Stolen Car

 

And I'm driving a stolen car
On a pitch black night
And I'm telling myself
I'm gonna be alright
But I ride by night
And I travel in fear
In this darkness I will disappear

I was listening to the above Bruce Springsteen song ‘Stolen Car’ the other day on my way home from work and it made me think of my own brief history on the subject while in high school in Waukesha, WI.  My first experience with the concept was with my buddy Mark Smith.  I used to sleep over at his house a lot on the weekends.  His room was in the basement and we would crank tunes, play pool and drink beer that we had snuck in through the basement window well.  Another cool trick that we had learned was how to abscond with his parent’s car for late night parties and midnight movies (usually Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’).

 

Mark’s parent’s bedroom was up on the 2^nd floor on the other side of the house from the garage.  So after they would go to bed, we would get the car keys off the hook in the kitchen and sneak into the garage.  Then we would pull the red latch to disengage the automatic door opener.  Slowly and quietly we would lift up the garage door, put the stick-shift car in neutral and give it a push to get it rolling.  Then Mark would jump in as he guided it down the somewhat steep 30 foot long driveway.  I would close the garage door as Mark would continue to coast backwards down the driveway and on to the cul-de-sac until it stopped rolling.  Then I would jump in, he would start it up and off we would go!

 

Freedom was ours…parties, movies, girls…whatever a couple of high school punks could get into we did and we had a blast.  Now getting the car silently out of the garage was one thing, but getting it back in was another.  Basically we would just do it all in reverse but it took some skill and timing.  We would stop the car in the cul-de-sac with his parents house about a block straight ahead.  I would get out, run up to the house, quietly open the garage door and wait for Mark.  He would then gun it as fast as he could, kill the engine at the bottom of the driveway, and hope he had enough speed to coast up to the top of the driveway.  We usually made it on the first try.  Then it was just a matter of pushing the car into place, closing the garage door and reattaching the garage door opener.  Easy peasy.  Never once did Mark’s parents catch us.

 

My other brush with a ‘stolen car’ was a little more hairy.  It was my senior year in high school and my neighbor and best friend Gary Paulson had also become good friends with a guy named Roman.  He was the guy I wrote about in my 4/13/12 blog entitled ‘Barf’…when I had gone with him in his car-paper route during 2^nd hour, drank seven beers and spent the rest of the day in the high school bathroom puking.  Well Roman had a girlfriend named Julia whose parents did not like him, and for some reason his parents did not like Julia.  All the parents were bound and determined that these two kids were not to be together.  Eventually Roman and Julia had had enough and hatched a scheme.  They would run away!

 

Roman had a really cool uncle who was a bus driver that used to drive the bus for our local minor league hockey team, the Milwaukee Admirals.  He was able to get Roman and Julia free bus fare on the Greyhound from Milwaukee all the way out to Oregon to stay with friends there.  The plan was that Gary and I were to drive Roman and Julia to the Milwaukee bus station in Roman’s dad’s car and then ditch the car.  We were to hide it out in the country somewhere so that the parents and the cops would think that the kids had ran away using the car and would not be looking for them at bus stations.

 

Well it was a good plan and we followed it at first.  We lived out in the country somewhere, so after dropping the couple off at the bus station we hid the car down a long dirt path in a little oasis of trees in the middle of a gigantic corn field across the street from my house.  We figured it would take the farmer weeks or even months to discover the car.  When we parked the car though we just could not bear to follow through with Roman’s instructions to throw the keys away.  They were perfectly good keys to a perfectly good car.  We left the car there under a bunch of branches but kept the keys and walked home.  Gary lived just up the street from me.

 

A couple of days later the Milwaukee Brewers were starting a weekend home stand against the Red Sox and we wanted to go!  Gary’s parents never let him drive, and for some reason I couldn’t get my parent’s car that night, so hey…why not take the perfectly good car across the street?  After doing it once, it became easier to do and we started using the car more and more.  It was the last week of school and one morning we decided to take the car to school instead of the stupid school bus.  We were about to pull into the parking lot when we noticed a cop car and an FBI vehicle parked by the front door of the school, so we kept on going and parked down the street in a neighborhood.

 

Having our own car was a blast, but the problem we chose to ignore was that technically it was a stolen car and the Feds were looking for the car and the kids.  Roman was over 18 and Julia was under 18 so the whole thing was a big deal.  Driving the car was nerve-racking and our heads were always on a swivel.  We were getting sporadic reports from Roman on the road that the FBI had figured out they were not driving and were using the bus instead.  They almost got caught in Denver and again in Utah, but somehow had managed to slip through and got all the way to Oregon.

 

One night Gary had tried to take the car to a Brewers game, but the distributor cap was missing.  The farmer who owned the corn field had found the car and sabotaged it so it wouldn’t work.  Gary found another ride to the game, got drunk, and when he got home the Feds were sitting in his living room waiting for him.  Fortunately I had not gone with Gary that night.  He did not rat me out, but he had to show the cops where the car was parked.  He got into some trouble, but surprisingly not much.  I believe the uncle had caved, Roman and Julia were tracked down, and Roman’s dad decided not to press charges against Gary.  We made it through all that relatively unscathed, but again...don’t try any of this at home…so very stupid.

Yet Another Good Year In Music (2017)

Red Hot Chili Peppers - 1/21/17 @ Target Center

Tesla - 2/4/17 @ Mystic Lake Casino

Roger Waters - 7/26/17 @ Xcel Center

Ozzy Osbourne - 8/11/17 @ Treasure Island Casino

U2 - 9/8/17 - US Bank Stadium

After Los Lobos - 5/5/17 - Mystic Lake Casino


With work being so crazy busy I have not had a chance to write a blog in a long time, but I still manage to make time for live music.  All my friends are currently in New Orleans this weekend seeing our favorite band the Radiators doing their 40^th anniversary shows at Tipitinas.  I could not make it down there this year, so I am going to look back at my 2017 calendar and reminisce about the shows I did get to see last year.

The first show that made a huge impression on me and one of my year's favorites was the Chili Peppers at the Target Center.  The first time I had seen them a few years ago I was not that impressed.  They seemed tired and bored and not into it, but this last show…holy moly.  Despite Anthony Kiedis’s busted foot in a walking cast he was all over the place dancing and going nuts.  And it goes without saying that Flea was twice as crazy and in my face half the night.  I ended up in the front row against the stage next to a chick in a large banana costume.  The show was intense, psychedelic, funky and somewhat healing while I was still in the beginning stages of Trump-shock.

 

Another great show soon after was Tesla headlining at Mystic Lake Casino.  I have seen them opening for Def Leppard a few times, but getting them front row at a smaller venue where they could play their full show was awesome.  Still rocking, still personable and just a great time with one of the all-time great American bands from the 80’s.

 

One of my favorite shows was during my now annual Summer trip south to see Dead & Company, this time at Wrigley Field in Chicago.  52 years since 3 out of the 6 members from that band started making music it is still incredibly fun and that makes it relevant.  Of course if I am on a road trip I am not about to choose a Dead & Co. cd to listen to over a Jerry-era cd, but Jerry’s dead and the Dead & Co. are alive and making incredible music.  This band is still worth traveling for.  The music is always fun but another huge aspect of the scene is running into old friends.  I found my old buddy Sean Morrison in the streets outside of Wrigley and got to meet his new sweet bride Staci, who tragically died a couple months later.  I feel fortunate that I got to meet that beautiful soul one time before she left us.

 

My favorite big venue shows for the year were a close tie between Iron Maiden, Roger Waters, Ozzy Osbourne and U2.  I have loved Iron Maiden ever since I first got the 'Number of the Beast' album as an 11^th grader in 1982, and saw them a year later in Milwaukee with Twisted Sister opening.  The band has lost nothing over the decades in the way of power and strength, and Bruce Dickinson is the consummate front-man with his non-stop energy and incredible voice even while battling with Eddie onstage.

 

I have been obsessed with Pink Floyd and Roger Waters ever since 'The Wall' came out in 1979.  I owned it on album, cassette & 8-track, and listened to it almost non-stop throughout “high” school.  I have seen Roger a few times including his performance of 'The Wall' twice which were of course two of my favorite shows of all time, but this last show was almost as powerful.  An incredible anti-Trump performance that was mind-blowing in its visual effects and its message that hit home in these crazy times.

 

I was sad a year ago while writing about seeing the final Black Sabbath show, but Ozzy lifted my spirits last summer when he reunited with Zakk Wylde to put on an incredible Ozzy Osbourne show at Treasure Island.  I went with Frank the Tank, and Ozzy still brought the madmen out in all of us as he was jumping around the stage in great voice while Zakk was in our face with his stellar guitar shredding all of our favorite Ozzy and Sabbath tunes.

 

U2 at US Bank Stadium was a breathtaking spectacle of light and sound as they assaulted us with audio/visual overload.  Frank and I got there early and scored a prime spot about 3 rows back from the front/center of the stage.  The sheer majesty and awesomeness of their stage and sound will never let you down, and I hear they are coming back on tour this year and I will be there.

 

For smaller venue shows, special mention goes to Zakk Wylde for ripping our faces off in front of hundreds of fans at the small Fine Line Café in Zakk Sabbath a mere few weeks after ripping our faces off in front of thousands with Ozzy at Treasure Island.  The man is a beast on guitar with a perfect rock and roll voice and we love him.

 

My favorite rock and roll experience of the year though was seeing Los Lobos at Mystic Lake on May 5^th.  How can you beat seeing East LA’s finest on Cinqo de Mayo?!  The band hooked me and Frank up with great seats and backstage passes and the show was fantastic as always.  After the concert we decided to hit the bar to celebrate, so me, Frank, David Hidalgo, Conrad Lozano and a few others were heading to one of the casino bars and happened upon a ballroom filled with drunks cheering on a real live all-star wrestling match in a ring.  Conrad was really into it and we watched that freak show for awhile, and then it was off to the bar for beers and tequila.  Just a fantastic night runnin’ with the Wolf.

 

Anyways, here is what I managed to see last year:

 

1/14/17 – Kris Kristofferson @ Pantages Theatre – Minneapolis, MN

1/21/17 – Red Hot Chili Peppers/Trombone Shorty @ Target Center – Minneapolis, MN
2/4/17 – Tesla @ Mystic Lake Casino – Prior Lake, MN
2/25/17 – Lettuce @ First Avenue – Minneapolis, MN
3/11/17 – The Subdudes @ Dakota Jazz Club – Minneapolis, MN
3/17/17 – Blue Oyster Cult/Mark Farner @ Medina Ballroom – Medina, MN
3/24/17 – Galactic @ First Avenue
3/31/17 – Warrant/Great White @ Medina Ballroom
4/9/17 – John Koerner/Tony Glover @ Cedar Cultural Center – Minneapolis, MN
4/15/17 – New Orleans Suspects @ Bunkers – Minneapolis, MN
4/21/17 – Def Leppard/Poison/Tesla @ Xcel Center – St. Paul, MN
4/22/17 – Burton Cummings/Gypsy @ Medina Ballroom
4/29/17 – Three Dog Night/Fabulous Del Counts @ Medina Ballroom
5/5/17 – Los Lobos @ Mystic Lake Casino
5/25/17 – Gov’t Mule @ State Theatre – Minneapolis, MN
6/2/17 – The Malone Brothers @ Dakota Jazz Club
6/3/17 – The Malone Brothers @ Mitch’s House – Golden Valley, MN
6/16/17 – Iron Maiden/Ghost @ Xcel Center
6/18/17 – Don Henley @ Xcel Center
7/1/17 – Dead & Company @ Wrigley Field – Chicago, IL
7/2/17 – PINK/Peter Frampton/Steve Miller @ Summerfest – Chicago, IL
7/14/17 – Queen @ Xcel Center
7/26/17 – Roger Waters @ Xcel Center
7/28/17 – Billy Joel @ Target Field – Minneapolis, MN
7/30/17 – Guns ‘n Roses @ US Bank Stadium – Minneapolis, MN
8/5/17 – Hot Tuna @ Dakota Jazz Club
8/11/17 – Ozzy Osbourne @ Treasure Island Casino – Welch, MN
8/19/17 – George Porter/Frogleg/Jon Cleary @ Como Lakeside Pavilion – St. Paul, MN
8/25/17 – Stevie Nicks @ State Fair – St. Paul, MN
9/1/17 – Garrison Keillor @ State Fair
9/8/17 – U2 @ US Bank Stadium
9/20/17 – Gene Simmons/Don Felder/Cheap Trick @ CHS Field – St. Paul, MN
9/23/17 – Honey Island Swamp Band @ Whiskey Junction – Minneapolis, MN
9/24/17 – Honey Island Swamp Band @ Ted Booker’s House – Coon Rapids, MN
9/26/17 – Zakk Sabbath @ Fine Line Music Cafe – Minneapolis, MN
9/30/17 – April Wine/Lita Ford @ Medina Ballroom
10/12/17 – New Orleans Suspects @ Dakota Jazz Club
10/20/17 – Widespread Panic @ Riverside Theater – Milwaukee, WI
10/25/17 – Bob Dylan @ Xcel Center
10/28/17 – Jon Groh Band @ The Hook & Ladder Theater – Minneapolis, MN
12/9/17 – Marvel Universe Live @ Xcel Center
12/30/16 – Frogleg w/Camile Baudoin @ Hook & Ladder

 

And looking forward to 2018, besides the Lana Del Rey concert I just saw over the weekend I also have tickets for:  Bob Seger, Pink, Jorma Kaukonen, Robert Plant, Jefferson Starship/Mark Farner, Lynch Mob/Slaughter, more Pink, New Orleans Suspects, Lorde, Dave Davies, Rob Lowe, Rod Stewart and Taylor Swift.  I am looking forward to those and whatever else pops up, including The Dead at Alpine Valley.

Grateful Dead 1988 Spring Tour

Getting concert tickets before the internet was around was not always an easy prospect, especially if you wanted to get tickets for an out-of-town show.  The Grateful Dead tried to make it easier for their fans however by selling a large portion of the tickets by themselves directly to the fans.  After listening to the Grateful Dead hotline for ’88 Spring tour info, carefully filling out all the 3x5 index cards with separate envelopes and post-office money orders for each city, we eagerly waited a few weeks until all of our tickets arrived.  My girlfriend Lona and I were going to six shows and we could not be more excited!  Then after the mail-order was over we got word that the Dead had added a 3^rd show to Chicago, so I quickly called the ticket office down there and got seats for that show as well.  I had only seen the Dead 13 times prior to this so adding 7 more shows was huge and we were looking forward to the road trip.  We would see the first four shows of the tour and the last three.

3/24/88  The Omni - Atlanta, GA
3/26/88  Hampton Coliseum - Hampton, VA
3/27/88  Hampton Coliseum - Hampton, VA
3/28/88  Hampton Coliseum - Hampton, VA
4/13/88  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL
4/14/88  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL
4/15/88  Rosemont Horizon - Chicago, IL

I was about to turn 22 years old, in my 4^th year of college in Minneapolis, and spring break was the week of Monday March 21^st through Friday the 25^th.  With the first show on the tour being Thursday the 24^th in Atlanta we had a few days to do whatever we wanted before then.  So Lona and I packed up my 1977 Toyota Celica that I had recently bought for $220 and decided to drive down to New Orleans for a couple of days before heading over to Atlanta to start the tour.

We left Minneapolis on March 21^st and arrived in Louisiana on the evening of the 22^nd.  We had stopped somewhere on the way to buy a large grocery bag full of fireworks, as they were illegal in Minnesota and it seemed like a good idea at the time.  After two long days on the road we decided to camp at Fontainebleu State Park on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.  We got up the next morning on the 23^rd and got on the crazy long Causeway Bridge across the lake down to New Orleans.  We knew absolutely nothing about New Orleans other than its reputation as a fun party-town, so being the good young partying tourists that we were we headed straight to Bourbon Street in the French Quarter.

We wandered around, people-watched, bought some souvenirs, had a few drinks and marveled at the fact that we could just hang out in public with alcohol in hand…we were in heaven!  We decided to get some po-boys for lunch and I got something different like alligator while Lona got something normal like ham.  I loved mine and she hated hers.  We spent the afternoon watching live music while sipping Hurricanes and then we headed back to the campground.  We stopped at a liquor store on the way for some wine.  I ended up talking to the friendly owner for awhile and for some reason he gave me a free large beer.  We went to bed fairly early, excited to be seeing the Dead the next day in Atlanta!  Well rested and awake with the sun, I noticed a small blob stuck to the outside of our tent.  I got up to pee and it turned out to be a sweet little green tree-frog.

We packed up and drove the 6 ½ hours to Atlanta, arriving on the afternoon of the 24^th.  It was total chaos downtown, so we found what looked like a nice and somewhat secluded street to park behind The Omni arena where we would sleep later.  It was a fantastic show with the ‘Looks Like Rain’ and its trippy rain/thunder sound effects being my highlight.  After the show we made our way through the sea of hippies and eventually found our car down a dark lonely street…the area looked completely different in the middle of the night from the way it did in the bright afternoon sunlight.  We got in the car, locked the doors, leaned our seats back and hunkered down for a restless night of sleep in downtown Atlanta.

We got up the next morning on the 25^th with a day off from the Dead and started our 9 hour drive up to Hampton, VA.  That evening during a stop for gas I noticed a huge wall of 6-packs stacked along the back of the gas-station.  Upon closer inspection it was a clearance sale on Dixie Beer…$1 per 6-pack!  Being somewhat low on money I decided to gamble and spend most of the rest of our money on beer.  We could sell it in the parking lot at Hampton!  The look on Lana’s face when she caught sight of me wheeling the first of several dollies full of beer out to the car was priceless.  I bought almost every 6-pack they had and filled every square inch of our car with beer.

An hour later we pulled our weighted-down car into a gas station in Virginia Beach for cheap food and directions.  As I was about to go in I held the door open for a guy coming out and it happened to be our friend Joel Ruthin from Minneapolis!  He was on tour selling tee-shirts and it was nice seeing a familiar face on the road.  He told us about a campground that he and some other Minneapolis friends were staying at and we told him we would catch him there later.  We did not find the campground that night so we slept in our car at a rest stop, ready for our 3-night run of shows in the awesome Hampton Coliseum.

We got up the morning of the March 26^th, filled our cooler with fresh ice and headed over to the Coliseum to begin my new profession as a beer vendor.  The going rate for beer those days was usually $1 for domestic beers and $2 for imports.  I decided to undercut everybody in the lot and sell my beer for 50 cents apiece.  So I put a cardboard sign on my cooler, cracked a beer and kicked back for a few minutes.  First one person came by, then another and another and another…word got out that some dude was selling beers for 50 cents!  Before long I had a line at my cooler.  I could not keep the cooler full because they would get bought as soon as I put them in there.  I put a 4-can per person limit on the beer but within a couple hours I had sold out.  I made a few friends, made a ton of Deadheads happy and I tripled my money.

Wandering around the lot we had run into our friends Joel and Mark Smith and Christy Russell from Minneapolis.  Christy had a great homemade sign to help her find tickets, and it worked.  It was a fun day but by the end of the afternoon I was a tad drunk on Dixie and it was time to turn our attention to the real reason we were there…to see our 15^th Grateful Dead show!  The show in Atlanta two nights ago to start the tour was smoking and we were excited to see what Hampton would bring.  Lona had never taken acid before and decided it was finally time to give it a try.  What better place than at a Grateful Dead concert in the hallowed grounds of the Hampton Coliseum.  The Coliseum was like the east coast version of the Oakland Coliseum in that it was all general admission seating and the shows there were usually great.

So we dosed about an hour before the show and headed in to find a spot.  As would become our norm in the years to come in Oakland, we picked out a nice spot in the lower level, side stage on Jerry’s side.  It was a very good, long show that included a humorous attempt at Bob Marley’s ‘Stir It Up’ early in the 1^st set.  It took a few seconds to figure out what the heck they were doing but when we figured it out the crowd roared and reacted in kind with everyone lighting up.  Lona was a little nervous tripping but I helped her through it and we had fun at the show.  The next step was to try and safely get to the campground that our Minnesota friends were staying at.

After finding Joel’s car earlier that day he said we could follow him to the campground, but that was easier said than done.  It was pouring rain out and there were a bunch of cops on horses galloping around the lot yelling at everyone and telling them to get the f*ck out of there.  Normally we would have either slept in the car or at least waited for the acid to calm down a bit but the cops left us no choice, we had to go.  It was extremely traumatic trying to stay right behind Joel and not lose him in the sea of merging cars in the blinding rain while tripping and being yelled at by the scary horse-cops.

I stuck right behind Joel hoping not to run into him, but eventually we made it out of the lot and 15 minutes later we were at the camp ground…huge sigh of relief!  The rain had stopped but everything was soaked so we decided to forgo setting up our tent in the mud and just sleep in the car that night.  We were still feeling the acid and could not sleep yet so we had a few beers with our friends, and then I remembered the fireworks.  Fun!  So I grabbed a pack of bottle rockets out of the grocery bag, pulled one rocket out of the pack, carefully placed it in the muddy ground, lit the fuse and backed away. 

The ground was so muddy though that as soon as I backed away from it the rocket began to lean and fall over.  Before I could do anything about it, it shot off horizontally across the campground about 5 feet off the ground.  I watched in horror as it streaked away, heading right for a cop car about 200 feet away that was slowly patrolling the grounds.  ‘No way…no way…please don’t do this’ I thought…but sure enough it exploded right on the windshield of the cop.  His driver window was open and I could hear him scream.

Holy f*cking sh*t.  I had no idea what was going to happen next but I knew it could not be good.  I did not want to go to jail, especially down south 1,000 miles from home in the middle of the night while tripping.  I also did not want to lose my fireworks so I quickly put the full grocery bag in the back seat of my car, covered it with a blanket, and then put the small pack of bottle rockets on top of my car in plain view.  After a few seconds of shock the cop figured out where the rocket had come from and raced his car over to mine with the cherries blazing.  He was large, much older than us, and oh so angry.

I did not try to hide the fact that I was the guilty one as I just stood there saying:  “I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!” over and over again.  I was hoping he would pity me as I tried to look as clueless and pathetic as I possibly could.  He jumped out of his car, ran over to me, lowered his face down to mine and yelled:  “I don’t how they operate wherever you come from, but here in Virginia we do not try to blow up police officers!”  He asked me where the rest of my fireworks were and I pointed to the single pack of bottle rockets on the roof of my car. 

With a big swipe of his meaty paw he grabbed them off the car and thrust them onto my chest.  “Drop these into the mud!  Now!!”  After doing so he instructed me to stomp on them and grind them into the muck.  I did so, trying to look very disappointed like he was somehow hurting me in order to give him some satisfaction so he would leave.  It must have worked because he told me that I hoped I learned my lesson and he triumphantly drove off.  As soon as he got out of sight I chuckled with relief as I packed away the rest of the fireworks deep in my car.

The next two shows in Hampton were just awesome, with the highlights in night two being the debut of ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’, the rare ‘To Lay Me Down’ and the only ‘So What’ ever.  The whole 2^nd set was just killer.  The third night was an average setlist, but played extremely well with a crazy spooky ‘The Other One’ out of ‘Space’.  We loved Hampton, but it was time to go back to school for a couple weeks.  We were all packed and ready to go after the last show but it turned out that Mark and Christy needed a ride back to Minneapolis because their ride there was Joel and he had decided to head on up the coast for the rest of the tour.  So we crammed as much of their stuff into our car as we could and took off.  I was already behind in school as I would miss the first two days of the new quarter, so we drove straight through only stopping for gas.

After two weeks of college we packed the car up again and hit the road for three more shows in Chicago at the Rosemont Horizon.  The first night was okay, night two was better, and night three was the gem.  On night three they opened the first set with a surprising ‘Scarlet>Fire’ and it was onwards and upwards from there.  So much fun, and I remember thinking how glad I was that they had added that third show.  A couple parking lot notes.  As I had written about in an earlier blog (1/27/12 – ‘I’ve Been On Fire Three Times’), one afternoon while passing a bowl out in the parking lot an ember had blown into the loose sleeve of my Guatemalan poncho.  Without realizing it, it smoldered there for awhile before coming to life and someone had to mention to me that “Hey man, your arm is on fire.”

Another tidbit was the fact that before we had left for New Orleans three weeks earlier I had stuffed all of my tax forms in my car’s glove compartment with the intent of doing them on the road.  I of course completely forgot all about them until the mushrooms had started kicking in on the afternoon of the last day of the tour…April 15^th.  In my giggly state I managed to do my taxes and then wandered around for an hour trying to find a place to mail them.  I finally succeeded, went into Rosemont for a killer show and just like that Spring Tour ’88 was over.  It’s always a bit sad going home at the end of tour, but no matter…we already had plans for an epic Summer Tour ’88 just two short months away with 8 more shows to be seen!  You can read about the near-tragic end to that trip in my 5/11/12 blog entry ‘Crossing Into Canada’.

Stella Blue

Last Saturday we suffered a terrible loss in our Minneapolis music/friendship community when our friend Stella Blue left us suddenly…a sweet, kind, peaceful, music-loving being.  I unfortunately did not know Stella as well as I should and now I of course regret that.  I would see her at all the shows, we talked now and then and we had tons of mutual friends, but we never hung out a lot.  She was at my after-show hotel party last Halloween and we had a great time then.  Also that night she left her camera and some other items in my room so she came to my work a few days later to get her stuff.  She gave me a big hug and as always she just oozed sweetness and kindness.  As she drove away I remember wondering why do I not know this person better.  She is obviously a really good person.

 

As usual Stella went out last Friday night to see music along with a lot of our friends.  She then went home and never woke up.  She was found Saturday afternoon and it was quickly all over Facebook…everyone in shock and disbelief.  Then we had the sad/happy task of going to see our friends the 'New Orleans Suspects' that night at Bunkers.  Stella of course had a ticket and would have been at the show.  When I got to the venue I was not using the ‘+1’ that was on the guest list next to my name so I had the doorman write in ‘Stella Blue’.  Inside some people did not even know yet, and the rest were just walking around kind of dazed.

 

The first thing I did was tell Mitch I loved him…and Ted Booker, Freak, B-Dog, Mike, Alli, Coach, Pam, Kari…anyone I could get my hands on.  Besides the obvious sadness vibe floating around, there was also a total love vibe going around as well.  With the sudden instant departure of one us, it gave us all that creepy feeling knowing that it could all be over for any one of us, at any time.  So everyone was hugging and telling each other how much we loved them…a total peaceful love-thing happening that Stella would have loved.  It was weird though…wherever I was in the venue throughout the evening I kept seeing Stella out of the corner of my eye…she was definitely there that night.

 

Before the show the band decided to learn and play the Grateful Dead song ‘Stella Blue’.  It was cool and sweet seeing them with their guitars working out the chord changes and learning the song on the spot.  They played it midway through the first set and it was beautiful.

 

One funny thing did happen that night between me and my friend Nancy Osbourne from Fargo.  She is a hot brunette, cool as hell, and the only girl I know who loves Black Sabbath almost as much as I do.  We have been friends for decades and we always mess with each other.  Nancy had been out to dinner and thus got to the show later than me and I hadn’t seen her since she’d been in town.  The first set was starting before I finally saw her in the corner sort of leaning up against her boyfriend who was on a bar-stool.  So I came up next to her and tapped her shoulder…nothing.  Then I flicked her hair…nothing.  She was just staring straight ahead at the stage.  Then I realized that she thought the tapping/flicking was from her boyfriend, not the person standing next to her.  So with the power of that knowledge I started stroking her hair, caressing her face, tucking her hair behind her ears…still nothing.

 

The boyfriend who I do not know very well was staring at me like:  “What the f*ck is this motherf*cker doing?”  But I ignored him and moved down to Nancy’s neck, shoulders and upper chest.  She and I are close enough that it would not have been a big deal, but I wasn’t sure if I should actually get too near her boobs without risking her boyfriend becoming completely unglued so I refrained.  By now the boyfriend’s eyes were as big as saucers and this went on for several minutes until she suddenly turned slightly and sees me standing there smiling.  She did a quick double-take…looked at me, then back at her boyfriend, and then me…and then she collapsed on the ground laughing.  It was awesome…the whole time I was messing with her she thought it was her dude and we laughed about it for the rest of the night.

 

Anyways, it was a bittersweet night.  Great music and great friends, minus a few.  As our wide crew of friends gets older I suppose this will be become more and more common as we take turns leaving this earth and heading for whatever is next.  Karl Bremer, Paul T., Eric Vandercar, Matt Carlin, Pizza-Jimmy, Ricky ‘Sexual Chocolate’ Smith, Tom Goodspeed, Glenn Kamrath, Kevin Santos…these were all hard to accept and Stella is one more.  All we can do is enjoy every single day, never “kill” time, love our friends and family and appreciate everything we have.

 

Stella Blue

 

(Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia)

 

All the years combine, they melt into a dream,
A broken angel sings from a guitar.
In the end there's just a song comes cryin' up the night
Thru all the broken dreams and vanished years.
Stella blue. Stella blue.

When all the cards are down, there's nothing left to see,
There's just the pavement left and broken dreams.

In the end there's still that song comes cryin' like the wind.
Down every lonely street that's ever been
Stella blue. Stella blue.

I've stayed in every blue-light cheap hotel, can't win for trying.
Dust off those rusty strings just one more time,
Gonna make them shine, shine.

It all rolls into one and nothing comes for free,
There's nothing you can hold, for very long.
And when you hear that song come crying like the wind,
It seems like all this life was just a dream.
Stella blue. Stella blue.

 

Another Good Year In Music (2016)

(Black Sabbath @ Target Center 1/25/16)

(Dead & Company @ Alpine Valley 7/9/16)

Well 2016 is over with (thank god), 2017 is under way and I just went to my first concert of the year last weekend.  It is time to look back at my 2016 calendar and go over all the shows I went to last year…see what kind of a year it was for concerts.

 

2016 started off strong with a trip to New Orleans to see our beloved Radiators for their annual reunion shows at our beloved Tipitinas.  I have seen the Radiators far more than any other band, and I love and miss them every day.  Tons of Minnesota friends made the trek down to the other end of the Mississippi River and it was an incredibly fun weekend.  I am bummed that I had to miss out on 2017’s reunion shows last weekend, but I will be back down there next  year.

 

Then it was back home for a bittersweet concert with Black Sabbath on their ‘The End’ tour.  It was a great show with Ozzy’s voice still strong and foreboding, Tony Iommi’s classic chunky metal riffs piercing my soul, and Geezer Butler’s evil bass shaking my organs loose and standing my hairs on end…but it was also sad bidding farewell to my all-time favorite metal band…the guys who started it all.

 

Looking over the list, there was not a bad show in the bunch except maybe the Prince tribute show.  I am not a Prince fan and would not have gone except my friend Penny McCartney flew in from Boulder to go so I went too.  The reason I missed the boat on the whole Prince phenomenon was because when I first moved to Minneapolis from Wisconsin in 1984 my roommate got to the dorm room before me and sort of by default owned the room/stereo.  I was into high school metal like Van Halen/Judas Priest/Scorpions and had never even heard of Prince.  This guy had Prince posters covering every square inch of the walls and blared Prince music non-stop 24/7.  Within hours of moving to Minnesota I hated Prince and I never got over it.  The tribute concert was long (we left early), not well produced and an amateurish disappointment.

 

Other than that the year had a lot of highlights and incredible concerts, but my favorite show was probably Dead & Company…partly because it contained 3/6ths of my all-time favorite band, and partly because it was at Alpine Valley…hallowed grounds.  I had not been there in almost 20 years and it was like seeing a long-lost friend or putting on an old pair of comfortable jeans.  I grew up a 20-minute drive from Alpine Valley and saw countless incredible concerts there in high school (AC/DC, Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Dio, Scorpions, Triumph, etc…) not to mention 14 Grateful Dead shows while in college.

 

On the drive from my hotel to Alpine Valley a strong sense déjà vu began setting in, and then pulling into the lot I got the biggest smile on my face that I could not get rid of if I wanted to…I was home again.  We found a spot fairly close to the front on the left side of the main road and set up camp.  It was just like old times…half-naked hippies playing Frisbee, hacky sack, drinking beers, passing joints, eating parking lot food, selling tee-shirts.  I ran into lots of friends and it was like going back thirty years to the mid-80’s.  Same good people and same good vibes everywhere.  And the concert was awesome too…this latest post-Jerry incarnation of the Dead is by far my favorite.  I am looking forward to seeing them again this summer, but I wish it was at Alpine Valley instead of Wrigley Field.

 

Another killer show was the Sammy Hagar concert.  A cool neighbor of mine had two VIP tickets ($150/each) and he could not go so he just gave them to me.  So my buddy Mitch and I used them, which got us right up to the stage, private bar/bathrooms and free food.  Before the show Mitch was hanging outside with our friend Thor Ekblom, so I went in to the Wayzata Beach VIP club to get some dinner and drinks.  There were a lot of rich yacht-type people in the swanky club.  I had a table all to myself and an incredibly nice, well-dressed couple named Mike and Wendy asked to sit at my table.  I chatted them up amicably and before long they were buying me drinks and laughing and I think we became friends…which is awesome because the guy is very connected in the musical world.  Mostly 80’s bands that I do not care much about like Survivor and .38 Special and Toto, but he also was friends with Bill Graham and is a Radiators fan.  So anyways, after trading stories and laughing it up for awhile he gave me his card and told me to call him anytime if I needed anything.  I gave him my card (Sneaky Sweets blog card) and he said we need to stay in touch, which we did for awhile by email.

 

The show itself was a blast.  Don Felder’s long Eagles set was awesome, but almost too awesome…was he lip synching?  I hope not.  But Sammy…holy moly he rocked out and I loved it.  I used to be pissed at him for daring to replace David Lee Roth in Van Halen, but now I dig him.  And the band was loose and tight…what a great lineup with Michael Anthony from Van Halen on bass and Jason Bonham of Zeppelin heritage on drums.  Sammy and Michael were drinking plenty of tequila onstage and just having a blast.  ‘When The Levee Breaks’ was incredible, and he played some old Montrose stuff which was cool.  I am glad I finally got to see Sammy.  It was a killer night, and I even got an electric glo-light sword that Sammy was playing with onstage which I gave to my son Jake.

 

Special mention goes to AC/DC with Angus and Brian still rocking hard but hopefully not for the last time, to Springsteen for always putting on a great epic show, to The Who, McCartney and Paul Simon for proving that old guys can still bring it at a high level, to Stevie Nicks and Chrissie Hynde for proving that old girls can still bring it at a high level, and to the two house parties with the NOLA Suspects and Raw Oyster Cult…Ted Booker always knows how to throw a killer party.

 

Anyways, here is what I managed to see last year:

 

1/15 & 1/16/16 – The Radiators @ Tipitinas – New Orleans, LA

1/25/16 – Black Sabbath @ Target Center – Minneapolis, MN
1/29/16 – Blue Oyster Cult/Jefferson Starship @ Medina Ballroom – Medina, MN
2/14/16 – AC/DC @ Xcel Center – St. Paul, MN
2/23/16 – Warren Haynes @ Fitzgerald Theatre – St. Paul, MN
2/28/16 – Disney On Ice @ Target Center
2/29/16 – Bruce Springsteen @ Xcel Center
4/9/16 – Marvel Universe Live @ Target Center
4/13/16 – Taj Mahal @ The Dakota – Minneapolis, MN
4/22/16 – The Fab Four @ Medina Ballroom
5/1/16 – The Who @ Target Center
5/4 & 5/5/16 – Paul McCartney @ Target Center
5/14/16 – New Orleans Suspects @ Bunkers – Minneapolis, MN
5/15/16 – New Orleans Suspects @ Ted Booker’s house, MN
5/21/16 – Prairie Home Companion @ State Theatre – Minneapolis, MN
6/14/16 – Paul Simon @ Orpheum Theatre – Minneapolis, MN
6/25/16 – Bad Company/Winery Dogs @ Hinckley Casino – Hinckley, MN
7/9/16 – Dead & Company @ Alpine Valley – East Troy, WI
7/13/16 – Camile Baudoin & Curt Obeda @ Viking Bar – Minneapolis, MN
8/20/16 – Metallica/Avenged Sevenfold/Volbeat @ US Bank Stadium – Mpls, MN
9/2/16 – Garrison Keillor @ State Fair – St. Paul, MN
9/8/16 – Australian Pink Floyd @ State Theatre
9/10/16 – Sammy Hagar/Don Felder @ Wayzata Beach Club – Wayzata, MN
9/29/16 – Dark Star Orchestra @ Skyway Theatre – Minneapolis, MN
10/5/16 – Def Leppard/REO Speedwagon/Tesla @ Xcel Center
10/13/16 – Prince Tribute Concert (w/Stevie Wonder) @ Xcel Center
10/28/16 – Raw Oyster Cult @ house party – Minneapolis, MN
10/29/16 – Raw Oyster Cult @ Bunkers
12/1/16 – Mofro/Parker Millsap @ First Avenue – Minneapolis, MN
12/3/16 – Disney On Ice @ Xcel Center
12/6/16 – Stevie Nicks/The Pretenders @ Xcel Center
12/22/16 – Dumpstaphunk @ Hook & Ladder – Minneapolis, MN

 

And looking forward to 2017, besides the Kris Kristofferson concert I just saw over the weekend I also have tickets for:  Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tesla, Subdudes, Def Leppard/Poison/Tesla, Burton Cummings, Three Dog Night, Neil Diamond, Iron Maiden, Dead & Company, Roger Waters, Billy Joel, and Guns N’ Roses.