fredo4: Having kids myself, no, I haven’t been to any shows recently (unfortunately).
I have to admit my tastes as of late have been veering into “heavier” metal, such as All Shall Perish, Crowbar and Meshuggah. I’ve continued to listen to the Misfits, but I haven’t heard anything interesting from that front in a while. Some of the more offbeat Industrial stuff is good (like Front 242 and Skinny Puppy), but Ministry seems to have put it into the ditch as of late.
The latest NIN is good, and the latest Metallica is passable, but you have to stray pretty far out of the lines to hear anything original anymore. You mention commercialization and I think the music industry has pretty well killed originality or at least “American Idol-ized” it (meaning, they’ve reduced it to insipid, easily packaged pap like Carrie Underwood).
Sorry. Didn’t mean to get off on a rant there. And, yeah, I’ve seen Black Flag in concert. Saw them up in San Francisco. Great show – the part of it I can remember. =)
