Perhaps I Should Explain Myself

My story: about 11 months ago, the online publishing company I work for hired a new heavy metal writer. To be honest, I made the decision about hiring him – hiring decisions are in my normal capacity anyway, but I’m the only person in our editorial department who really knows anything about metal. When I said this guy not only had the knowledge but the connections, it went over well.

In any case, about a month later I had the bright idea of furthering my own burgeoning writing career by doing concert reviews for this writer – I live in New York City and he lives off the main tour circuit, so it turned into a mutually beneficial arrangement for both of us. I started in January with part 2 of Anthrax’s reunion tour, learned a lot from the process and have been covering about a show a month ever since.

Great, but so what? Well, the problem with writing anything for publication is that you need to cut things out from your description so the reader doesn’t have to wade through pages and pages of pedantry just to find out what the hell was going on. Unfortunately, some of that pedantry is interesting (the conductor at the Dream Theater 20th Anniversary show in April was very clearly rocking out during those songs that had minimal orchestral involvement), some of it isn’t appropriate for the publication (while waiting for Mastodon to come on stage at the Unholy Alliance Tour in June, I had the pleasure of listening to a drunk New Jersey redneck biker-type yell about how “Angel of Death” was all about killing Jews and how any Jews in the crowd were going to die during Slayer’s set) and some it just won’t fit (Queensrÿche re-recorded all of the old Mindcrime footage for their current tour). As I was enjoying the privileges granted to me by my first-ever photo pass at Gigantour 2006 last week, I thought, “why not take the best of those missing bits and blog about them?” So here I am, blogging about the missing bits. I don’t know how often I’ll be updating – I suspect a post per show or so.