Some kind of monster...

If you haven't checked out Metallica's rockumentary Some Kind of Monster...I highly recommend it...

It's a great opportunity to watch a band reflect on itself...on it's problems...as a band trying to record an album...and as friends for twenty years being honest with one another in ways that they've never been honest with each other before...

If you're not familiar with the movie and the band...Some Kind of Monster chronicles Metallica's recording of its most recent album...with the help of a therapist hired by their production company...to facilitate a process that had hit a serious breakdown after bassist, Jason Newstead, left the band...

As lead singer, James Hetfield put it...

"We worked on ourselves...identified what part can we work on...so when someone else steps in...it's clean...they're not stepping in our shit"...

It's pretty impressive, actually...to see a rock band...a metal band, at that...so maturely deal with a serious problem that the band had had for quite awhile...namely...keeping a bassist...after the death of their earliest bass player, Cliff Burton...and then a whole shitload of issues that band members had between one another -- especially between Hetfield and drummer and the other strongest personality in the band, Lars Ulrich...

The funniest part of the movie is learning what a puss guitarist, Kirk Hammett, was a lot of the time...though I definitely give the whole band, Kirk included, much more respect after seeing this documentary than the already powerful respect I've had for Metallica after seeing them live in concert at Lollapalooza in 1996...

And it is interesting to see that when people who don't seem to have a lot of complexity to their thoughts and feelings...share their inner-most thoughts and feeelings...there's not all kinds of complexity that I thought I might find underneath...that a lot of their problems are pretty simple...they just haven't figured them out yet:):)...

It was crazy and funny watching their therapist be a total puss about the band's decision to cut him loose when they were ready to move on...if I were Metallica's therapist, I would totally thank the shit out of them for letting me hang with them and maybe ask them for some decent concert tickets...and let that be that:):)...

And listening to James Hetfield tell an audience full of prisoners that we are all born good...and that without music he might either be in that prison or dead...was really powerful...

If you're interested in watching some of the world's biggest rock stars growing up and learning how to treat each other better...and making great music out of that...definitely check out this movie:):)...

Have a great night, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben