Blues Saraceno Does Netflix Reality (Kinda)

Meanwhile, here’s something completely random:

I was watching Battle Camp on Netflix last night. It’s a reality show where folks compete in a summer camp-like setting for power and ultimately money. Anyway, I’m just watching, and I turned on the closed captioning because the audio level kept getting crazy low. Battle Camp uses a ton of music in nearly every scene. What did I spy but guitarist Blues Saraceno’s name pop up on the screen! (Look, I’m not done with the series yet, so no comments to spoil me!) Kids, I'm so old I remember when Blues was a member of Poison for 12 seconds!

I stopped, did a double-take and went back to check again. Yep, that was Blues on the screen for sure. Eric was like “What are you doing?” and when I explained, he rolled his eyes. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the song, but it was pretty darn catchy. I don’t know why I was so surprised. I mean, Blues has done lots of songs for hit TV shows and movies over the years. He’s a quite accomplished composer at this point. Dude is truly killing it.

Just felt like sharing. As you were.

That One Time I Finally Saw Metallica Live

Happy Mother's Day!

Your girl finally got to see Metallica live and it was pretty epic. The set surprised me a little, but maybe it shouldn't have given the festival setup and no-repeat weekend rules.

Eric and I went to Sonic Temple Festival in Columbus, Ohio on Friday only. The fest is four days, opening Thursday and closing tonight with Metallica again. We wandered around, looked at booths, bought some Metallica merch and of course had the adult happy meals at Metallica's Blackened burger bar pop-up restaurant. They actually had a vegan option and I was shocked and stoked. Eric had real meat (of course) and he loved it. I had the real whiskey (lol) and I loved that too. Hat tip to Metallica and their San Francisco foodie roots. Also, the "prize" was a packet of Blackened branded picks. Nice.

We watched a few of the early bands including Exodus. I was on the floor for them for awhile but the sound wasn't great. Pit didn't seem to care!

Alice Cooper was freaking phenomenal as always because there's no one better. Nita Strauss was living her best life and swinging her bass around and people were eating it up. I've had "Hey Stoopid" going through my head since the set. You could tell who was seeing Alice for the first time and they were mesmerized by the guillotine bit and the snake too. I even convinced a 27-year-old stadium bartender to watch all of Alice and he agreed with me that it was awesome and worth his time. (He said he had never heard of any of the bands except Metallica).

You know how I mentioned the sound was bad for Exodus? Well it got worse for Rob Zombie and Dude. Was. Pissed. Rob was very clearly motioning to the sound crew for fixes and nothing was going right. Then the intro to "Living Dead Girl" got all screwed up and Rob blew his top. He slammed down his microphone stand and stormed toward the side stage sound crew and yelled for a while. Then the show went on and he did his best.

At the intro to "Thunder Kiss '65," he mentioned it being some "old White Zombie shit your grandparents might know" and then I felt old as hell.

Sound issues aside, I had a good time watching Rob Zombie. It was probably my fifth time seeing him live.

Metallica was supposed to go on at 8:30 p.m. but that didn't happen. My theory is that their crew was working with Sonic Temple to fix the sound because it sure did seem resolved (or at least way better) for Metallica. Funny how that works, right?

As you can see from the setlist above, the opening of the show was heavy as hell. Since this was a festival formation, the stage was very stripped down, too. Lars was still dead center and there was plenty of room for him to stand at the end of every song.🙄

I will say I think Metallica started losing the crowd a little after the third track or so, but they got everyone back with "King Nothing." They just needed that big commercial song to get folks going again. After all, people had been standing or moshing for like 10+ hours at that point. Then they released an entire semi trailer full (seriously) of massive branded beach balls, and folks liked that a lot.

I was shocked we got "Orion" live. According to the Metallica song vault, the track has only been performed live like 100 times. A nice tribute to Cliff Burton for sure.

"Nothing Else Matters" and "Sad But True" were just epic, the latter being on my permanent running list for ever and ever, amen. Eric even got a "Sad But True" themed shirt.

By the time "Fuel" came around, we got lots of pyro, which is always a good thing (outdoors, that is). I also felt very lucky to get "Master of Puppets" as our closer - complete with a really long fireworks show at the end! I guess when you have all the money in the world, you can afford to set off 10 minutes worth of fireworks every night and give out heaps of custom picks and drum sticks, because zillionaires. (Also that adult vegan happy meal was $33 so someone is making a killing somewhere).

The bad part is I didn't get  my beloved "One" but I'm sure the crowd tonight will and I'm guessing "Enter Sandman" will be their closer. But that's okay. I feel lucky that we got a rarer, heavier set and it wasn't just all radio singles. I mean, hearing "The Shortest Straw" live was a shocker.

I would have enjoyed "Chasing Light" as a newer track, but it is what it is. A massive catalog with lots of hits and limited time means something has to give, right? So fun, so worth the money but Christ on a bicycle, the egress to Sonic Temple this year was bad. In fact, we waited 90 minutes to get out of the parking area. The entrance was bad for lots of folks too, with Thursday traffic making the local news it was such a cluster. In fact, people were sitting up to five hours trying to park - just gridlock everywhere.

If you believe what you read on the internet (and you probably shouldn't), the festival was quite over sold, which would explain some parking issues I suppose. 

Here's drone footage of the crowd during Metallica. Eric and I actually spied the drone and watched it zoom around. Cool footage.

Meanwhile The Who Are Retiring (Again)

I think this one is going to stick.

The Who are retiring with a farewell tour called "The Song Is Over." In my opinion, that is an incredibly sad name for a tour, but it definitely gets the point across, doesn't it?

Tour dates are below - no Ohio stops. Actually, not all that many stops at all, considering. Tickets will be bonkers expensive, I'm sure. I also think the tiny "Live Nation" under The Who logo in the lineup is just ridiculous.

I Am So Pumped For This

I am so ready to see Metallica tonight, like you just don't know. I don't have many bucket list bands left, but they are one so it will be great to see them live for the first time. I know the festival experience is much different than in-the-round, but it should still be loud and awesome and metal.

"One" is my favorite Metallica track and I hope I get it in my set. It's no repeat weekend, so we'll see. There's a deep catalog to pick from, so I am sure I will be pleased with whatever the band has in store.

Kip Winger Debuts New Concerto Tomorrow

It's going to be a big weekend for Kip Winger. He spent five years working on a violin concerto and it will officially debut tomorrow and Saturday night as performed by the Nashville Symphony. I love this for him and I think it is great that he took a selfie with his name on the marquee.

The name of the concerto is In "The Language of Flowers" and the debut will also be recorded.

No, it's not "Seventeen" but I bet this will rock in its very own way.

Revised Rocklahoma 2025 Lineup Released

This year's Rocklahoma festival looks pretty good. Marky Ramone is playing Ramones tunes, Alice Cooper and Shinedown are headlining. Also playing is The Darkness, Dirty Honey, Mike Tramp's White Lion and Sebastian Bach too!

Rocklahoma takes place Labor Day weekend (end of August for the non-American readers) in Pryor, Oklahoma.

The Joe Perry Project Announces Tour

So this is interesting. Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry just announced a tour and part of his Project this go-round is fellow 'Smith guitarist Brad Whitford! The entire band is really a supergroup with members of The Black Crowes and Stone Temple Pilots joining along.

There have been rumblings that something is brewing in the Aerosmith camp and that a show or two might happen by the end of the year. This would be a good warm-up for such an event.