Metallica...gotta love 'em!

October 3rd and 4th I was at the Bell Centre in Montreal attending 2 Metallica concerts. I had seen them at Summer Sanitarium in July 2003 and I was more than eager to see them again...and twice in 2 nights. Actually, it was 3 times in 5 days as I saw them in Ottawa on October 7th as well...hehe (yeah...I'm a big fan...!).

To make a long story short, the Montreal concerts were the greatest gigs I have ever attended. Loud music and insane crowds (way better than Ottawa concert-goers...sorry guys). Metallica had been selling the audio version of every concert since they started touring in 2004 on livemetallica.com and I was looking forward to downloading the Montreal gigs in order to have the coolest possible souvenir from these concerts...aside from the pics I usually take at concerts (http://www.anhs.qc.ca/metallica). So anyways, coming back home after the second concert, the livemetallica.com website mentioned that the Montreal concerts were not going to be available because of the high fees requested by the stagehands in Montreal in order for Metallica to record and publish their own shows on their website. Eventually, after much nagging to GEG (the promoter), IATSE (the stagehand union in Montreal) and some media help (Alexandre Vigneault, La Presse) we were able to find out that it was for a matter of 6000$ that the concerts were not made available.

Apparently, Metallica records the shows on 4 track systems through their soundboards. The stagehand union in Montreal includes the possibility for any artist to record their own show on 2 track or VHS. This is included in the contracts that the artists sign when they come to the Bell Centre. Meanwhile, Metallica apparently forgot to tell the union that they record on 4 tracks, thus going against the agreement they have. Unfortunately, both parties were unable to come to another agreement before the Oct. 3 show, so they were not allowed to publish the concerts on livemetallica.com

Earlier this afternoon, I was chatting with a friend I met through the Metallica message board a couple of weeks before the Oct 3 concert and he just told me out of the blue that he had a very good audio recording from the audience from the Oct 3 concert! OMG!!!!! Imagine my surprise and how excited I was when he told me that. So at the time I am writing these lines, we are still exchanging files over MSN and I am listening to this wonderful concert that I attended, that I will burn on CD a little later and keep as a souvenir from this night. I will only be missing an audio or video recording from the Oct 4th show and I will have either format for all the Metallica concerts I have attended since 1997.

I have:
VHS Bootleg from March 28, 1997 (Molson Centre, Montreal)
VHS Bootleg from July 20, 2003 (Parc Jean Drapeau, Montreal)
Audio Bootleg from October 3, 2004 (Bell Centre, Montreal)
Audio from October 7, 2004 (Corel Centre, Ottawa -- from livemetallica.com)

So that's 4 out of 5 which is good! I can't think of a good way to thank my buddy for sending me this incredible concert audio from Oct 3...I'm going nuts just listening back to it for the first time...I can almost feel as if I was there!

Here's a pic from Oct 3 2004: