The Highway to Hell: Novelty and Megadeth

As things go in life, so does the rapid arrival of new developments when working on other projects as would be the case tonight, when called upon for a promised favor after a long week of working which included multiple nights of staying out till 6am with the client. Tonight, Megadeth, the heavy metal thrash organism piled inside this small corporate conditioned space known as the House of Blues. Since, I got the tickets for free as a favor from a friend in the biz, arriving at any sort of appropriate hour did not have quite as much magnetism, as if I had pay for the tickets with my own money. First thing, all ages show, the concert started quite early, roll in around 9pm expecting Megadeth to have just gone on the stage, yet being fashionably tardy it becomes apparent that me and my friend have missed pretty much the entire concert, however within this four song mini set to be witnessed, many great details about people, the music, and the band begin to appear in grotesque and nostaligic manner.

The music venue is crammed with hundreds of Megadeth fans who came to headbang and occasionaly push the random stranger around on the venue floor in attempt to feel something that has long since left the character of the concert goer which is mad inescapable violence. Does this have to do with all the heavy security in red shirts manning the edges of the arena floor crowd to keep them from slamdancing into each other in fear of some potential law suit or is it the prevailing feelgood nature I seem to be recieving from people who excuse themselves as they pass by me in cramped quarters. Where is the violence, the rushing of the stage into a swirling mass of humanity that need to beat each other into sweaty, messy, and battered pieces of human flesh who leave the concert with a feeling of release, redemption, and a primitive bond amongst strangers who lead all sorts of varied lives yet embrace the angst, the repression, and the animal locked in cage feeling living in modern society can create. Something is missing here, while the happy and fat come fleeing from the downstage pit area where a few strung out souls slam into each other like male animals during mating season, the purpose, the reason, genetic in foundation, environmental in action.

While getting nostalgic, I can recall shows where fans would crawl through urine, fire, and chaos to reach the epicenter of disaster where a tsunami of aggression awaited anyone with the desire to jump in and take the punishment of the overall vibe from the people, the music, and the scene, no escape clause here, just running into others out of pain, anger, and frustration, a giant carthatic orgy, street fight in the stands, and at the end of it all, most people did not take it personally, the violence was accepted, the broken limbs, bloodied clothes, a reminder of dealing with the 80's and all the bullshit neo-conservatism laid at doorstep of a teenage generation that had been taught very little, if only to be number one and to hate everyone else who attempted to take that title away. Fair enough, so why not beat each other into ground beef, feels alright, no wars right now, none at least totally visible on the horizon. Dislocated shoulders, black eyes, and head tramua, no law suits, no crying, no problem. All this has dissapeared tonight with this crowd who seems happy enough to stare at some middle guys playing a genre of music they helped establish to a crowd of youth who never got the opportunity to feel the freshness of the music, if only through idiots like myself who get to gloat over being a little bit older, wiser, and most often debilitated from my life experiences, not much of a reward, wisdom sure, but to rub in the faces of these teenagers only turns them off.

Not that they did not give themselves a fair shake by attempting to get a pit going down on the floor, those same old people, the one guy with the number one finger flowing around the moshpit like some bobbing bottle in the water, heading in any direction the current would take him, as well as the one guy who just kept on going, running into people no matter how long the show went on, continously falling to the floor, as others kept lifting him back toward his next target.
Good to see some brothers in attendence as well, cause back in the day, most were homed in on upon the racist skinhead crowd which cause tremendous amounts of division between pit members, skin heads, and screwballs like myself, anytime the racist skins would start in on a brother in the pit, fights soon followed, a charge against small mindedness, hate, and outright prejudicious, but thankfully tonight the brothers mixed it up without any kind of debate, if only between the bouncers and the brothers in the mosh pit, one bouncer in particular who could grasp the concept of people beating themselves up for no good reason, serving as a corporate barrier to having any fun, this long arm of business justice only reflected a larger government type of beast desiring to control how people live, keeping the cities safe, making sure you do not hurt yourself, big brother taking control, so the bouncer made sure to give all the moshers a nice extra hard shove back into the center of the vortex when necessary, but also had the power to toss people out of the show when they expressed their personal disagreement with his behavior by running full speed and then jumping into his body, so the politics of life, as well as the politics of the modern moshpit.

Not much life in the band or the pit, like an engine attempting to turn its over in the cold weather of winter after a week of inactivity, Dave Mustane and his crew felt like they were playing at half speed, maybe it had been about twenty years since I last saw Megadeth but they seemed so lethargeic in comparison to the rapid nature of everyday 21st century life, which is true but as is almost anything today, in the instantaneous nature of daily existence, can't blame Megadeth for that one and in fact if you were to read some of Dave Mustane's lyrics you would find him to be someone who has a keen sense of observation of his environment that happens to be the foundation of his music, probably more like the inspiration, so not to write off them off, but having a history with the band as far as listening to them goes, the transcendence through the decades has missed, which could be due to my frumpy old clouded idealistic nature versus the molting of a few new generations of music listeners who have been offered less and less opportunity through channels of new artists to take chances, to get involved, and say what is on their mind, and for those who appear to be talking in this cyberspace galaxy, they did not get much proper schooling on what is going on around them, only in developing content to invent new dramas and tragedys that have nothing to do with the human condition right now.

They played Peace Sells, But Who's Buying and there was a bit of comfort seeing so many young kids singing the song word for word, hoping that they had understood the intented message of living in a virtual global warzone, jeez, why not, aren't some these teenagers of military age, possibly ready for deployment for Iraq or Afganistan (sp?), maybe some have already been there and back, for those people this song I would think has a more definite personal meaning, in my teens, the first Iraq encounter was more like an idea, a possiblity, a movie news reel with digital effects, today, when I run into twenty somethings who have spent a few years in combat overseas, I like to buy them a few drinks in hope they will share some of their experiences, how these things have changed them, and overall their perception of coming back home, which would be a entire another thread, so stick to the point, the thrash fest starts to peak with a old school style grand finale moshpit that would make even the most harden needle junkie skinhead want to rise from the dead and get into play. The fact the venue had their dogs out there as some armed guard presence, this tisk, tisk, tisk, don't play too rough now children okay, that is the kind of garbage which had me beating people in the first place, all the control, all the messaging, the brainwash, santize, cleanse, fold, and manipulate, wasn't their enough in school, at home, and on the television, why should I have to deal with it at a punk rock, thrash metal, or rap show.

Authority shutting the door on a good time, half the reason the music we listen to is created or maybe was, today is for the money, yeseterday, for the fame, and for some the sheer ability to generate instant rebellion in a million souls, could make one feel like a king, until the curtain came down or the media, the government, luckily the current adminstration has nothing to fear while many of the patrons made their way out of the show before the end of the last song in order to avoid having to wait an extra ten minutes at the conclusion of the concert as everyone else gathered what was left of their mind, hearing, and abuse. Time can be such a strange thing when in the middle of an era who has nothing but fighting on their mind, no internet, cheap drugs, or multi-hundred channed television, someone forced us to pay attention to the propaganda then to react to it, against the world, against our parents, against each other to the point where killing became the desensitized entity that covers the news twenty four hours a day, the body counts of Washington DC in the 80's felt like something, all the numbers from the Vietnam War, all the wars, today we try to give every single military solider an identity, then spend the rest of the time making murder seem like taking out the trash, so a family must suffer the loss of another human being, fuck where have I gone, off the rails again.

Novelty, Megadeth supercedes novelty they have been engrained into it by my generation who was influenced by the baby boomers who could just not let go of seeing Elton John, The Who, or the Rolling Stones one more time, so now has come the resurgence of Megadeth, The Pixies, and Public Enemy who have now become my generations Eagles, something played on a predictible list of Ipod listeners that were cooler than the other kids in school, who knows what they all do now, some successful, others dissapeared, and the rest fell into the middle of the bell curve where no one really cares about their existence on any level what so ever. So my big problem today has to do with all this retroism if that is a word, coming around in music I embraced like some naive fool as my own, now nothing but retreads for a new generation, both of us suckers as the aged rockers head back stage after taking their final bows, shirtless, in skin tight pants, looking for the same rocker groupies who are now my daughter's age, and were the same high school wonderfucks that went to the shows when I was a teenager, that is why even today, the bands of old hit the road to feel some of that yesteryear, from the stadiums to the nightclubs, day in, day out, from the drugs to the athletic trainer, moving in a never ending circle that offers nothing but re-runs from adult theme films where clothing trends and hair dos only seem to change.

After the show, I went with a friend who wanted to watch a rock cover band of which he somehow knew some of the musical players. Cover bands are the pinnacle of self indulgence this human like jukebox, according to the lead singer would play any song if written on some form of dollared amount, say a five or a ten for example, sounds easy enough, give them some cash and they will whip up their best version of Paradise City, maybe even Telegram Sam if prodded with enough financial incentive. Whenever I hear a cover band today, I think of the high school dance, oh come on, play Just Like Heaven and get it the fuck over with, need some help in the getting laid dept. with this girl from English class, either way my personal affinity for cover bands depends on booze and narcotics, why lie, the more of the two, the better the idea becomes, a simple Highway to Hell, transitions into Smoke on the Water. The band themselves looked like a bunch of guys who knocked some women up, got married, then just packed it in or never felt the need to give it one last shot at creating something unique, which today seems like an impossiblity thanks to the internet, but why stop trying which to some point I think most artist have, but another time. Rather drink down eight dollar beers pretending to be entertained for two hours while this band goes through the motions of playing Led Zepplin's Heartbreaker, extended solo and all the trimmings, the string bending, grimaced face, arched back, rocker poses, living in the moment, living in the past of something at one time perfect, but only now mere a statue gathering more bird shit stains by the day, but the general public loves it and goes in a mild state of hysteria as rail thin heroin addicted guitarist in Herman Munster Boots falls into a dream like state of Jimmy Page orgasms, almost possessed as the lighters come to life and the occassional drunk odd ball rushes the stage with devil horned fingers, leaning back attempting to take it all in one last time before having to check back into work in the morning.

Pretty much run of the mill the rest of the night, with more solos and more people plopping down in front of tables to pass some time singing along to hits of the past slowly dissolving away into the ash of rock and roll history that the wind quickly sweeps up into the air and dissapates like weekday motor traffic smog, building up slowly over time into something more caustic, more damaging, and fatal, something invisible but reducing the population, reacting with negative effects, wearing down into a translucent being, hollow, without anything to offer, a golem under the control of those who want customers, not questions, look for bigger numbers, not larger ideas and will melt down the next two generations into marinara sauce if the elders as well as the youth of this planet do not do something to change it. It's the Highway to Hell, follow it.