What Shure Artists, you say?   OK, so here’s the rundown:

fun., Luke Bryan, Maroon 5, Dierks Bentley, The Band Perry, and newly signed Shure Artist Hunter Hayes all performed on the show. Shure Artist Sheryl Crow appeared to announce along side Chris Young.  To top it all off, Maroon 5 performed a 40 minute set after the hour long broadcast.

Let’s talk nominations!  Several Shure Artists are up for awards including: Mumford & Sons, fun., Arturo Sandoval, The Civil Wars, The Black Keys, Alabama Shakes, Maroon 5, Chris Botti, Megadeth, The Roots, Dierks Bentley, Ronnie Dunn, Little Big Town, Al Jarreau, Casting Crowns, TobyMac, Fonseca, Lila Downs, Dailey & Vincent, and Dr. John.

A big CONGRATUALTIONS to these and all who are nominated. Best of luck in February 2013 !

I’d also like to give a big shout out to all the crew who work this show.  Joel Singer, Jay Vicari, Mark King, Jeff Fecteau, Mikael Stewart. Steve Anderson, Andres Arango, Jackie Brooks, Danny Breedan, and so many more. You guys ROCK!!!

Ryan

OK, so not to take away from anything I’ve seen during this season, but this was the show I had been waiting for all Summer long. I mean, we haven’t had the Big Four here in the States (well, not yet at any rate…and the fingers are crossed). But Slayer, Megadeth and Testament all on the same bill? Yeah, I’ll take that any day.

Camera in hand I made my way down to the UIC Pavilion in thick Chicago traffic. About the only thing I had been listening to in the car for about a week was a burned CD-R in my car with Rust In Peace and Reign In Blood. Today it was turned up a little louder than usual.

I pulled up to the lot and grabbed my interview gear. In the lot I met up with Paul, our main man for artist photos. Rounding the corner we met with Kerry King’s long-time tech and our friend, Armand. After our hellos he handed us our passes for the night and we ran down the ramp to find our interview room and get settled.

Running through the backstage area was like a bit of a family reunion. Most genres of music will involve an intertwining of musicians and crew. Metal is a very tight community. Established metal is entrenched. It’s very possible to go to five different tours and see people from each at the others. More on that later.

After some quick hellos we got led to our room for an even quicker set-up. We Artist Relations guys wear a few hats, and on days like these we are our videographers and interviewers. I was tucked in to a bit of a corner getting everything double-checked when I became aware of Paul speaking with someone else in the room. I peeked out to see the first interviewee. There stood Dave Mustaine.

We sat down and talked for about fifteen minutes. Hopefully we’ll have the interview up soon, so keep your readers on this blog (or my Twitter feed @Richard_ShureAR) to see when and where it posts.

After chatting for a while Dave had to run. I had not met him before, save almost literally running in to him backstage at another show. I found him to be extremely cordial and hospitable.

After Dave departed, we had about two minutes to set up for our next session: Kerry King.

Kerry and I have known each other for a while now. He’s a celebrity, of course, but I also consider him the unofficial “King of NAMM” (no pun intended, really). If he’s late to an autograph session, it’s because he’s signing autographs in the aisles all the way to said session. We got to speaking about the importance of things like NAMM and playing festivals hit by tornadoes. And no, I don’t mean by the ones generated by their astonishingly violent mosh pits, though if you’ve ever seen one or been in one you might think it’s possible.

We wrapped up Kerry’s interview (again, keep your syndication software here, or follow the Twitter account above for when it posts) and left the room to go explore a bit. In the backstage hall we ran in to Doug Short, who is Front of House for Megadeth. He and Scott Boculac (Megadeth Monitor Engineer) were our third interview of the day. They ran us up on to the stage to take a peek at Shawn Drover’s drum kit. They had outfitted the toms with custom May internally-mounted Beta 56As and Beta 52As (floor toms).

We scoped out the kit, then checked on the wireless that they were using during the show. It was a combination of UHF-R and ULXP setups. After that, we ran back to the room to get some on-camera time with Doug and Scott.

As that wrapped we could hear Testament take the stage. Earlier in the evening I had come across Martin Walker, who usually mixes FOH with Judas Priest and Halford (with whom Doug had also mixed FOH…see? Intertwining, indeed.), now working for Testament. I joined him at the FOH position to check them out. Mucho talent in that band, I must say. Alex Skolnick is a guitarist I suggest everyone go and see in their lifetime. If metal is not your thing, you can see him playing jazz in the Alex Skolnick Trio. Paul Bostaph, who had been a drummer for Slayer through three albums (again with the intertwining!) was behind the kit. I know their material the least of the three, but I do know that they are perhaps the most under-appreciated band in all of thrash metal.

Following their set, Megadeth took the stage. The members came out one-by-one, completed when Dave took the stage. As the intro music and the crowd crescendoed together hands went in the air. Then a split second of silence was shattered by the opening riff to “Holy Wars…The Punishment Due”. They continued playing all of Rust In Piece. A few added tunes and a recapitulation later and they had left the crowd exhausted. However, all a crowd like this needs are a couple minutes to get whipped back in to a frenzy.

And there was still Slayer to go.

About the best way to say anything that needs to be said about Slayer is to stick your horned hand in to the air and at the top of your lungs yell, “SLAAAAYERRRRRR!!!” Seriously, that does it. You can do it anywhere at any time and anyone who knows the band knows what you mean.

Just as Megadeth powered through Rust In Piece it was Slayer’s turn to put everyone through the whole of Seasons in the Abyss. The crowd was ready and responded to the brutality in kind. Around the time of “Dead Skin Mask” I left the FOH position and found Armand on the side of the stage. I was lucky enough to hang on both Kerry’s and Jeff’s support positions. If I were any closer to the band on that stage, I would have been playing guitar.

After the show I hung for a bit and chatted with everyone who had made the evening possible. Dave came back to bid me a farewell (which made the inner geek in me totally, well, geeked). More craziness ensued, but this brief blog post has already gotten out of hand, so we’ll just say I’m left counting down the days until the show of the Fall: Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax.

Richard

I started appreciating the history of metal in my twenties.  Industrial and metal were merging and I started following that branch backwards as I listened to the new stuff.  I also had to understand where my band mates were coming from.  They were heavily influenced by early thrash and punk, the latter of which had more of an influence on the former than I had ever suspected when I was younger.

I started to dig in to the roots of where this music came from.  From my tastes, I went backward…skipping the hair metal of course. I still don’t give it too much credit.  I started to pay attention to the third generation bands – Slayer, Megadeth, early Metallica, Anthrax, Testament.  Then I started to listen to the roots: early influences like Deep Purple, The Kinks, Mountain, Black Sabbath.  Motörhead was all over the bars I was hanging out in.  The last holdouts to study were Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.

I remember being in the House of Blues here in Chicago and interviewing Anthrax right as they had reformed the Among the Living line-up.  I remember one part from the interview particularly well.  Frank Bello (bassist) said that they started by writing music they thought was the logical continuation of what Iron Maiden had done up to that point.  That piqued my curiosity.

I first caught Iron Maiden on their Ozzfest 2005 slot.  They were energetic and tight.  But they were limited in their presentation as all the acts were.  I personally like seeing what some acts can pull off with those limitations.  But the word was that in order to get the full impression I should see Maiden on their own.

On a Saturday night in July I got to see their full production.  I was fresh off the shift of my volunteer work and made my way down to Tinley Park.  Prior to getting to the venue I stopped to grab some dinner in the neighborhood.  There were quite a few Maiden fans at the restaurant.  I was just stepping up to order when I realized that they were all young.  I got my food to go and drove to the venue.

I pulled in to my spot and set about devouring my dinner.  The windows were down and cars everywhere were blaring Maiden songs as the tailgaters got psyched for the show.  I made my way to the will call window to claim my passes.

I ran backstage for a bit to see if I could connect with my contact on the stage.  While back there I ran in to Charlie Benante, who was back in town from the Big Four tour in Europe.  We caught up for a bit, then I was able to check in with one of Maiden’s techs, Sean.  Iron Maiden have a huge and elaborate set and they rely on Shure UHF-R wireless systems for vocals and most of the instruments (I think it’s Adrian Smith who has always preferred to use a cable with his guitar) to use all the space allotted to them.  Sean had a few flattering things to say about the performance of their wireless systems before he had to get working on the set change.  He excused himself to get to work and I went out front to the box they had graciously put me in.

There were certainly people that grew up with Iron Maiden in the crowd, but at one point Bruce Dickinson used an intermission to ask the audience how many people were there seeing Maiden for the first time.  If I had to guess, I’d say that about 80% of the audience threw their hands in the air and screamed.  “Yeah, right,” I thought.

He paused and said, “No, seriously, I only want to see who is here seeing Maiden for the first time.”  This time I’d say about 70% of the audience roared.  I looked around to see who these people were.  I was shocked to see that those with their hands in the air were so young.  It appears they’ll appeal to youth today just as they did to many in my generation and the generation before me.

As I had mentioned, they used all the space they could on the stage.  There were constant background changes and the stage resembled a moon base, complete with rocket ship.  I have to say, I see a lot of shows and sometimes it’s just nice to see the spectacle come back in rock.   It’s also very worth a mention to say that at one point Bruce Dickinson used an intermission to pay respect to someone who influenced Maiden as they influenced their acolytes.  The salute given by Maiden and the audience to the memory of Ronnie James Dio sent shivers down my spine.  They played “Blood Brothers” in dedication to him.

Richard

The crowd gathers.

Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth & Metallica all together!

Ambassadors of thrash.

All photos (c) 2010 Andrew Stuart/Future Grandpa (and much thanks for allowing us to post these, Stu!)

I was reading Scott Ian’s tweets afterward.  They melted the faces off a crowd of 100,000!

Richard

Hawthorne Heights is the featured band in this issue, in which editor Cory Lorentz riffs on the challenge of seeing past the media circus to the artists making music out there beyond the hype.

View and download the full On Tour With Shure Summer 2006 Issue on shure.com.