80's metal concerts-- how the mighty have fallen.

[graywolf624]

Over the weekend my best friend came up from GA so we could go see saxon in concert. Low and behold the day before the concert they canceled their entire US tour(needless to say we were none to happy also considering Ticketmaster stiffed us part of the refund). It was a small venue(300 people each part of the tour) and rumour is it had to do with their visas, but frankly I'm not happy with them.

Anyway, so we surfed around for another concert option. Came up with a festival in Baltimore featuring Skid row, quiet riot, and slaughter.
Ahead of time I'll say straight up I've never been a slaughter fan and like like skid row and quiet riot, but neither has had a hit in years. That being said when it turned out the arena booked was cut in half and didnt sell out, I'm left with the question of the status of metal in America. I realize they arent putting out new cds like many metal bands, but the turn out was disappointing(maybe 1000 people). We also went to an afterparty with band meet and greet. Turns out total turnout here including the bands were about 50. Cool, but sad.

The show:

Started with some cover group called never never. They did a damn good job of covering Zepplin and Van Halen.

As stated above Im not a slaughter fan, they did a good job but other then the bassist I wasn't really impressed.

Quiet riot, I have to say had the most talent there. The guitarest and basist had alot of talent and the singer still has his abilities. As my observations figured out, they were really the only stars of the show. Large amounts of audience participation and loud 80s hair metal. I can't complain.

Skid row, I have to wonder why this band was the headliner. I love the band and all, but only one of the original band members was even there. Snake , the guitarest, was out cause of a hand injury. Sebastian Bach, to me the life blood of skid row, left the band years ago with the drummer. That left a bunch of unknowns. They weren't bad, and I have to say the singer and stand in guitarest had alot of talent. The singer, Solinger, sounded similar to manowar and they did get alot of audience participation. That being said its still for all practical purposes a cover band playing their stuff with their name. It also kind of annoyed me that they did a cover of the ramones. I didn't come to listen to punk, this is a metal concert.

Oh well. I guess I really just wanted to vent on how few metal fans there seem to be(though the choice in bands might contribute in this case, even with more recent bands/shows like g3 I've noticed a down turn in attendance) and Saxon's idea of screwing their fans. I figured someone also might have some interest about the other bands, though prolly not as Im starting to wonder if my tastes are sliding ever further out of the mainstream.