I went to Mayhem Fest at Comcast a couple of weeks back because, yes, I still am that sort of degenerate dimwit. Without a doubt my age has affected my view of these events. What would have been a fine outing 15 years ago is now way too long a day to be spent in 95° heat with 100,000 cases of tragic acne, an equal amount of fat folk, spilling port-a-potties, non sequitir vendors (Bob Marley & Beatles tapestries?), redundant bands and – the most horrible of all – NINE BUCK BEERS!

   The prohibitive cost of a Bud Light probably slows down the drunks. And the last thing you want to be is tanked in a hot, zitty and fat concert ho-down. Like this multiply-limbless dude who’d been bumming smokes and staggering around the lawn on bionic stilts. He was plastered. The chick who’d originally plopped down on the grass with him had vanished, leaving strangers to pick him up each time he face-planted on a hunt for yet another cigarette. The kid was chain-smoking, trying to find ways to hold two smoldering fags in the knuckle nubs of the one thing he had close to a hand. My pal Ralph & I were trying to assess what could have happened to him – war vet? Awful car accident? Ralph mused that it might’ve been genetic, “Something wrong with his DNA, you know, like it’s really DN-Ohhhhhh…”

   So there was something worth going to that Metal Muck Up for: some black humor gems about drunken invalids! Well, that ain’t exactly nice, but Ralphie never fails to provide all sorts of conversational pearls when we hang out. My largest gripe about metal in general is the redundant nature of most of the bands.  Musically, most of them might as well be Slayer cover bands except when it comes to the singers. Don’t know when or why it happened, but almost all metal “vocalists” – including women – vomit out lyrics trying to sound like Satan with a bowel obstruction. My view is that if you can’t understand the singer then there’s no point in having lyrics in the first place. Ralph is metal-dedicated, but he concedes the excess sonic barf of lead singers while summing up the phenomenon perfectly: “Their voices are percussion instruments. It’s like if you can’t play an instrument then become a drummer. If your voice sucks – make it a drum!”

   All in all, the evening was what it was. Got to see Bullet for My Valentine and they definitely earned my PFG rating. They had an Iron Maiden bend to their sound, what Maiden might sound like today if they’d evolved and were still cool. I didn’t make it to the headlining Marilyn Manson as I’d hoped. By the time Slayer wrapped it up so had I. Slayer is still pretty intense, but after 5 hours of mostly repetitive acts I was getting bored, not to mention a wee bit sick of having to dodge charging knots of teenagers trying to start mosh pits all over the grass. I hit the road, went to a local packie to pay $9 for a six-pack of Smutty Nose Pale Ale and took it home to drink the ring out of my ears. 

   I know you will never again find my ass at a music festival unless it’s one of them city-wide sort of deals where you can come and go at will and drink wherever the hell you like at sensible cost. Not even sure if I’ll ever get to an arena-sized show of any sort again either, keeping my fingers crossed for getting in on the swell, tighter gigs like NIN or Tool when they play the Orpheum.

Might even just stick to the radio from here on in. Golden Oldies like The Clash or AC/DC played on an AM radio with a single earphone embedded in my hairy, age-spotted lobe. Because maybe it is an age thing after all. I should switch my little radio over to Rush Limbaugh or Jay Severin to find when the Death Panel of President Lucifer Hussein von Baby-Diddler will be cruising my hood to euthanize old fucks like me who think Cannibal Corpse is kind of lame. 

Tune in soon for my next post: “My Menage a Trois with the Frumpy Mom Across the Street and a Bag Tard from Stop & Shop”