Saturday, December 26, 2015

Metallica w/ Cliff Burton(!!!!) - 'Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)' Live 1986

The screen is ultra-distorted and clouds of smoke make it look like the stage is obscured by clouds, but that helps the overall vibe of this awesome clip from 1986. When I was 13/14 and in Metal Health Lockdown (1988 edition), we watched Cliff 'Em All more times than I can count. We also watched the first Evil Dead movie and some XTIAN Anti-Metal videos because they at least were about metal. This wasn't my first exposure to Metallica, which had happened in Metal Health Lockdown (1987 edition) when a thrash/punk kid was like 'oh hey! you like Pink Floyd? You should listen to THIS!!!' which turned out to be Master Of Puppets. In hindsight, this was probably an effort to get me to stop playing The Wall and Animals and The Final Cut over and over again on my boombox (!!!)... What patience these older kids must have possessed! I would like to say that it was an instant conversion experience, but it wasn't. What I liked about Pink Floyd and Hendrix was their fluidity and spaciness, and in the case of Hendrix and early, Syd and post-Syd-era Floyd (which is still today the Floyd I listen to), the Noise and Chaos and Pure Sound. So, it actually took me hearing Kill Em All the following year to 'get' Metallica. Cliff Burton's Coltrane-influenced sheets-of-sound approach within thrash's gothic cathedral of architectonic shredding made a huge impression upon me. I was devastated to learn of his death, just prior to my becoming a Metallica fan. Ultimately, the noise-first approach of Slayer won me over in 1988 when I heard South Of Heaven for the first time and I was never the same after that. But that was also when I bought Dimension Hatross by Voivod and And Justice For All (still my favorite Metallica album, despite NO CLIFF!). Hail Cliff Burton & Metallica Forever!!!

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