Please Excuse My Excess Use of the Word Awesome…But This was Awesome.

MSN article & Article here.

So this weekend we were in Cleveland to attend the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony Concert!! We were excited that it was going to be in Cleveland (where it belongs EVERY year instead of New York) AND that this was the first time they opened it up to the public, you know the FANS. Besides it being in Cleveland, what made us really want to attend, was that Metallica was getting inducted!

Overall we had a really good time. The things that were annoying had to do with the set up of and execution of the event itself, and believe me a courteous but also informative letter/email will be making its way to the Rock Hall. Even though our seats were not the best, they were almost but not the worst, but I think (and maybe this is the event planner in me) they need to rethink the layout for when they have it again in 3 years.

But the performances themselves were great. It was so fun to be a part of something like this and to see this kind of activity and support in Cleveland is wonderful…..Cleveland needs this event. I thought all the performances were wonderful, Little Anthony and the Imperials surprised me…they still got it. Of course my favorite performances of the night had to go to Jeff Beck and flipp’n Jimmy Page – um AWESOME!!!!!! The two of them together were just great and to see Jimmy Page play was amazing. He is wonderful. Of course the Metallica performances also just rocked. I was SO happy to see that they included Jason Newsted (their bassist for many a years) not only in the induction part but also had him play on stage with the current Metallica line up. That was Awesome. I wanted them to just keep playing, two songs were just not enough. They also played a finale at the end with Metallica, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Flea and Joe Perry. Again I say it – AWESOME!!!

Additional Favorite Moments from the Concert/Weekend:

- Flea’s speech was incredible…what a great speaker.

- Loved when J. Hetfield said in his speech “Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, Rush, Kiss, Ted Nugent, Iron Maiden, Motorhead. We'd like to invite them through the door," Totally agree and one of my biggest problems with the Hall of Fame is these people, along with others that they leave out of the HOF. Politics?!?!?!

- It was cool to see Run DMC and Eminem. I would have loved to see them perform, but understand why they didn't.

- Oh, we are now BFF’s with Eddie Trunk. Yeah, that’s right. Click on the link to see who he is, but we watch That Metal Show every Saturday. It was funny because we were walking through a building and we walked right past him and K & I both looked and said That was Eddie Trunk! We wanted to say something but didn’t. THEN, as we were leaving the concert and walking back to our hotel we saw him again. We were thinking of what to say and Dad said welcome to Cleveland and hope you come back. He was very gracious and then the dork I am said We loved That Metal Show (to which he said thank you) and then the bigger dork I am said So Old Metallica or New Metallica (which was something they did on their show). He then proceeded to talk to us for the remainder of our trip back to the hotel (a few blocks or so). I think Terry could have just kept talking to him, he was so easy to talk to. It was cool.

- I loved seeing the middle aged white people trying to rock out to Metallica. It cracked me up! Because who got inducted it was a unique mix of people but it was pretty easy to recognize the Metallica fans.

- Terry and I really want to go see Metallica in concert and are looking at tickets for this fall.

- We stayed in room 1408….creepy.

- Another fun concert with my family. Seriously, I feel very lucky to be a part of a family that really has an interst in good music and that brought us up listening to everything.

(I could keep writing about the evening, I will stop now)