My two friends and I finally arrived at Maple Leaf Gardens after a trip which seemed like it took the whole day.� We had green seats, which is really not very good so we were talking to scalpers, and one guy told us that he would give floors if we gave him $60 each plus our tickets... We didn't have that kind of cash so we kept trying and found a guy who traded our 3 tickets and we gave him $85 all together, so we were happy and so was he. We arrived during the set of a band I believe was called Queens of the Stone Age... They were horrible, it sounded like they were trying to be metal, but you couldn't hear the guitars, it was all bass, and the singer had such a high annoying voice... They were bad.

When they were finally finished, a rap group came on called Gangstarr...� They weren't very good either, but they did get the crowd going.�

After Gangstarr had left the stage, it must have took rage at least 50 minutes to come out, and even though theres no one onstage, its still like a mosh pit, and people were crowd surfing, though I dont no why, it was just pissing people off... One guy was stripped down to just his shorts, but no underwear, that was ripped off too!

The house lights finally went out, and the crowd started to go nuts.� A big black sheet dropped down to reveal a big banner that looked like the BOLA album cover but it said The Battle Of Toronto on it. Then the greatest band of all time came on stage.� They opened with a solid version of Testify, into Guerrilla Radio, then into People of the Sun...thats the only order of songs I remember.� The mosh pit was crazy, and when I finally decided I had to get out due to exhaustion, I crowd surfed up and over the rail, which was during one of my favorite songs, being, Know Your Enemy.� While I was up I looked up at Zach who was looking down at me.� I got down and looked up again and he looked down again and looked at me.� When I walked around from one side of the floor to the other (sticking to the boards the whole time) I noticed that it wasn't just a pit at the front, but it was a pit to the back of the floor, it looked awesome.� By coincidence I met up with one of my friends at the entrance to the floor, so we decided to go buy some water, however we were quite disappointed when there was no water to be bought, for some reason they were not selling drinks, so everyone who wanted one had to go into the bathroom and drink from the taps.

After Rage left the stage, the crowd continued to go nuts, and a few minutes later Rage returned to the stage for a three song encore, which started with Bulls On Parade, then into a song of which I dont know the name, but it had the lyrics from some of there older songs, but with completely different music... They then closed with Killing In the Name.. The whole crowd was chanting "Fuck you I wont do what ya tell me".� They then left the stage and the house lights came back on.

After finding our other friend we found out that he had lost his shoes in the pit during Testify, I could only laugh.

I believe that this was probably the best concert I've ever been too, and I cant wait for Rage to come back to Toronto.

Mike LeFort
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