Metallica have spent the past few years circling the globe on their World Magnetic tour, and now they're finally going to play a hometown show in their native San Francisco. Unfortunately, no Bay Area metalheads will be able to attend the August 31st concert, since it's a corporate gig at the Salesforce.com Dreamforce convention.
As you might imagine, Metallica fans are not pleased with this news, but it's totally cool, guys, because as Metallica write on their official site, "Where else can you learn everything you ever wanted to know about cloud computing during the day and then rock out with the 'Tallica at night?"
A decade after whining about Napster, it's nice to see Metallica finally embracing technology, but this probably isn't the route most fans expected. "It all started when Kirk [Hammett] mentioned that his next-door neighbor had invited us to play at his party in San Francisco and we figured, 'Why not?' After all, it has been quite some time since we've played in our hometown, and we haven't exactly been getting out a lot lately," Metallica explain. "Well, it turns out that Kirk's neighbor, Marc Benioff, is the top dog at a 'small' company called Salesforce.com and his shindig actually lasts for four days and hosts over 30,000 people. So much for a little backyard barbeque..." Or in other words, SELL OUTS!
In fairness, Neil Young played a past Dreamforce convention, and we have nothing bad to say about Neil Young, so the gig does have some cred. As with most aging metal acts, Metallica's luster has tarnished somewhat in their older age, especially when photos of band members wearing plaid shorts and shopping at Armani hit the web. Collaborating with Lou Reed was a big step back toward being cool, but we could see why fans are upset that the Ride the Lightning crew are playing a corporate gig.
[Photo: John Shearer/WireImage.com]