TOUR ARCHIVE

Date: 2009-05-06
Location: Munich - Germany [12 shows here]
Venue: Olympiahalle [4 shows here]
Fan reviews: 1 - Add yours!
Author: Phil
Setlist: Yes

Note that this concert was part of a larger trip whose details and pictures you can find here.

The venue was in a huge complex near the Porsche museum with two different venues. Once we found the right venue, we were pretty sure it couldn't be the right venue. It looked like a tiny few-hundred-seat place by the size of it - but the hoards of Metallica fans made it clear this was the right place.

We walked around the whole place looking for the back entrance, but got 90% around it when we couldn't get any further and had to go back around. We found it right next to where we had originally started. Once inside, the size thing became clear. This venue was almost entirely underground. The part that was above ground was just a concourse, all seats were below that level - and it was actually a pretty big place. It was the most unique venue design I've seen to date.

We met Jeff, who gave us working passes, and walked through the specifics of both this tour (as this was our first show working on this tour) as well as of the day in particular. Then we helped Jeff setup the room where we'd do the Meet-n-Greet. Once that was done, Kyle and I headed off to round up the M&Gers. There was some confusion as to where to meet since there were two will-call areas. The majority of folks were by the closed one, so we based ourselves there and went to check on the other one every 5 or 10 minutes. We were missing 2 clubbers plus a contest winner tonight. I'll never understand that!

Once we had everyone, Jeff came out, and we brought them all back to the M&G room, and waited. Kyle and I took turns filming the M&G, which was nice since that camera gets heavy after a while. Some guy had pictures of him and each band member from some previous M&G and asked each person if they remembered meeting him before. Not surprisingly no one did... except for Lars. Ordinarily, you'd assume a rock star who claims to remember a fan from a meet-n-greet a few years ago is just appeasing the fan, however, this is Lars. Lars, the man with the infinite memory. Lars commented on some little kid that had been in the M&G that night and the guy was ecstatic with "proof" that Lars remembered the night.

Another guy had a tattoo of James' face on his right shoulder and had James sign it so he could complete the tattoo.

Yet another M&Ger was wearing a shirt that Lars commented on being really cool. He then turned around to Jeff and went "is that one of ours?" and Jeff confirmed it was in fact not, to which Lars noted it was better than the real shirts and that they should make better shirts. Of course, in my opinion, most of the bootleg shirts are actually pretty shit, but this one was very cool. Unfortunately I don't remember anything specific about it at this point.

We then brought them all back outside to bring their signed schwag back to cars if they wanted, and then to re-enter through the normal doors on their own.

With the M&G over, Kyle and I went to have dinner in catering, to be joined later by Jeff. After dinner we had some time to kill waiting for when I had to go meet the contest winners and Kyle had to go setup the camera, so we found a road case to sit on and stay out of the way. At the time, we hadn't noticed we'd picked a spot right in front of the "Tuning and Attitude Room" - and didn't notice until the whole band walked by us and into it.

It was then time to go back to work - Kyle got the camera from Jeff and went to go set up, and I got the flashlights from Jeff and went to go meet the contest winners at the arranged location. I brought them back stage, near the to-the-stage exit, and waited. Eventually the band came out and did their "huddle" and then went around and fist-bumped everyone in the area - including myself and the contest winners. We heard Ecstasy come on, and the band was visibly excited. When the intro to That Was Just Your Life came on the band went towards the stage and we followed closely. I brought the contest winners to their place in the pit to watch the stage and hung with them for 3 songs. It's pretty cool to be watching the stage from within the pit! After the third song, I took the contest winners back out onto the floor to enjoy the rest of the show. I then ran to catering to grab two bottles of water and went up to meet Kyle. We took turns filming and I gave him a few pointers (having filmed on the Madly tour).

The set was great tonight. I was thrilled to have All Nightmare Long again! It's such an amazing song live! We also got Breadfan a favorite of mine and Whiplash, which I haven't seen much of and is always an amazing live song. The guys were excited and the show - as with all of them on this tour - was amazing.

Annoyingly the venue sold pitchers of beer. You could be a plastic pitcher of fucking beer. And drunk people threw several mostly-empty pitchers of beer down at us and the pyro guy next to us. Arming drunk people with heavy disposable objects to throw is a really, really stupid idea.

After the show we dropped the camera off, said goodbye to Jeff, and headed out. I stopped to buy a shirt and after I got out of line, Kyle told me that Jeff had called to tell us we forgot our jackets in his office. Whoops! We ran back to get them and headed home.