SooToday Curmudgeon meets Megadeth (10 pics + video)

Mr. Ed was fortunate enough to secure a press pass to last night's Megadeth concert at the Steelback Centre.

We were instructed to leave our spiked jewelry at home and did so.

Upon entering the venue, Mr. Ed and other members of the photographic pool were escorted through 3,500 heavy-metal fans to the narrow enclosure separating the stage from the mosh pit.

This area is filled with people wearing black t-shirts that say "EVENT STAFF" on the back.

All of these event staffers were male.

Large biceps and thick necks (shown) appeared to be part of the hiring criteria for this job, which consisted mostly of picking up water bottles deliberately dropped into the enclosure by attention-starved Megadeth fans in the front row.

Sometimes, the muscular event staffers were also called on to remove undesirable ticketholders spat into the enclosure from the mosh pit.

Most of the mosh-pit rejects were allowed to return to the arena floor.

Some, however, were taken back of the stage for further processing.

Interestingly, the event staff wore rubber gloves (shown) for this purpose.

Some wore two gloves.

However, many appeared to require only one latex glove for whatever was going on backstage.

Like the event staff, all members of the accredited photo pool coralled in the enclosure were male.

The sole exception to this rule was one female employee of the South Side Story, a newspaper based in Sudbury.

Sudbury is a community located 192 miles east of Sault Ste. Marie.

Nothing much ever happens there, so the local media is forced to visit the Sault for news and entertainment.

The South Side Story photographer was having trouble operating her camera and kept asking other members of the photo pool about apertures and f-stops and other stuff.

But she was unendurably cute and all the gallant Saultbie photoboys were more than happy to impress her with their vast storehouses of technical and creative knowledge.

The photographers were only allowed to take pictures of Megadeth during the first three songs.

Then, we were paraded back to the box office area.

The Steelback Centre advised us, however, that another band called Heaven and Hell would be performing at 9 p.m. and we were welcome to come back then to take some more pictures.

We did this, and found that the second band was almost as good as Megadeth.

Of course, SooToday.com had suffered permanent hearing loss by being in the front row of a Megadeth concert without hearing protection, so it's possible we were wrong about that.

But it was really nice seeing Megadeth allowing the more-mature Heaven and Hell guys to close the show for them.

And this being Sault Ste. Marie, the crowd cheered just as loudly for the old guys as for the Megadeth stars.

The Megadeth tour had the most elaborate staging seen here since last year's Motley Crüe concert.

The show arrived in the biggest entertainment convoy yet - seven tour buses and four transports.

The Heaven and Hell guys were almost as old as Mr. Ed and they spent a lot of their time in the Sault huddled in their bus and their dressing rooms, engaged in their aging-rocker indulgences of afternoon nappies and tea-drinking.

The Steelback Centre was asked to supply tea kettles in every dressing room to support their habit.

Mr. Ed found the music too loud and dissonant for his tastes.

He did however, quite enjoy it when the Steelback staff loudly played Frank Sinatra's That's Life over the sound system immediately after Heaven and Hell had left the stage.

Hundreds of heavy-metal fans could be seen racing for the exits to avoid having to endure Ol' Blue Eyes crooning about being "a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king."

This allowed the clean-up staff to get home to their families at least an hour earlier than would otherwise have been possible, undoubtedly resulting in significant savings to the Steelback's casual labour budget.

To view some concert video shot by SooToday.com's Peter Gualtieri, please click here.