Monday, September 06, 2010

blah blah blah

Spent the weekend doing much of nothing. Today I changed the oil in my truck, installed new battery terminals and finally refilled the washer reservoir. I'm not looking forward to getting rained on tomorrow. I think I'm going to stop by a Wal-Mart early in the morning and buy one of their cheap plastic ponchos. Maybe it will be cool enough to get away with wearing it.

I still haven't finished another album yet, but I've been working on it. Recorded two more today, so now I have about a half dozen going at once.

A song just popped up on Winamp that reminded me of the very few groups I have actually seen in concert. As I said before, I'm not a big fan of the concert experience, and I have never gone out of my way to see groups in concert even when I'm a big fan of them. I'm not a big fan of going to movie theaters either. So, just for the record, here is the (very short) list.

Air Supply: Seen at ACU when I was going to school there. This was during a "comeback" tour in the early 80s. There wasn't a whole lot to do there and during the rare occasions that they found someone cheap enough to hold a concert on campus, it was something different to break the tedium. Their opener was some guy who sang and played a guitar--I don't remember his name but I remember him as being pretty bad. During one song--I don't remember which, the Air Supply guy who plays guitar (the tall one) cut loose with some pretty decent hard-rocking guitar jams. Even my room-mate admitted afterward that he was surprised to hear that kind of guitar coming from Air Supply.*

Firefall: Also seen at ACU, during another "comeback" tour in the early 80s. Oddly, they didn't perform "You Are the Woman," which was probably their best-known hit. The opener for them was a group called The Side of the Road Gang, which was sort of a poor man's Asleep at the Wheel. I remember they performed their cover of "Desperados Waiting for a Train," which I liked. Spent most of the time watching Firefall's keyboardist, surrounded by racks of keyboards and occasionally switching over to flute.

The Bulgarian Women's Vocal Choir: Seen at the Scottish Rite Temple in downtown San Antonio in the mid 80s. No opening act. A fantastic performance that I'm glad I saw. Took along my good friend Brer that time.

Groups I wish I had seen at least once: Styx, Paradise Theater era. Rush, A Farewell to Kings/Hemispheres era. Marillion, Fish era. The Doors, anytime, but I was only 7 years old when their last album came out.

UPDATE: Oops, forgot one. As mentioned before, I saw Stryper in the mid-80s at the Majestic Theater. Opening act was Heaven, who totally sucked.

*At one point, the Student Association ran a poll to find out if there were enough students who would pay $16 to see Chicago perform on campus. There weren't.

2 comments:

  1. Wow. You're really not much for concerts, are you? I used to be, but not so much anymore. Maybe I'm just getting old.

    P.S.: I saw Rush, but it was for their Hold Your Fire tour. If I remember correctly, Tommy Shaw opened for them, and I didn't think he was that good. Shaw used to rock with Styx, but he just didn't impress me as a solo act.

    Of course, we all know where he ended up.

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  2. Right.

    I saw a brief interview with him on some TV show right after Styx broke up, and it sounded like he didn't particularly care for being a solo act. He sounded like he preferred being in a group.

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