Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Rock The Hill

I had a good time at the Rock The Hill concert last Friday, July 14. Bands played from about 3PM until midnight. I got there at 6 PM to see and hear Seether, who have some really good songs, especially "Broken". After Seether was Coheed and Cambria, a band that I was not familiar with, but they were good nonetheless.



Of course, Metallica was the main draw for the 20-30 thousand people in the audience especially since they hadn't played in Halifax for 18 years, before many of the audience members were even born! They rocked the hill for 2 hours and played many of their classics as well as some songs from their latest album.



I was about 100 feet from the stage, close enough to see the band and get some good photos. The show itself was something to behold, with a huge screen, multi-level stage, flames, Metallica beachballs and even fireworks!



I was impressed to see how much fun the band members had (OK, maybe not Lars so much) and how they stayed on stage after the show to throw out literally handfuls of guitar picks and tell the crowd how much they enjoyed playing for us. My cynical side told me that they understand marketing and branding so well that they acted as if they were emotionally involved with the crowd and I'll bet they do the same thing after every concert. My optimistic side told my cynical side to shut up and enjoy the afterglow of a really fun show.