Saw The Rolling Stones last night in SF, I can say definitively that the ‘Stones ROCK.
Or, more precisely, Mick Jagger rocks ... and the old guys he hangs out with are okay too, but he's definitely carrying them at this point. I was afraid that one of them might fall over dead during the show. Mick runs (literally) around the stage not "like a rock star" but like the world's consummate Rock Star. All I could think is that he's my Dad's age, but he's 10x cooler than my coolest friend. He's way cooler than the coolest person I ever met. If could be 1/10th as cool as Mick Jagger at any point in my life, let alone when I'm in my SIXTIES, I think that I would be so cool that I'd have to routinely change my address just to keep the back yard from filling up with groupies.
Metallica opened for them. I like a couple Metallica songs (e.g. Sandman), but they are such a tool of the music industry, as witnessed by their suit against Napster, that I can't stomach subsidizing their existence. I'm sure that the money they get from their producers is enough to keep them fat and happy with canned beer and cigarettes for the rest of their lives, but if they ever stopped to do the math and saw what a tiny percentage of the gross that they get to keep then maybe they would have used their proximity to Silicon Valley to help come up with a better music distribution system than $0.03 CD's sold for $20 by big labels. Camp Chaos put together the perfect summary of the issue here: Money Good! Napster Bad!
For those of you who want to show up in time for the 'Stones, but want to miss Metallica, here's the timing:
7:00pm start time listed on the tickets
7:40pm time we arrived, we managed to catch Sandman (but the music video is better than watching them play live anyway)
8:00pm Metallica got their butts off the stage
8:40pm 'Stones opened
So in short, you can show up at 8:30 and easily catch the 'Stones in their entirety and at least not visibly support the purchase of Lars' next gold plated Ferrari. We did notice that the park was not much more than half full until it was time for the 'Stones, then every seat was filled.