It's taken years, but apparently the big four bands of 80s thrash metal -- Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth -- will finally share a stage at a few festival dates in Europe. Hopefully, this leads to some appearances together in the United States -- we can hope, anyway ...

Review to come.

Setlist
Spiderwebs
Hella Good
Underneath It All
Excuse Me Mr.
Ex-Girlfriend
D.J.s/Message to You, Rudy (outro) (covers: Sublime, The Specials)
Simple Kind Of Life
Bathwater Play
Guns Of Navarone (cover: The Skatalites)
New
Hey Baby
Running
Different People
Don't Speak
It's My Life (cover: Talk Talk cover)
Just A Girl

Encore
Rock Steady
Stand And Deliver (cover: Adam and the Ants)
Sunday Morning

"It's a very complex record, I'm trying to do something different. Some of the arrangements are kind of like Queen. Some people are going to say, 'It doesn't sound like Axl Rose, it doesn't sound like Guns N' Roses.' But you'll like at least a few songs on there."

- Axl Rose, Rolling Stone, 2006

After so much time, money and speculation, Chinese Democracy has finally been released for mass legal consumption. My impressions from several listens is that it has elements of the GNR formula, but it appears that re-creating the glory that was GNR was not really the point of the album. Instead, Chinese Democracy is a big creative leap in many different and interesting directions, an attempted proof of concept of Axl Rose's "musical genius".

And that leap yielded mixed results -- but the picture that emerges from the album is that of a emotionally conflicted artist who still has brilliant ideas, but he could not execute them at times, leading to some really overwrought songs that were terribly in need of others to counterbalance the creative output.

Barack Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States of America.

An unexpected return to form. Even my faith as a long-term Metallica fanatic was beginning to wane with each entry into the Metallica catalog post-Black Album. I had pretty been resigned to the fact that the Metallica that plays fast, thrashy and energetic was long gone, and was only seen periodically during its live performances.

However, I am very pleased to report that I was dead wrong. After the perfection exercise that was Black, the experimentation of the Loads and the statement of St.A, all of which never really delivered on a visceral level the experience of the first four albums. Metallica delivers with Death Magnetic, a record that shows that heavy metal can still be a vital force in current music.

It's unbelievable

3 of the G.O.A.T. and Kanye, too

So little sense ...

Dark. Realistic. Created an unrelenting sense of dread, and a drink from the firehose type pace. Leaves you feeling gut punched; however, it is a very satisfying movie as well. The quality of this movie transcends that which would normally be associated with the superhero movie genre; it simply is a great movie.

What does it look like when a comic comes to life? This movie is a pretty close approximation of my childhood recollection of what I appreciated about reading Hulk comics -- really liked the action, the chases, the explosions and destruction and I wasn't particularly sophisticated enough to appreciate some of the psychological complexity/human drama that Bruce Banner was going through.

SD and I saw this movie as a part of the theatre's child friendly matinee program. Ironically, a performance designed for child and infant interruptions actually turned out to be less bothersome, loud, and irritating than that of a regular performance, interrupted by inconsiderate people who should know better -- Iron Man at Windward Mall comes to mind. Go figure.

I didn't write this for a while, as I waited to stop seething from the vast number of clueless morons who think it's okay to light up and text and answer cellphones during a movie. It definitely colored my experience of the film, but hopefully I've shed the angst adequately enough.

This is a fun, summer popcorn movie.

So little sense ....

Making his first Honolulu appearance in a little over three years, Jason Mraz played a really solid set to a surprisingly large crowd of 6,000+ at the Waikiki Shell. This is one that SD really wanted to go see. Admittedly, I was less than enthusiastic when the venue shifted from the concert hall to the 'Shell. However, it was a nice night, with nice weather, and the environment was really well suited to Mraz's performance style.

Well said, KO.

This one is an all-timer, no one has even come close in the past 33+ years

Of the embellished national anthem.

Perhaps the most original yet compelling version of the SSB. Indeed, a singular moment much like Jimi's at Woodstock and Whitney's before SB XXV.

However, unless you can outdo Marvin, you best be singing it as intended:

Straightforward and in 1:40.

I'm not sure that there will be that many for me this year.
However, The Police put on a very strong show at the Blaisdell last Saturday.

And the crowd ... Vegas can't party like HNL. Period.

With much liberty taken:
You gotta see The Shins live. It'll change your life. I swear.

This is THAT song from Garden State.
However, not much to choose from from their Pipe performance this past summer.

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Amazing performance, surpassing all my expectations.