, we noticed this middle aged fruity guy dancing as if he were at an Abba concert. My initial thought was, "How did Bud get here???" Once I realized it wasn't Bud, we could only surmise that he must have thought he was at a Madonna concert. Had he been in Farmington, he wouldn't have survived the evening...the fact that he was among a "mature" crowd probably saved his life! Finally, we got Metallica, they've definitely gotten older as they only played for 2 hours...they used to play a lot longer! Big Dave loved it! ACK! was so into it he was going nuts! Cory and I were headbanging and singing along as loud as we could! Paw-in-law had a great time and has been talking about it ever since! The only regret is that we should've purchased general admission and gone to the front...I was hesitant because I didn't want to subject poor ol' Paw-in-law to a mosh pit...but it turns out there wasn't any real moshing going on, again, "mature" crowd. It was no "Metallica 10 years ago" or Slayer for that matter, but it was still good and I had great company!