Not for the cure heads unless you now appreciate good music

Well thats the longest title out of the way.

This whole music thing has been fun for me also on youtube, and Dollys mention of Metallica got me searching and I found two absolute gems.

Metallica was formed by an amazing drummer Lars Ulrick and would have been one of the top 4 Trash metal bands when I was growing up, alongside other greats like Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer. There was great tales of Megadeth and Metallica always at odds with each other, due to the fact that the original lead guitarist Dave Mustaine was kicked out of the band after 2 years due to arguments with the rest of the band, mainly because of drugs and alcohol. Dave Mustaine was a mad man and a loose wire and I think kids looked up to him in a wierd Amy Winehouse way.

After been kicked out he formed Megadeth, and the fueding started in gusto and to this day is unresolved, the replacement guitarist for Metallica ended being Kirk Hammett, and Mustaine even had a go at him with quotes like "I dont care Kirk took my job, at least I got to bang his girlfriend before he took my job — how do I taste, Kirk?" oh yep class stuff!

Mustaine was and still is an amazing guitarist with some heads of the music industry claiming he was the inspiration of Trash Metal and Speed Metal.

Anyhow back to Metallica, they also replaced the original bass player with a guy called Cliff Burton, who unfortunatley was killed in an accident in Sweden when the tour bus went out of control and he was crushed under it. 2 months later Jason Newstead joined.

This was the line up that I mainly grew up to love, Lars Ulrick - Drums, James Hetfield - vocals and guitar, Kirk Hammett - lead guitar and Jason Newstead on bass.

This first video is old school Metallica (1984) and a tune from their second album "ride the lightning" called for whom the bell tolls



Here it is again this time years later in 1999 when Metallica had the pleasure of working with an amazing composer Michael Kamen and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra for a live gig called S&M (Symphony and Metallica) Basically the band asked Michael Kamen to score 21 of their songs going back through the years and play 2 concerts with a full orchestra, this was no mean feat thrash metal mixed with an Orchestra, but it works and works really well, and I much prefer this later version.

To this day this album still remains one of my all time favorites, even the old man will listen to it and he is almost 60!!! listen to Lars on the drums to this day I have never heard anyone play drums as well as he can!




The only bad thing about Metallica is the fact that Lars spearheaded the demise of music sharing through Napster, and to be honest lost a fuck load of fans in the process, what a wanker. And since then music sharing has never been the same and that is all Metallicas fault. In 2007, Metallica was named #17 on Blender magazine's list of "biggest wusses in rock" for its "anti-Napster crusade".

Anyhow sorry for boring all you cure heads and your morbid sucidal music fetishes, but finding these 2 gems as I say was a great way to see how the band grew up and listening to them both I would have to say how much I have grown up with them.