When you absolutely positively have to be there THAT night...

I first saw the Radiators in 1984 during my college years in Minneapolis and they have been my favorite band ever since.  Of course there were a few times when I was faced with the choice of seeing the Grateful Dead or the Radiators on a particular night or weekend.  At first I always chose the Grateful Dead because...well...they were the Grateful Dead.  I followed the Dead all around the country for 10 years and my devotion to them was deep and unwavering.  I actually traveled all over the country seeing both bands whenever I could, but the Dead shows were the holy grail for us college-hippies.  After awhile though, especially in the 1990's, I came to realize that the Dead shows were hit and miss on whether or not it would be a good show, but the Rads never failed to deliver...they put on a great show night after night and you were always guaranteed to have an incredible evening of music and fun. 

Eventually I ended up cutting my hair and getting a real job in 1992, and this coincided with me winding down the perpetual touring with the Dead and amped up my ability to see the Radiators even more.  Maybe I was growing up at the same time that I wasn't?  Brent Mydland from the Dead died in 1990, Bill Graham in 1991, and then when Jerry Garcia died in 1995 it sealed the deal...all of my New Years Eves, Halloweens, Easters, Summers, etc. were now devoted entirely to seeing the Radiators.

As it turns out the Radiators were much more accessable than the Grateful Dead and in 1995 I was fortunate enough to meet them through my friend Dirty Dan at a concert in Madison, WI.  I then began to get to know the band on a personal level in addition to just being a huge fan.  Eventually this led to the moment when one day Dave Malone from the band suddenly handed me a Radiators laminate pass.  Holy crap!  I was not sure what it meant exactly, but I felt like I had been given the key to the greatest city in the world and I was ecstatic.  It basically meant that I had access to the backstage areas when the tour manager gave me the nod, but it also made me feel special and somehow part of the band, or more accurately part of the large Radiator family.

The pass proved to have other uses as well.  One time outside the busy House of Blues nightclub in New Orleans I had my laminate on, but with money in hand for a ticket I was suddenly ushered into the venue before I even had a chance to buy the ticket.  I also happened to get into a few festivals with it, and a couple times at the '10,000 Lakes Fest' in Detroit Lakes, MN I got to park in the artists section, camping a stone's throw from the Allman Brother's tour bus one year.  The biggest side-perk I ever realized from the pass though was on the dark and stormy night of April 30th, 1997.

In addition to the Radiators, Dave Malone has a side band called Monkey Ranch.  This is an amazing band with the core consisting of him on guitar/vocals, Reggie Scanlon from the Radiators on bass, and Mean Willie Green from the Neville Brothers on drums.  The rest of the band has been a revolving door of great New Orleans musicians that over the years have included Tommy Malone, Anders Osborne, Theresa Andersson, John Gros, David Torkanowski and others.  It's been a few years, but they used to play once or twice a year, usually for the annual New Orleans Jazz Festival which was the case in 1997. 

My friend Brad Pronger and I were heading down to New Orleans for the 2nd weekend of Jazz Fest to see tons of music, including 4 Radiator concerts and a Monkey Ranch show on our first night there.  I was living in Madison, WI at the time, and Brad and I had a flight down that night on 4/30/97.  It was not direct as we had to make a connecting flight in St. Louis, but we were due to arrive in New Orleans by 7 pm which gave us plenty of time to get to our friend's apartment that we were crashing at, unload our luggage, and then get to the bar called Benny's where Monkey Ranch was starting at 11:11 pm.

Unfortunately it was a rainy, windy afternoon in Madison as Brad and I sat in the terminal waiting and waiting for them to let us board the plane to take off.  It was funny at first as we joked about what if we missed the concert that night...but after awhile it was not so funny when that turned out to be a real possibility as we waited for a couple of hours to get the hell out of town.  Finally we boarded the plane and took off for St. Louis, but of course by the time we landed we had missed our connecting flight to New Orleans.

I was not too worried however.  There is always the 'next flight' right?  So when we got to St. Louis at 7 pm I confidentally walked over to the Customer Service desk and casually told the lady that we needed to get on the next flight to New Orleans.  "There is only 1 more flight out leaving at 8:30 pm...but that is all booked up." she said.  What?!  What about standby, or other airlines??  She tapped away at her computer for awhile and then told me that all the other airline flights were booked as well.  She said that she would put me and Brad on standby with their last flight, but it was overbooked and we would probably not be able to get on.  She then went on to explain that we would most likely be spending the night in St. Louis, but with a big smile said she would get us out first thing in the morning.

I walked away from the desk dazed and confused as I headed over to where Brad was waiting with our carry-on luggage.  This was not happening.  Did she really mean to tell me that we weren't going to New Orleans that night?  It did not seem possible.  I could not wrap my head around the idea and I refused to believe it.  There has got to be another way.  I told Brad our situation and he shrugged his shoulders.  What choice did we have? 

Like the Grinch, I stood there puzzling and puzzling 'till my puzzler was sore, and then I got pissed.  There was no way I could comprehend us missing Monkey Ranch that night.  We were meeting our friend Mitch Manson, his beautiful girlfriend (now wife) Kara and a host of other friends that night at the concert and the idea of us sitting in St. Louis while our friends and the band were all raging down at the bottom end of the river was inconceivable. 

Suddenly I remembered my Radiator laminate.  I was grasping at straws but I was desperate.  I pawed through my bag till I came up with the pass and told Brad to hang tight.  I marched up to the desk, this time with attitude.  I got the same lady, and as I made eye contact with her I slammed the laminate down on the counter and said:  "Look!  I am the drummer in a band called the Radiators.  You have probably heard of us.  That guy over there is my drum tech Brad.  Our band is playing tonight in New Orleans and we have GOT to be there!  I don't care if you have to rent a private plane, a private helicopter, a high-speed turbo limo, or simply get us on this last flight, but if you cannot figure out a way to get us to New Orleans by 11 pm there is going to be hell to pay!"

Her eyes grew huge as she looked down at the laminate, then at me, then at Brad.  Suddenly she started hammering away at her keyboard in ernest with a scared look on her face.  It took a couple of minutes, with her nervously glancing up at me from time to time, but eventually the printer started whirring away and with a sigh of relief she handed me two boarding passes for their last flight out of St. Louis getting us into New Orleans at 10:30pm.  I tried to act cool, but I was freaking out inside...it f*cking worked!

We got to New Orleans without further incident, took a taxi from the airport directly to Benny's, and got there just as the band was starting so we did not miss a note.  We hooked up with Mitch and the gang and had a great night and a great Jazz Fest full of lifelong memories.  Thinking back, I suspect that the airline lady may have had to bump 2 other passengers to get us on that plane and I feel bad about that, but at the time I was just enormously relieved and amazed at the power of the laminate.  The Radiators finally called it quits in June of 2011 after 33 1/3rd years, but they are still my favorite band and an endless source of stories and memories...stay tuned...

P.S.  As I said it was a great night with Monkey Ranch and a great concert in that crazy-cool weird place called Benny's.  I have a soundboard copy of the concert that fits on 3 discs.  If anybody should happen to want a copy of the show, just post a comment with your address below and I will send it out to you.

Costly Pier-party

Okay, do not try this one at home.  In fact, it might be in your best interest to view a lot of these stories as things to 'not-try-at-home'...sort of a public service message.  So about 10 years ago I was living on my own in a 2 bedroom condo on Medicine Lake near Minneapolis, MN.  As was often the case, there was a party that warm summer night down on our large condo-pier in our secluded bay on the lake.  Almost every weekend all of us who had boats on the pier would bring them in for the evening, tie up, and inevitably somebody would start cranking the stereo on their pontoon boat.  Then we would dip into our coolers and pass cold ones around and pretty soon the entire pier was rocking.  We would hang out, show off the fish we had caught that day, flirt with the pretty girls in their bikinis, crank tunes and fish for catfish off the dock late into the night. 

So after this one particularly large, late-night pier-party I woke up the next morning fully clothed and spread-eagled on my back on the floor of my bedroom.  A sharp ray of sunlight was streaming through the window burning a hole into the side of my skull.  My mouth tasted like wallpaper glue.  My everything hurt...and what was that incessant noise?  The TV was on.  I sat up confused, looked around, and saw my wallet laying on the floor next to me.  Then I noticed that the TV was tuned to the Home Shopping Network.  I never watch those stupid shopping channels.  Uh, oh...what did I do?! 

I could not for the life of me remember the end of the night so I was just kind of hoping for the best and pretty much forgot about the whole TV-still-on-the-next-morning thing.  But then of course about two weeks later an incredibly large, heavy box showed up at my house chock FULL of pocket knives...$119.99 worth!  And I guess I must have "Acted now!" or was one of the first 20 callers or something like that, because the next day I got ANOTHER huge, long box loaded with some bonus swords...like decorative medieval dragon swords, I suppose for hanging on the wall or killing dragons.  What the hell?  I don’t even like knives and I have nothing against dragons. 

As I said that was about 10 years ago and I am still to this day giving away knives every year to my poor relatives as Christmas and birthday gifts.  I even keep a detailed list in the box charting who has gotten what.  I have given them to my friends, I have sold some to the kids who lived down the hall, I have even made each member of the Radiators take some home to New Orleans with them...and yet I still have a pile of these damn 'Frost Cutlery' knives taking up space in my closet.  Hey...does anybody need any knives?  We've got The Tracker, we've got The Vulture, The Apache, Delta Ranger, Eagle Eye, Magnum Force, and even a Magnum Force III!  They're all here!  Don't delay!  In fact if you act now, every caller in the next 10 minutes will receive a voucher for a free round of golf with Frank The Tank!  Oh my god don't think, just do it!

Weird Phone Call

A few months ago my favorite band the Radiators were in town for the weekend and I had to call my friend Ted Booker to get the Friday flight arrival info and hotel info as I needed to finalize my plans for the weekend.  So I call Ted from my work phone, holding the phone up to my right ear.  I am sitting there waiting for the call to go through when suddenly my cell phone on my desk in front of me starts ringing.  I am a little annoyed at the bad timing of this intrusion, but my call to Ted was still ringing so I dutifully picked up the cell with my left hand and put it to my left ear.  “Hello?  Hello?  Who is this?” 

Nobody is answering, and for some strange reason I can totally hear myself loud and clear in my right ear.  What the hell?  Then I think to look at the caller ID on my cell phone and it was the general phone number from work.  Huh?  Why is somebody from my office calling me on my cell phone??

Oh cripes...suddenly I realized that I had accidentally called my cell phone number instead of Ted’s cell phone.  So…the right side of my head was talking to the left side of my head…very weird.  I abruptly hung up on myself and took a quick glance around the office to see if anyone had seen me talking to myself.  Nope, all good!   

Air Mishap #3

Have you ever had that sudden insanely strong feeling that you were going to die?  That huge instant rush where every single muscle in your body tenses and your adrenaline goes from zero to a million in less than a second as your body physically prepares for death?  That has happened to me twice.

The first time was in the panhandle of Florida one hot summer day in the late 1980’s.  I was laying on the beach with my girlfriend Lona next to me and a quarter on each eye.  For some reason I did not have my shades with me but I did happen to have some quarters so I put one on each eye to help block out the sun rays.  We were laying there on a very desolate stretch of beach peacefully listening to the waves gently lapping on the shore.  I was thinking about how these damn quarters were getting pretty hot though when suddenly I was sure the world was ending as this impossibly loud noise was instantly upon us, surrounding us, inside of us, part of us...I bolted straight up, quarters flying, opened my eyes and my entire world was filled with helicopter!

There was a huge green army helicopter about 20 feet above us and going at least a 100 mph.  My first thought was that it was crashing into us, but in that split second that they were above us I caught a glimpse of the pilot and a passenger looking out the window and they were both laughing!  It was just an army copter cruising along the beach and they must have spotted us and decided to buzz us.  And just as fast as my world went from calm and peaceful to certain death, they were gone…down the beach and out of sight, probably looking for more people to freak out.  It took several minutes for my heartbeat to get back down from 300 to 72 and then I was pissed.  Ah well…a good joke I suppose, but I would still like to punch that pilot in the mouth.

The only other time I had that kind of an instant death-rush was a few years later on a clear sunny day when I was flying solo in a two-seat Cessna 152.  I was practicing touch-and-goes at a small, non-tower airport east of Madison, WI.  A 'touch-and-go' is where you power down, make the landing, and instead of coming to a complete stop you power up again as soon as you are safely on the runway and take off again…then you circle around and do it again.  When you are in the flying space of any airport you are required to turn your airplane's radio on to a certain frequency.  Every airport has their own frequency, so when you enter an airport’s airspace (which is anywhere from a 5 to 30 mile radius depending on the size of the airport) you turn your plane’s radio to that airport’s frequency.  Then with a tower airport they tell you where to go, but with a non-tower airport you have to take it upon yourself to announce your presence and your intentions and movements to anyone in the area on that frequency.  At the same time, you are listening to other pilots so you know where everyone is and you can avoid any mid-air collisions.

So on this particular day I am doing touch-and-goes and announcing my position over the radio at every turn.  I had just landed, took off, was climbing back up to 2,000 feet and just finishing my left-hand turn into the downwind leg of the next touch-and-go when all of a sudden BLAMMO!  To my immediate back-left is another freakin’ airplane coming right at me!  (The picture above is about what I was seeing.)  It's a low-wing 4-seat Beechcraft and we are just about to hit each other.  I am on the left side of my plane, and the passenger on the right side of that plane locked eyes with me for a split second and we both thought we were dead.  He was so close I could see the map in his lap, the yellow #2 pencil in his hand, another map on the dashboard, and various items in the plane like a cup of coffee and another pair of headphones.  There was nothing but airplane in my vision, and then just as fast as he was there the plane slid right underneath my plane and he was gone…off to my right now and making a beeline out of there.

Again, every single nerve in my entire body had tensed up as I braced for the crash and my heart had leapt up into my mouth while my heartbeat had accelerated to pounding levels.  I opened my eyes and suddenly realized I was alive.  Relief quickly turned to anger though and as soon as I was able to breathe again and my body had calmed down to a level that allowed my to talk, I got on the radio and started screaming at the guy, “What the f*ck are you doing!!”  He had never announced his presence and I never had a clue he was there until he almost hit me.  He never responded however so he either did not have his radio on the correct frequency or he was too embarrassed to talk.

It was exciting and quite a rush, but I would still like to punch that pilot in the mouth as an in-air near-miss is something I would never like to repeat again.

The Who - Now and Then

For anybody that knows me, you know that music is huge in my life.  I mean, it is right up there with food-and-air important.  Growing up as a kid from as early as I can remember there was always music in our house cranking on my dad’s stereo, and I was always planted right in front of a speaker listening intently and memorizing all of the words.  Until I got into college and was introduced to the Grateful Dead and the Radiators, music had 4 levels for me.  Way way alone up at the top level was the Beatles….stand on your tippy-toes and reach as high as you can and that is where the Beatles were at.  Then below that down on Earth the 2^nd level was Pink Floyd, again on a level all their own as there is no band like them then or now, and they were about head high.  Then just below that in the 3^rd level at shoulder height were the ‘Big Three’…the super-groups…Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and the Who.  Then way below that the 4^th level starts from about the waist down and that was all of the other bands in the world mucking about together.

Well a couple of nights ago me and my buddy Frank ‘The Tank’ Hoffman went and saw one of the ‘Big Three’…Roger Daltrey from the Who at the Target Center in Minneapolis, MN.  The arena was cut in half making it extremely intimate and I don’t think there was a bad seat in the house.  We had two okay $38 seats in the back of the arena, but by a lucky quirk we ended up with six $125 seats all to ourselves in the 8^th row dead center on the floor in front of Roger!  I have been to a lot of concerts with Frank, but this was right up there with one of the coolest things ever.  It was an amazing show that had me mesmerized and goosebumped the entire show and left me so thankful that I got to see one of my musical heroes still performing at any level, much less at an exceptional level. 

He opened with the ‘Tommy’ album performed in it’s entirety, and it was perfect.  His band was energetic and right on the money, and Pete Townshend’s younger brother Simon on guitar/vocals was incredible.  It was eerie watching him on stage as he channeled his brother almost to a spooky level.  Minus Pete’s signature bloody-fingered windmill guitar strumming, the rest was there as Simon had all of his brother's jumps, motions, upside-down smile, nods, and grins that must run in the family.  He also sang all of Pete’s vocal parts and if you closed your eyes you’d swear it was Pete up there. 

After an hour of ‘Tommy’, Roger talked for a bit and then broke into over an hour of sweet classic and not-so-classic Who songs, a couple of his solo tunes, and a nice long medley of Johnny Cash songs.  He peppered the songs with stories in between of his childhood, his Who bandmates, his health, and he made it an intimate feel-good mood in the arena.  And for the doubters out there thinking this was just a Who cover-band…this was a kickass rocking band that had me smiling, clapping, dancing, jumping up and down and yelling for more.  Frank even managed to stay awake for the entire show despite the pre-show martini’s and Jameson’s and beers we had enjoyed.  I thought we were going to lose him about 2 hours into the 2 ½ hour show when Frank sat down in his chair while the rest of us were standing and screaming, but it was just a brief rest and then he stood back up.  It was a great concert that left me smiling and loving life and I recommend Daltrey to anybody lucky enough to have him coming to your town.

As I was driving home humming ‘The Kids Are Alright’ and thinking about what I had just seen, I started reminiscing about the one and only other time I had seen Roger Daltrey, 29 years earlier.  It was with The Who, December 7^th, 1982 in Milwaukee, WI.  It was supposedly their ‘Farewell Tour’ and the hype was HUGE.  Everybody was talking about it and it was the concert tour of the century.  Of course they have regrouped countless times since then, but it was awesome and unique at the time.  At first they were not even going to come to Milwaukee, but they had an open night right between their shows in St. Louis and Chicago so the city lobbied hard to get them to come to Milwaukee.  Nothing.  Then our DJ ‘Tim The Rock and Roll Animal’ from 93QFM radio literally went out on a ledge to get The Who to come to Milwaukee.  He ate, slept, and broadcast his show from up on the ledge of the radio station in downtown Milwaukee for like 19 days or so until the Who finally agreed to come.  The city went nuts.

Tickets were going to be impossible to get though.  The old Milwaukee Mecca arena only held 12,000 people, so they held a lottery run by the Milwaukee Journal newspaper where you could submit your name for the chance to buy 2 tickets.  They got over 90,000 entries.  I entered and won the right to buy a pair, but tickets were $17 apiece…double what normal concert tickets cost in those days.  I was only in 11^th grade and certainly didn’t have that kind of loot.  Luckily my mom stepped up and bought them for me, god bless her. 

Next it was time to pick a lucky companion.  I knew this girl Cindy Burelli from French class…she was totally hot.  I had been flirting with her all that fall and we got friendly, but not ‘lets go out’ friendly.  I can still picture her long wavy perfectly feathered reddish-brown hair…her tight blue jeans and tight tee-shirt accentuating both her perfect ass and exquisite chest…her badass jean jacket…and her cool black suede G.A.S.S. shoes.  I desperately wanted to kiss those lips and run my fingers through her beautiful hair.  I had to have her.  So when I got the tickets I pulled out the big guns and casually let her know that I scored a pair of Who tickets and did not have anyone picked out yet to go with.  Her attitude immediately went from ‘just friends’ to ‘Omg-Sneaks-is-the-greatest-thing-since-the-dawn-of-time’, and she strongly hinted that the lucky knight in shining armor who took her to the Who concert would get huge dividends in return.  It’s a date I proclaimed!  I was so psyched…me, Sneaky Sweets, with freaking Who tickets in hand and taking one of the hottest chicks in 11^th grade!  I was a damn hero…if not in anyone else’s mind, certainly my own.

So the night of the show I went to her house, picked her up, went to meet some other friends and then we were off for the show.  The concert was amazing and the two of us had fairly good seats in the lower deck, but as we were standing there I tried to hold her hand a couple of times and was thwarted each time as she didn’t take my hand and sort of brushed it aside.  I was puzzled at first and then full of doubt.  For the first time in the couple of months leading up to this night, the thought suddenly crept into my head that maybe I had been had.  Was this chick just using me for my tickets?  No!  Really?!  But then that question was answered definitively about two-thirds of the way through the show when she started talking to this tall, long-haired, good looking dude next to her wearing cowboy boots who was probably 10 years older than us.  Over the music I overheard him ask her if I was her boyfriend.  “No no!” she said smiling up at him, “We’re just friends".  I was crushed.

For the rest of the night I decided to try and make the most of it and just enjoy the music, but for a 16 year old kid it was tough watching my ‘date’ flirt with this creepy old douchebag.  I did my best to ignore them though and it was still one of the best concerts I have ever seen.  There were two lessons I learned from all of this:  1) Girls can be pretty damn sneaky, so watch out for them and learn from your mistakes; and 2) Go see your musical heros whenever/wherever you can before one of you are dead.  No matter what it costs, in twenty years you will not miss the money but you will certainly remember that night.