CLEVELAND, Ohio -- While former Beatle Paul McCartney was playing some of the most famous songs ever written at Quicken Loans Arena Wednesday night, a much louder and more intense show was being performed just down the road.
Post-grunge act Shinedown took their hard-rock anthems to Jacobs Pavilion as part of the "Carnival of Madness" tour.
Black Stone Cherry and Halestorm opened. All three groups share a similar sound.
It was an evening filled with the usual hard-rock shenanigans. Vocalists implored the audience to raise their fists, drummers played drawn-out solos that tested the crowd's patience, bass players slung their guitars too low and guitar players pounded out the same piercing solos you've heard at every hard-rock show for the past 40 years.
The opener, Black Stone Cherry, played an especially generic show. The one highlight was their cover of Motorhead's classic "Ace of Spaces," which they performed with more zeal than an average cover.
Halestorm has a more melodic sound than most hard-rock groups -- most of which simply bang out guitar cords as fast as their guitar pics will allow -- giving the crowd a little rhythm with their head-banging. But there was little to make their set stand out.
The headliner, Shinedown, is another typical hard-rock act, but one that knows exactly what it is: a group of aging hard rockers who can get heads banging and fists pumping, but don't give their audience much to think about.
They were interested only in giving the audience a good time Wednesday. And they seemed to succeed, but anyone who had seen one of their shows before knew exactly what was coming.
That isn't to say the show was without highlights.
Here are a few of the standout moments:
"Sweet Adrenaline"
The four-piece band started their show from behind a black curtain bearing their signature 'S.' The crowd first heard a few fairly typical screeching hard-rock guitar riffs followed by a haunting recorded version of "Hush Little Baby."
As the rendition concluded, Shinedown jetted into their opening song, "Sweet Adrenaline," a speedy tune that they played with their typical gusto, setting the tone for the rest of the night.
"Diamond"
Vocalist Brent Smith asked everyone in the crowd to introduce themselves to the people standing next to them before he began this tune.
The song itself is typical of Shinedown, mostly intense guitar chords with enough of a melody to make it stand out in your mind. But it's one of their most popular songs, and they performed it with the enthusiasm expected of them.
"Enemies"
Prior to this song, Smith waded through the audience (accompanied by a buff security guard) to the edge of a steel barrier separating the general admission area from the cordoned off section in front of the stage. Then, he told everyone to jump after he counted to three and shouted, "Jump!" There's nothing quite like audience participation in a hard-rock show.
"Follow You Down"
The speed of this song lands somewhere between a whiney rock ballad and an energetic opening tune, but the highlight was Zach Myers' heartfelt guitar solo.
He managed to capture the song's angst without falling into the typical screaming riffs employed by a typical hard-rock soloist.
"Creep"
The aptly named Eric Bass briefly set his bass guitar on the backburner in favor of a keyboard when he covered this Radiohead song, mostly by himself. It was a rare display of musical prowess in Wednesday night's show, and considering that Radiohead rarely performs the song in concert, it was likely the only chance most audience members will have to hear the tune live from someone other than a cover band.
"Simple Kind of Man"
Smith and Myers toned things down a little when they played their cover of this classic Lynyrd Skynyrd song.
It was only the duo and Myers' acoustic guitar, and yet, somehow they still nailed the feeling the song is intended to express.
The audience was so engrossed that they forgave Smith when an apparent memory lapse led him to skip a lyric, forcing him to start over.
"You can't fight hate with hate," he said as the duo briefly paused the music. "The only thing that destroys hate is 100 percent pure love."