Dave Mustaine, San Diego Symphony Rock

Happy Monday!

The other day Dave Mustaine performed with the San Diego Symphony. The clips are online now and I have to admit the concert looked darn cool. Plus I've never witnessed a proper orchestral audience hoot and really cheer before -- but the folks in San Diego sure did when Mustaine came on the stage.

I really do love when musicians take risks. I've been following Mustaine's build up to this symphonic endeavor and I'm glad it came off without a hitch.

Comments

[Sean]

This sounds pretty good, but I can barely hear the guitar over the horns and percussion. This is certainly better than Deep Purple with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from way back in 1970.

[Ace Steele]

I'll reserve judgement until I see something with better audio. Like Sean said, you can't really hear the guitar. And if that's all that was added, what's the point? Deep Purple did this to great effect, long ago, Metallica gave their thrash metal depth & texture when they did it, KISS also added depth to their material when done with an orchestra...(in fact, they should have played less & let the orchestra do more!), The Scorpions are probably the ones that have done this sort of thing best, as they totally re-wrote & re-arranged their compositions to take advantage of a symphony's capabilities. I hope this is better than it sounds here, because so far, it showed Megadeth's songs to be pretty mundane & based around a single riff.

[Bob]

Let's not forget that Deep Purple's Concerto for Group and Orchestra was not a simple reworking of already-written songs to accommodate orchestral instruments like Mustaine's undertaking. Rather, it was composed from the ground up to be a fully-realized work to blend classical and rock forms. Jon Lord was still honing his classical composition chops at the time. His later classical works demonstrate how amazingly far he had come over the years. Finally, for a mind-blowing listening experience, check out The Mooddy Blues live at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in 1992.

[Dj]

What I hear is pretty cool. I love Mustaine, he is a phenomenal guitarist. I love how they mix genres here too.

[Him]

Bob, you gave me a flashback of sorts. In the mid-90s I saw the Moody Blues (or, ahem, most of them) play with the World Festival Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall in London. A great show. "NIWS" (I know, I know) sounds amazing live with full accompaniment. And the acoustics in the hall were amazing, as were the fans, young and old.

I still have a soft spot for Megadeth, Mustaine's ranting and all aside. If this brings in a wider audience, for them or metal, and if only by a bit, that isn't a bad thing.

Thing is, this audience isn't likely to have been a "proper" orchestra audience. They promoted the heck out of this event. They sold, I assume, quite a few tickets to fans who only know "Carmina Burana" because of The Doors movie or Ozzy's old intro music. They probably think Orff is a character in _Lord of the Rings_. I kid. I kid.

Still it is a good gimmick for orchestras too. They need to refresh their audiences and cater to different demographics as their sponsorship base--corporate and individual--shrinks and dies. So the relationship is symbiotic for both sides. It may not mean street cred meets high street. But it doesn't hurt any of the bands or the orchestras.

I find it funny: in a head to head, Mustaine is going to lose to a kettle drum and the string section! Now that _is_ pretty darn metal.

[Ace Steele]

Upon listening to the attached videos in this article, I think they are correct that Dave & Symphony together was kind of a fail.

http://www.metalinjection.net/latest-news/dave-mustaine-played-with-the-san-diego-symphony-this-weekend-and-it-was-not-good

[Bob]

Ace, thanks for the link to these videos. Yeah, this really isn't very good, and it's not the fault of our awesome symphony! Mustaine's playing, especially during the Vivaldi pieces, is very sloppy. It's too bad that someone with the actual guitar chops to pull this off doesn't have the name appeal of Mustaine. Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Stump, or Tony MacAlpine would have sounded infinitely better than Mustaine, but those names, with the possible exception of Yngwie, don't sell tickets.