Metal Lair Complaint Department: Modern Concert Experience

Written by Remmy Chillmister

Metal Lair Complaint Department. A Subdivision of The Metal Ministry

COMPLAINT NO. 001: THE MODERN CONCERT EXPERIENCE

Welcome to The Metal Lair Complaint Department, where we take the petty annoyances, legitimate grievances and festering bullshit of the metal world and give them the thoughtful, mature consideration they deserve. Which is absolutely fucking none.

For our inaugural complaint, we’re going to a concert, or at least we’re trying to.

It begins innocently enough. You hear one of your favorite bands is coming to town. You haven’t seen them in years. You pull up the ticket page and there it is:

LAWN: $30 Thirty bucks? Fuck yeah.

You don’t need luxury. You’re a metalhead. You’ve slept in cars and pissed behind dumpsters. You’ve eaten things from gas stations that didn’t technically identify themselves as food. You can sit on some grass.

So you click the beautiful little $30 button. That was your first mistake.

YOUR $30 TICKET IS NOT $30

At checkout, your $30 lawn ticket begins reproducing fees like somebody dumped water on a fucking Gremlin.

Ticket: $30.00
Service Fee: $14.75
Facility Fee: $11.00
Order Processing Fee: $8.50
Digital Delivery Fee: $5.00
Because Apparently Computers Need Gas Money Fee: $7.25
Tax: Of fucking course.
Fuck You Fee: $100.00
Because we can fee $50.00

You stare at the total. Surely there’s been a mistake.There has not. Remember, this is the lawn. There is no seat involved in this transaction.

I am sitting on YOUR DIRT. I am bringing my own ass. What exactly are you servicing? And can somebody please explain the digital delivery fee?

Nobody delivered anything. You sent some pixels to the phone I already bought through the internet I already pay for.

Did somebody put my QR code in an Uber? Did it require overnight accommodations? Was there a fucking meal allowance?

Then there’s tax. I would specifically like to speak with whoever calculated the tax on the Fuck You Fee.

Is Fuck You considered a taxable service? Was the Fuck You rendered in the state where I purchased the ticket? Does Fuck You qualify as interstate commerce? I want documentation.

FINE. I’LL GET A SEAT.

Maybe the lawn isn’t worth it. There are actual seats for only a little more money. Look at that!

LIMITED VIEW: $39.50

Limited view? That sounds manageable. Maybe there’s a railing. There is not a railing. Your seat is located somewhere behind the stage, slightly to the left of the drummer’s pancreas.

For the next few hours, you enjoy an unobstructed view of six speaker cabinets, a lighting rig, seventeen cables, three road cases and the back of a roadie named Steve. You cannot see the band.

You can see the equipment responsible for allowing other people to hear the band. Every once in a while the singer wanders far enough stage right that you catch a glimpse of an elbow.

HOLY SHIT! THERE HE IS! And he’s gone. Best fucking elbow you’ve ever seen. You have purchased the Behind The Scenes Audio Infrastructure Experience. Congratulations.

BETTER SEATS AVAILABLE!

Now the seating chart starts whispering to you. For another $80, you can move closer and for another $150, you can see the drummer. For another $250, you can determine whether the drummer is actually a human being.

Then you discover PLATINUM.

What is Platinum? Nothing. It is a seat. It does not include a meet and greet. Nobody from the band is coming to your house. You are not receiving a guitar. Nobody is naming a song after you.

It is simply a better seat that somebody noticed you really fucking wanted. Platinum isn’t a seat. It’s a diagnosis.

You clicked the little blue dot and demonstrated enough emotional attachment to this band that an algorithm concluded you could be financially bullied.

A BRIEF WORD FOR THE VERTICALLY DISADVANTAGED

You finally did it, you spent the money and got really good seats with a perfect view. Tonight you are going to SEE THE BAND. The lights go down and everybody stands.

And rising directly in front of you is a seven-foot-six human redwood. Of course. He can’t help being seven feet tall. This poor bastard has done nothing wrong but neither have you.

And your $275 concert experience is now:

DAVE’S HEAD: LIVE IN CONCERT.

For the next two hours, you become intimately acquainted with the back of Dave’s skull. Occasionally Dave leans left.

HOLY SHIT, THERE’S THE GUITARIST.

Dave leans right. Gone. Eventually you begin noticing things. Nice haircut. Is that a mole? What shampoo does Dave use?

By the encore, you have spent more time studying Dave’s occipital bone than you have spent looking at several members of your immediate family.

EXCUSE ME, THOSE ARE OUR FUCKING SEATS

Eventually you have to pee. This is dangerous because leaving your seat apparently constitutes abandonment under Maritime Law.

You return carrying your $17 beer and discover two people sitting where you paid several hundred dollars to sit.

“Excuse me. Those are our seats.”

“Oh, nobody was sitting here.”

Correct.

BECAUSE WE WENT TO GET THE $18 BEER NOW MOVE!

Then there’s the floor.

You got there early. You found your spot. You stood through the opening acts. You protected your tiny piece of concrete with the territorial determination of a small European nation.

The headliner is about to start. Suddenly, here comes Chad. Chad arrived seventeen minutes ago and has decided he belongs at the barricade.

“Excuse me, sorry, my friend is up there.” No he fucking isn’t.

Chad begins plowing through humanity like he has diplomatic immunity. One person moves, then another. Then twenty people are shoved backward because Chad has apparently purchased the Manifest Destiny Package.

WOULD YOU LIKE A BEER?

Yes. You have been standing for four hours. One beer will be: $18.00. For $18, I should receive the beer, the glass and a handwritten apology from the brewer.

Fine. Water? $9.00. Water. Not Norwegian glacier water harvested by monks and blessed beneath a blood moon. Water. The substance that falls out of the fucking sky. But you’re thirsty, so you buy it.

Which leads directly to…

THE BATHROOM

There are 19,000 people in the building.

Apparently, whoever designed it anticipated that approximately six of them would urinate.

The bathroom line begins outside Section 104 and ends somewhere near Cincinnati. Eventually you reach the Promised Land.

The door opens. Jesus Christ! The toilet looks like it witnessed something. The floor is all wet. But with what? Is there a leak in the plumbing?

DO NOT INVESTIGATE.

There is no toilet paper and one sink has surrendered. The soap dispenser contains either nothing or a mysterious pink substance last replenished sometime during the Obama administration. Someone is pounding on the door.

“I HAVE BEEN IN HERE FOURTEEN SECONDS.”

You wash your hands or perform whatever ceremonial gesture is possible under the circumstances. Then you leave and realize you’re hungry.

WOULD YOU LIKE THE MEAT CYLINDER?

Concert food exists in that fascinating biological territory between cuisine and evidence. There is pizza with the structural integrity of roofing material. Nacho cheese with a measurable half-life and something being sold as a hot dog that looks medically interesting.

“How much?” “Fourteen dollars.” Of course it is.

You buy the cylindrical meat question because you’ve been inside this building for five hours and your remaining choices are: Eat it or die.

BUY THE FUCKING SHIRT

One thing we are NOT complaining about is the band merch. Buy the shirt. Seriously.

Touring costs money. Gas costs money. Crew costs money. Hotels cost money. Bands need merch income.

If you’ve got the cash and want the shirt, support the fucking band.

The Complaint Department has plenty of targets. The people making the music aren’t one of them.

WELCOME TO THE PIT. DON’T BE A FUCKING ASSHOLE

Then there’s the pit. The glorious, sweaty, chaotic human washing machine where several hundred metalheads willingly slam into one another while everyone outside it wonders why their species ever crawled out of the ocean.

There are unspoken rules. Not official rules. Nobody handed you a pamphlet. But somehow generations of metalheads figured this shit out. Somebody falls?Pick them up.

Somebody loses a shoe? Hold that motherfucker in the air like you just recovered Excalibur until its owner appears. Somebody clearly wants out?Let them out.

Someone gets hurt? Make space and help them. This is a mosh pit, not the collapse of civilization. And then… THAT GUY arrives.

You know That Guy. That Guy isn’t moshing. That Guy has apparently been waiting his entire life for a legally ambiguous opportunity to punch complete strangers in the fucking kidneys.

He’s throwing elbows. Windmilling his arms. Kicking backward. Charging into people half his size. Congratulations, Kyle. You have defeated a 5’3” woman who was trying to watch Gojira. Your ancestors are surely overwhelmed with pride.

Meanwhile, somebody else gets knocked down and six terrifying-looking dudes covered in tattoos immediately stop what they’re doing and haul them back to their feet.

Because THAT is the pit. It looks violent. It is chaotic. You might lose a shoe, half a beer and possibly your understanding of where north is. But there is supposed to be a strange little social contract underneath the carnage:

We beat the shit out of each other recreationally. We do not actually beat the shit out of each other. Learn the difference. And if you cannot? There is plenty of room elsewhere in the venue.

Possibly behind Dave.

AND YET…

Here is the stupidest part of this entire experience. We keep going. We bitch about ticket prices and fees. We bitch about the $9 water. We survive Dave’s head. We defend our seats from squatters. We avoid the Chads. We piss in Mordor. We eat the Meat Cylinder.

Then the house lights go down and the crowd erupts. The first riff hits. And for the next two hours, every single goddamn complaint disappears.

Because this is why we came. The band is fucking magnificent. Your ears are ringing and your voice is gone. You’re sweaty, exhausted and grinning like an idiot. You walk back to the car thinking: Worth it.

You get in. Turn the key. And then sit there. And sit there, and sit there. Nothing moves. You have been in the parking lot for 47 minutes and have traveled approximately eleven feet.

Somebody three rows over is leaning on their horn as though the other 8,000 cars simply forgot they could leave.

Then you remember: Parking: $45. You paid forty-five dollars… to sit here. Son of a bitch. See you at the next show.

The Metal Lair Complaint Department

Your complaint has been received.

It will not be resolved.

Metal Lair Complaint Department featuring Remmy Chillmister at the Ministry of Metal complaint desk

The Metal Lair Complaint Department is A Metal Lair® OriginalSeries

FILE A COMPLAINT WITH THE METAL MINISTRY

Have a metal-related grievance that needs official investigation?

Bad concert etiquette? Venue bullshit? Festival fuckery? A trend in metal that needs to die? An industry annoyance? Something that’s been pissing you off since 1987? Have a complaint against Metal Lair?

FILE YOUR COMPLAINT

File it with the Complaint Department. Remmy may investigate your grievance in a future installment.

Selected grievances may be investigated, mocked, dissected or otherwise subjected to the questionable judgment of Remmy Chillmister in a future edition of The Metal Lair Complaint Department.

Submission does not guarantee investigation. Remmy has a substantial backlog of things that piss him off.

About The Author

Remmy Chillmister survives on beer, bad decisions, and one functioning ear since ’79. Banned from three metal festivals, countless venues, and one nursing home for excessive honesty. Nobody knows why he still has a press credential, including him.

THE METAL LAIR COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT