I saw them minus one of the front man singers (Two Dog Night) and they were fantastic. They opened for America who were not fantastic. 
I’ve seen Kenny Jones era The Who, ELO and their spaceship (when they were playing along with taped backup), John Denver a half dozen times, The Roches (sublime), Indigo Girls (birthday present for my wife. They were abysmal.), Foreigner, Beatlemania, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra numerous times (more on that later).
The BSO hosted Harry Belafaonte (excellent despite being 153 years old at the time), Paul Anka (OK voice, lame show), Henry Mancini’s Daughter (singing all his hits), Shirley Jones (Decent voice/awful show/started snowing/had to go). A younger version of Blood, Sweat and Tears.
Not quite the same, but Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson in Jesus Christ Superstar.
Cliff Richard in a small venue in the round. Outstanding. Mike Oldfield with Maggie Reilly providing backing vox; wonderful.
I’m seeing them on Friday. They’re doing the county fair circuit this summer. They still have the two principal members of the 1967 lineup; not just a drummer carrying the name.
A couple of weeks ago I saw Triumph on their 50th anniversary tour.
I’ll say up front that I enjoyed the show a lot. There is a lot of online chatter about it not being a real Triumph show. Age has certainly changed things. Mike Levine can’t tour anymore with undisclosed health issues. Todd Kerns is a very good bass player and vocalist. Phil X who was Richie Sambora’s replacement in Bon Jovi was there helping out on guitar. He was a former member of Triumph so that makes sense. They also had Mike Fitz as a second drummer. All three of the new guys would be worth seeing on their own. They were excellent.
Although I never got to see Triumph in their heyday I have seen Rik Emmett multiple times playing acoustic. He remains a guitar virtuoso. He has arthritis in his hands and has problems with playing a full show anymore. He handed off a decent amount of guitar parts to Phil X. Phil is 60 but seems like he’s 30 on stage. He also can’t hit the notes like he used to. The parts were either modified or helped by the backing vocals.
It still felt like a Triumph show. As long as Gil and Rik are there it’s Triumph. They didn’t play all the songs I wanted but they played a good mix of their catalog. The audience was very into it. Overall a very good experience.
That was how I felt at an Interpol show. Absolutely nothing said to the audience, not even a mistake to liven things up. I was so bored that I ran down the street to a dollar store where i’d seen $3 flat brim hats. Bought ten and a handful of Sharpies. Spent the last hour of the show decorating the hats with Interpol logos and themes, then sailed them off the balcony into the crowd.
Tonight’s the second of two nights that Los Lobos are playing at a neighborhood festival in Madison, WI. What’s the deal there? Hey, I’d go even if it weren’t free.
But why?
I also saw the Indigo Girls, in the early 1990s. That show wasn’t very good either.
They’re probably the kind of act that are great in, say, a coffeehouse, but not so great in a large auditorium.
I have two coming up.
Les Miz The Arena Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. I’m really looking forward to this. I love Les Miz and it’s just about the best possible cast that they put together. Despite the fact that I’ve walked past it so many times, I’ve never been to a show at Radio City.
A week later I’m seeing Blues Traveler, Gin Blossoms and Spin Doctors. I’ve seen Blues Traveler once before and they were great.
We just went to see a band called Afro Dead, which reinterprets Grateful Dead songs with an Afropop influence. They were very entertaining.
They’re on a small tour the rest of the summer including stops in Chicago and Madison (free on the Terrace) in August.
Here’s a link with some clips and tour info: https://afrodead.com/
As for the tunes, some are more successful in the re-arranging than others and some were closer to the originals (I am a long-time Deadhead) but I was definitely glad to have seen them and would go again.
Speaking of that, I just got home from Los Lobos. They were great, and the last song (before an encore that was a medley of old Tex-Mex-tinged oldies like La Bamba) was a Grateful Dead cover.
It was Bertha, the one song of LL that I was hoping they’d play… the one song of theirs I’ve heard a hundred times.
Because that’s how often I listen to DEADICATED, an album of Dead covers with gems like Zevon and Lindley’s Casey Jones, a jazzy Jack Straw by Bruce Hornsby, Burning Spear reggaefying Estimated Prophet, Lyle Lovett’s plaintive take on Friend of the Devil…
and Bertha!
Bertha was the one Afro Dead did that most sounded like an African pattern, and they also did an interesting I Know You Rider.
We saw Patty Griffin and Kathleen Edwards tonight. They were stripped down shows, and Edwards was outstanding; her voice was in fine form, and the guy accompanying her on second guitar was good as well.
Griffin is an icon, still has great guitar chops, and can hit some high notes, but her voice is basically shot. Different from Steve Earle, who does hit the notes… Patty is all over the place. I know some of that is down to the chemo in 2016, but I think it’s past that now.
I saw Motorhead in 09 or 10, I don’t remember and they didn’t give me a ticket so I can’t go look. I always wore ear plugs because I knew how loud they were. I think I saw them 10 or so times, always a good show.
I saw Swift in 18 with my kids, and I too wore my Motorhead shirt, though no one said anything about it to me.
I saw Golden Earring in January three times. They were there “last shows”, but because the guitar player died a couple of years ago they brought out other Dutch bands to play their songs or play with. The only song the other three played on was Radar Love.
Is there some significance to wearing a Motorhead shirt to a Taylor Swift concert, like has there been some bad blood between Swift and members of Motorhead? Or is it just a coincidence you both wore Motorhead shirts to a Swift show?
I was curious, and searched. From Rolling Stone, 2006:
Motörhead will be on the road for the next few months. A feature documentary about Lemmy is also in the works, and he still plans to record a long-promised solo album. When I ask if he likes any recent music, his answers are surprising: Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift, Bon Jovi‘s duet with Jennifer Nettles of the country band Sugarland. “Harmony still makes me shiver,” Lemmy says. “About the only thing that still does.”
I don’t think there’s actually any significance to the shirt-wearing above, but I do like that.
Just a coincidence I suppose. I usually wear my Motorhead shirt to shows, it’s 30+ years old now so I get some “street cred” out of it too. Had I known people paint TS on their cheeks I would have tried to paint the Twisted Sister logo on my cheek.
I jjst thought it would be an amusingly unfitting shirt to wear to a concert where most of the attendees were likely to be tween girls and their dads.
Noah Kahan (Wrigley Field): Hot. Heckin’ hot. Hotter as the night went on as the wind died down and the accumulated heat of 43,000 people built up. That aside, the show was fine in that it was melodic, they had a nice set design with multiple “Acts”, attendees were given flashy wristband dealies that looked appropriately impressive en masse and overall it was a good show. Except I only know one song (was there for my wife) and it was roasting hot. I suppose the upside was that I didn’t mind retreating to buy more water and missing bits of the spectacle. Would see again under cooler circumstances and if it wasn’t $400+ for a ticket.
Chapparelle (Fitzgerald’s): Small show, smaller than I expected in both length and venue. Was nice but Zella Day’s voice is notably weaker in person than recorded and punched up. Through an uninteresting series of events, I had my own four-seat table right up at the stage and invited a couple standing around in the back to come share. They paid for my drinks so everyone’s a winner. Show was only maybe an hour. Nevertheless, glad to have seen them.
We saw Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings tonight. I’m not sure if in my 50 or so years of live music that I’ve seen two musicians more in the same pocket as those two, it was incredible. Two encores and a big singalong at the end added to it. Quite the show.
I think I’ve posted this list in earlier threads but here are the concerts I attended before I went deaf 3 years ago.
August 1965:
My first concert, age 14
1966:
1967:
1968:
1969:
1973:
1974:
1975:
1990:
1993:
2000
2002:
2012:
2014:
I’ll always regret never having seen-