METALLICA JAM WITH FLEA

This week, Metallica played a benefit concert to raise money for the Silverlake Conservatory Of Music, which is a non-profit founded by Flea to provide music lessons from great teachers at a reasonable price, making music lessons accessible to kids even if they aren't from rich families.

The gig was at a pretty small place with pretty high priced tickets, but lots of money was raised for a good cause. Metallica pretty much played older stuff, plus "Fuel." Flea jammed with them on one song, and he picked a classic - and one they don't do much - "Fight Fire With Fire." As usual, Metallica has posted the song for download ($10 for mp3, a bit more for FLAC) at thier download website LiveMetallica.com. Yes, all the money will also go to the Conservatory. Last year, Metallica did Neil Young 's annual Bridge School Benefit Concert, and posted those sets as well - which were pretty interesting, they included covers of Rare Earth's "I Just Want To Celebrate," Nazareth's "Please Don't Judas Me," Garbage's "Only Happy When It Rains," The Dire Straits' "Brothers In Arms" and Blue Oyster Cult's "Veteran Of The Psychic Wars."

People have long bitched about Metallica's Napster fight from a few years back, but offering fans live concert recordings for $10 is a cool deal (especially when the money goes to charities when appropriate).