For those of you who went to the Metallica show on September 1st at the Cal Expo fairgrounds, I congratulate you on taking part in the greatest shard of entertainment to grace Sacramento in recent memory. For those of you who didn’t....well, I pity you.

Following openers Days of the New and Jerry Cantrell (who, I might add, were both quite awesome), Metallica took the Cal Expo stage at around 7:15 p.m. and stayed there until 10:00. Not many bands I know can pull off a two-hour and forty-minute set with two encores. As they made their dramatic entrance, driving the 25,000 fans into a moshing frenzy (even before they started PLAYING), they ripped into a rarely-heard cover of Budgie’s "Breadfan." Personally, I think they couldn’t have chosen a better opening cut, and the crowd went wild. Junior Jeremy Seltz had this to say about the show, "(My friends and I) didn’t have tickets, but we could hear just fine from the parking lot."

After six minutes of blistering fun courtesy of "Breadfan," James, Kirk, Jason and Lars (the members of the band) said not a word, but were all smiles as they launched into the classic riffs of the metal anthem "Master of Puppets." Just when I thought things couldn’t get more insane....they did. Some crazy fans behind me began launching tortillas (!) above our heads, encouraging about 2,000 more equally crazy fans in front of us to throw everything in their possession as high as they could. I have to admit, I was expecting insanity, but I wasn’t expecting this level of, oh, shall we say, "crowd participation."

Metallica then played a moving (!) twelve-minute version of "Nothing Else Matters," written in memory of their deceased bassist Cliff Burton. By the end of their first set, everyone was left screaming for more, and for the rest of the evening, Metallica rocked a hole in the sky and left every person there smiling and loving life.