Well as the title suggests, we will start off with the ‘good’. Early last Spring the four remaining living members of the Grateful Dead announced they were going to do three final farewell shows in Chicago on July 3rd, 4th and 5th of 2015 at Soldier Field. This seemed fitting as it was the site for the final shows the Dead did in 1995 before Jerry Garcia died a month later. I had been at those two final shows in ’95, and I decided I had to see at least one of the three final ever Dead shows. With Saturday being the 4th of July to spend with the family and Sunday the 5th being my wife Nadia’s birthday, that only left me with Friday the 3rd.
We were going to be in
Wisconsin anyways that Thursday through Sunday at Nadia’s brothers cabin in the
Wisconsin Dells, so my plan was to drive the 3.5 hours on Friday down from the
cabin to Chicago, and then drive back late after the show. But after
months of looking I could not for the life of me find a reasonable
ticket. I was not going to spend hundreds of dollars to sit behind the
stage, so I decided not to go. But then my buddy Travelin’ Dave from
Milwaukee told me he flew out to San Francisco for the two Dead shows the
weekend before and there were tons of tickets available all over the
parking lot. Okay, that’s good news, so I decided to go to Chicago
without a ticket and find one in the lot.
As I was pulling into the B&B where Travelin’ was staying with his
girlfriend, out of the blue my friend Dave Thompson called me up from Virginia
and asked if I was in Chicago and if I needed a ticket. He knew a guy in
Chicago with an extra. $215 face value. Yes I said! More than
I wanted to pay (I only had $260 in cash), but at least I would be in to the
show. Then he texted me and said it was free! What?! So I
figured the guy with the extra ticket was rich and was just being really
cool. After many anxious texts and failed phone calls and voicemails with
his friend, I finally managed to find the guy out in the lot only an hour
before show time. And thank god because there were NO extra tickets to be
found. I would have been shut out. I only saw one guy
selling tickets in the lot and he looked like a criminal. And right after
I saw him I ran into a friend from Minneapolis who was incredibly bummed out
because he had just spent a ton of money on two tickets from somebody in the
lot and the tickets were fake. He got turned away at the door.
So I finally find Thompson’s guy with an hour to spare and he hands me
the ticket and a beer and said the ticket was on Thompson! Dave…you are so f*cking cool. It was a
great seat, next to a hot 24-year old chick who was there with her dad. They were both totally cool and we talked and
shared Dead stories. The show was a blast and surpassed all of my
expectations. I warmed up to Trey Anastasio
after a bit, and then started to really enjoy his guitar. I was never a
Phish fan and only have been to one half of one Phish show so I know nothing
about Trey, but he was good. The 1st set was well done and the
energy of the 70,000 people was a living, contagious entity. It was starting to feel a little like old
times.
‘Mason’s Children’ to open the 2nd
set was the second of four songs I had never heard the real Dead play
(Passenger, Mason’s Children, New Potato Caboose and Ripple). The
‘Scarlet/Fire’ that came next was crowd-pleasingly awesome. That
eventually led into ‘Drums’ which was fun to watch as they broadcast it up
close on the insanely massive screen behind us, but it was a bit weird as
everyone turned their backs to the stage to watch the screen. The jam after ‘Playin In The Band’ was
incredibly long and rather pointless since they had just got done with a long
‘Drums/Space’. It was basically all seven
guys making uncoordinated noise for way too long, and after awhile I really
missed Jerry who would have guided that mess into something cool. I said
to the hot chick “What the hell are they doing?” and this being her first Dead
show she had no idea what they were doing. Finally Bob steered it into
‘Let It Grow’ which was cool, and then a sweet ‘Help/Slip/Franklins’ to end the
set. Then the ‘Ripple’ encore to end the show was total goosebumps, with
Bobby singing and playing acoustic guitar.
It was a good concert, but it could never touch that good ol’ Grateful-Jerry feeling you got when Jerry was on
stage taking care of our souls. It did
reaffirm my love of the Grateful Dead’s music however, the soundtrack to much
of my life. I had a few goosebump moments (during ‘The Music Never
Stopped’, and of course ‘Ripple’). I had no illusions that I was seeing a
Grateful Dead show when really I was just seeing the best Dead cover
band of all time…but the music was good and it was a great night. If
those same seven guys ever toured I would go see them (but not for $215).
I have my commemorative ticket, as well as the stuff they handed you at the
door which was a rose, a backstage-pass type of thing and a program. And
since I had some extra money thanks to Dave I also scored a signed/numbered
7/3/15 poster (#987/1000) which I have framed along with the ticket and
pass. It was a good time and I had a
blast and I owe it all to Thompson. I am almost glad I did not go to the
final show on Sunday as I am sure there were a lot of tears. I listened
to it on Sirius radio in my car and I was tearing up throughout the show. I was very nostalgic, thinking back on the
exactly 100 times I had seen them in the past and all the good
times/friends/travels/memories/loves the Grateful Dead had brought me. Overall, it was a ‘good’ experience and I
will go see these guys play again in whatever configuration they come up
with.
Now we go back a couple weeks to the ‘bad’. With two small kids Nadia and I only get out with
each other a few times a year, so we have to pick and choose our nights
carefully. We had not gone out since the
previous fall so when I saw Gordon Lightfoot tickets go on sale a few months
ago I asked Nadia if she was up for that.
It was on Saturday, 6/20/15, just a day before our 7-year
anniversary. She was not a big fan, but
I had grown up listening to his records and still love everything on the
‘Sundown’ album so I talked her into it.
I scored a pair of great 15th row aisle seats dead center on
the floor of the State Theatre in Minneapolis.
I had never seen him but always wanted to, so I was super excited.
When we got inside I ordered
a double-scotch for me and a bag of Skittles for Nadia. $23 with the tip. Okay, it would be a one-drink night. No problem.
We settled in to our kickass seats and right on time at 8pm the band
strolled on stage and started playing.
Soon a little old man shuffled slowly up to the center mic with a guitar
and started playing and ‘singing’.
What? Was that possibly Gordon?
It did not look like the guy that was on any of the album covers I had
ever seen. This was just a little old
guy with long, greasy, slicked-back hair.
And the voice. Ouch. It was inaudible, barely above an old-man
whisper. Was this for real? A quick check of my cell phone revealed he
was born in 1938. Holy crap he was going
on 77 years old!
That sort of explained the
insanely bad vocals, but it did not explain why he still thinks he should be
touring. I looked over at Nadia who was
gamely pretending to be enjoying herself.
I shook my head and put her at ease by telling her that this was
horrible. She looked relieved, like she
thought that I thought that this was good.
I kept hoping maybe he would clear his throat and his voice would come
back, or he just needed a couple songs to warm up. But no…his voice remained consistently
painfully embarrassingly non-existent throughout the entire concert. After 45 minutes he took a much needed
set-break. 15 minutes later he shuffled
back on stage and continued the torture for another 45 minutes.
His band was good, but his voice was just
awful. I knew every word to almost every
song, but I could barely recognize the songs.
I love Gordon Lightfoot and his music, but the ancient man who was
croaking out my favorite songs bore no resemblance to the man who first sang
them. It was by far the worst concert I
have ever paid any money for. This was
not an isolated incident for him because I have since read similar reviews of
his shows around the country. I feel bad
for him, but I just hope somebody he will listen to will tell him that he has
to stop touring and retire. It was a
‘bad’ performance and nobody should ever pay money to see him again.
Now
we go back another couple weeks to the freaking ‘awesome’. Last spring
mysterious billboards started popping up in certain cities around the country
with the familiar Rolling Stone tongue logo and a saying next to it like ‘Start
Me Up’ or ‘You Get What You Need’.
Minneapolis was one of those cities and I was overjoyed. I had only seen the Stones twice before, and
for various reasons I had not seen them since 1997. The show was announced to be at TCF Bank
Stadium on Tuesday, 6/3/15 and I scored a fairly good seat for $150. I marked my calendar and eagerly awaited the
return of the greatest rock and roll band of all time.
The
day of the concert it was raining so I brought a raincoat and parked a mile
away near my old apartment in Dinkytown to avoid traffic and paying for
parking. I had my bike in the back of
the car and rode in the misty rain to the stadium and locked my bike to a rack
against the stadium. I was wearing my 50th
Anniversary Stones shirt (thanks Penny!) and my ‘Stones/Sesame Street/Some
Girls’ boxer shorts and I was ready to rock!
Grace Potter opened and she was great.
The first time I had seen her was a few years ago in a half-full bar
called the Cabooze, and now she was opening for the Stones in a football
stadium. I talked to her at the Cabooze
and she signed a couple of her cd’s for me as my buddy Mitch and I went
backstage to smoke up her band. Extremely
nice guys, and Grace is as cool as she is hot so I was happy to see her making
it big-time. She did a great set and the
mist had ended by the time her set did and the skies cleared up.
My
purchased seat was in the upper level on the side of the stage but I never went
up there. Instead I found a 5th
row aisle seat directly below on the lower level right out in front of the
stage. I sat there for Grace, and then
had to move back to the 7th row for the Stones. For some strange reason I had 10 seats all to
myself in an expensive section close to the stage. Through the next couple of hours they slowly
filled in with a few people, but I managed to have the two seats on the aisle all
to myself for the entire show. That is
one of the perks of going to a concert by myself…I usually manage to find a
great seat close to the stage.
The
excitement and tension was building until the lights finally went down and out
came the Rolling f*cking Stones with ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ and it was on. It was a massive stage of course and they
continued to assault us with classics like ‘It’s Only Rock n Roll’ and rarities
like ‘Bitch’ for over two hours. Mick
Jagger was all of 71 years old, but he sang and acted like he was in his
20’s. His voice was perfect and he is
obviously in great shape as he danced and pranced the entire concert. Compared to Gordon Lightfoot who is only 5
years older, Mick is a god. Gordon can
barely walk or talk whereas Mick hardly ever stops moving. The stage was as wide as a football field and
there was a walkway out from the stage out to the middle of the field. Mick left no part of the stage or the walkway
untouched as he continuously ran all over, making as many people as possible
feel as if they were in the front row.
Keith Richards, Ron Wood and the rest of the band rocked, but Mick was
clearly the life of the party.
One
of the highlights was when Mick slowed down for a bit, donned an acoustic
guitar and went into ‘Moonlight Mile’…so beautiful. Later Grace Potter was invited onstage to
sing a powerful ‘Gimme Shelter’ with Mick and she nailed it, and she even
inadvertently flashed us her boobs a few times which was nice. Two songs later things got eerily intense
when the familiar bongos started the intro to ‘Sympathy For The Devil’. Smoke and flames licked up from the stage and
massive screens while Mick slowly emerged from hell wearing a devilish black
and red outfit. The encore started with
a wonderful ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ complete with a huge local
choir split in half on either side of the stage, and ended fittingly with
‘Satisfaction’ and fireworks.
The great seats were a big part of it, but god what a crazy ‘awesome’ concert. Expectations tend to get lower the older your heroes get, but the Rolling Stones erased any doubt that they are still a viable touring band with an incredible performance that blew me away. I will never not see them if they ever come around again. Check out the Stone’s 6/3/15 set list:
The great seats were a big part of it, but god what a crazy ‘awesome’ concert. Expectations tend to get lower the older your heroes get, but the Rolling Stones erased any doubt that they are still a viable touring band with an incredible performance that blew me away. I will never not see them if they ever come around again. Check out the Stone’s 6/3/15 set list:
1)
Jumping Jack Flash
2)
It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)
3)
All Down The Line
4)
Tumbling Dice
5)
Doom And Gloom
6)
Bitch
7)
Moonlight Mile
8)
Out Of Control
9)
Honky Tonk Women
10) Before
They Make Me Run
11) Happy
12) Midnight
Rambler
13) Miss You
14) Gimme
Shelter
15) Start Me
Up
16) Sympathy
For The Devil
17) Brown
Sugar
Encore
18) You
Can’t Always Get What You Want
19) (I Can’t
Get No) Satisfaction
