4/5/2023 0 Comments Forgotten souls jackpot![]() There even was free pizza/burritos and after 5 pm,beer! Thanks. A scan of the band line-up proves Orion is NOT a metal festival, despite the presence (albeit predominately on the second day) of a few metal acts. ![]() ![]() God I'd forgotten how much sycophantic glad-handing goes on in "real entertainment" circles, to say nothing of those talking heads' interviews: "So how's the crowd?" "What other bands are you most interested in seeing?" Geez! Wi-fi hook-ups and rechargers were plentiful. Great attention to detail was afforded those reporting on the event too and shockingly, it was almost all domestic media, mostly FM radio affiliates, from Baltimore to central Jersey (doing nothing more than a remote they'd do from a car dealership, any other weekend) and mainstream press. Didn't witness a single fight, nor puking incident (the scavenging sea gulls would have loved that! There were people strolling the grounds throughout, pre-emptively picking up litter, so that the hordes of birds didn't have anything to investigate. T-shirts, from the lone stall ran $35, even for the vintage Metallica album designs, the same ones could be had for half that on the boardwalk, And everyone in this predominately 30-50 aged crowd (some with their entire family) seemed to get along. Still miss the Euro freedom to piss anywhere/everywhere, when nature calls, but portable toilets ringed the facility, as did food kiosks: $7 for a 12 oz can of Heiny or a 16 oz Bud, jumbo soft pretzel $8, half that for the regular size. Water stations allowed people to re-fill plastic bottles (free of charge!) and there were a smattering of music related vendors. Accessible from NYC and Philly, I took the train, although don't think too many of the geriatric day-trip gamblers enjoyed my DEATH ANGEL t-shirt, probably hit too close to home! Strollers and wheelchair accessible field (thanks in part to Bader Field's old paved runways), yet few Americans walk this much all year. While there's no on-site parking, buses were hired to shuttle people between the municipal lots and the grounds. Guests were allowed limited in-out privileges (to go get something to eat, return purchases to their hotel, etc.) courtesy of barcode wristbands. This is a first class operation, which pretty much ran on time (some issues on Sunday that saw headliners take the stage almost half an hour later than announced) and minimal sonic bleed through from one stage to the other three. So how does Orion stack up to 13 years of European festival-going experience? Well, they lucked out with the weather, although a couple of days earlier it was almost 100 degrees (38 C) and the night before, there was a nasty thunderstorm that surely would have played havoc with the entire event. Some waited in football field long lines, for more than an hour, to see Kirk Hammett's collection of horror memorabilia (Kirk's Crypt, which also hosted Exorcist star Linda Blair, in her crusade against dog fighting) or the shrine to Metallica history. The four stages of continuous entertainment only served as diversions, until showtime. No, the majority were there for the headliner and the auto show, movie house, etc. No classical though. Make no mistake, there weren't a whole lot of people shelling out $90 to see one of the bands going on at 1pm (although a two-day pass was "just" $150). Like OZZY and AC/DC, there are tons of Metallica fans who know nothing of metal beyond their favorite, which is one reason why the Orion Music Fest, with its variety of styles, just might work: blues, country, brass band, various forms of metal (alebit towards the noisy side), synth-pop, alternative.you name it. Of course millions of other (non-metalheads) latched onto the band/Black album. Wasn't that I'd outgrown metal, but rather Lars and Co., by word and deed, outgrew the music, basically abandoning the genre, until Death Magnetic. Apart from guest-list snafu preventing me from photographing a sold-out Death Magnetic tour stop in Philadelphia, really had no interest in attending a Metallica concert since I last saw them, the first time around with the audience "snake pit," for the Black album! Saw every tour before that, in some cases, multiple times and witnessed a lot of great heavy metal in the intervening years, in the studio and on stages around the globe. Ironic that only a week after the Rock Of Ages filmed opened nationally, METALLICA debuted their two-day music festival, where the band played all of their '84 album Ride The Lightning, representing some sort of a yin-yang on the '80s metal scene.
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