New Orleans Jazz Fest 1995

It all began for us on Tuesday, May 2^nd, 1995.  Mitch, Arnie and I planned to drive to New Orleans for the 1995 Jazz Fest.  We were huge fans of the New Orleans Radiators, who would be playing almost every night in some capacity while we were down there.  But we are also huge music fans…and if you are a fan of music then a trip to Jazz Fest is a must.

 

Mitch and I were living in Madison, WI at the time and Arnie lived in Minneapolis.  Arnie drove down to Madison on that Tuesday and then we all jumped into Mick’s new green Honda Civic for the trip down to the Big Easy.  It is about a 1,000 mile drive from Madison to New Orleans and we took off Tuesday night.  I had recently been busted for a DWI and did not have a license so my driving was limited.  They let me drive a few times, but only when we were in the middle of nowhere like southern Illinois or Mississippi.  Instead of driving I was the navigator and before long Mitch had nicknamed me ‘Maps’.

 

We arrived in New Orleans on Wednesday afternoon and headed to our friend Kathy’s place where she lived with her daughter Karamia.  I had stayed there before and Kathy is a sweet person and an awesome host.  She never hesitated to let 5 or 10 of us crash in her various rooms or floor space and there was always room for one more.  Arnie and I had actually met there a couple years earlier when we were in New Orleans to see the Radiators for New Year’s Eve.

 

Wednesday night we went out to the Muddy Waters bar on Oak Street in the Carrollton District to see a blues show (possibly Kenny Neal and Tinsley Ellis).  It is impossible to remember which nights we ended up where for the after-party or remember all the crazy details (all the New Orleans memories over the years start to blend together), but at least one night we ended up at Snake ‘n Jakes, at least one night at the Maple Leaf, and one night we just sat on Kathy’s front porch drinking till dawn while our friend Tommy The Freak tried to kick his shoes onto Kathy’s roof.

 

Thursday was the first of a 4-day weekend going to the New Orleans racetrack every day for the Fest.  For those of you who do not know about it, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is an enormous annual festival held the last weekend in April (Fri/Sat/Sun) and the first weekend in May (Thu/Fri/Sat/Sun) from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day.  There are at least a dozen stages, hundreds of bands and countless awesome local food stands.  The music is mostly local New Orleans bands but includes bigger national acts as well.  So there was Fest during the day, and then there were shows at the seemingly infinite bars and clubs around town where all the bands would play at night.  In addition to that, the various record stores would have in-store appearances by bands as well.

 

Here was a typical 24 hours in New Orleans during Jazz Fest:  wake up at 11 am and head to the fairgrounds where you would eat, drink and watch music until 7 pm.  Then head to wherever ‘home’ was and nap for 3 hours.  Get up at 10 pm and head out to whatever night show you were seeing, oftentimes the Radiators at Tipitinas that started at approximately 11:11 pm.  Watch that concert till 2 or 3 am and then head to the after-party until 6 am.  Go home, sleep until 11 am and then start over.  I had started going to the 2^nd weekend of Fest a year or two before and continue going to this day, although not every year anymore due to my married-with-children status, and never for a week…usually just a couple nights.

 

On Thursday the three of us got to the fairgrounds and I would be lying to you if I said I remembered what exactly what we saw, but looking at the lineup that day I imagine it included some or all of the following bands or acts:  James Taylor, Kenny Neal, Nocentelli w/special guest Zigaboo Modeliste, Charles Neville & Diversity, and Walter Payton.  I bought a 1995 Jazz Fest tee-shirt for $10, but upon hindsight I wish I had bought the 1995 Jazz Fest poster with Louis Armstrong on it.  The unsigned edition originally sold for $45.  My tee-shirt is long gone, but that poster now sells for $1,770 if you can find it.

 

We got back to Kathy’s around 7 p.m. and that is when shit started to get crazy.  A couple years earlier Mitch and I had immediately bonded when we met and became best friends, and this night would go down as one of the cornerstones in our relationship.  Mitch had brought down 3 sugar cubes laced with acid that he got from his buddy Donnie in Madison.  The Radiators were playing that night at Tipitinas and we were excited to dose and see our favorite band at the coolest bar in the country.

 

Arnie was hungry and wanted to go out and grub first with Kathy and a pack of Canadians that were also staying at the house.  I wanted to take a shower before heading out, but Mitch was anxious to get going as soon as possible.  We made a deal and decided to try an experiment…Mitch would take his acid hit right away…I would take a shower and then take my hit exactly one hour after Mitch…and Arnie would go out to eat and then take his hit exactly one hour after me.  We would all be on the same acid but one hour apart so that we could take mental notes…compare and contrast our trips.

 

Mitch ate his sugar cube, cracked a beer and hung out on the porch while I went in to get ready for the night.  I came out an hour later and Mick was already becoming a giggling puddle.  He had dropped his beer on the concrete porch and was unsure what to do next.  He was slowly pacing around, staring at the broken glass and the widening pool of beer.  He kept staring at it, worried and hesitating but giggling.  His complete inability to figure out how to proceed in this situation was hilarious but I decided to help him out anyways.  After sweeping up the glass and beer I ate my sugar cube to try and catch up to Mitch.  He kept looking around, staring at stuff…asking me if I saw what he saw.  No, not  yet…I was only 3 minutes into the trip.  Judging by Mitch’s extreme goofiness I realized this was high-powered acid and I was nervously excited.

 

After a while Mitch and I got in his car to head to Tipitinas.  Arnie was still out and he would meet us down there later.  Before we could go to Tips though, Freak asked us to give him and a guy named Hal a ride to Jimmy’s Music Club to see the Funky Meters.  Hal was a friend  of Freak’s from California who carried an 8-string proto-type guitar/bass thing around with him everywhere he went…the entire week…he never left home without the big silly thing.  We had met him earlier in the day at Fest and he quickly proved to be slightly amusing, but somewhat of a pain in the ass.  He was convinced that if he carried that weird guitar with him long enough somebody would eventually invite him onstage to play with them.  As far as I know that never happened.  Mitch quickly nick-named him the ‘Octoprotozoid’.

 

Mitch was now two hours into the trip and probably should not have been driving, but I did not have a license so I took my usual spot in the shotgun seat with map in hand.  I was an hour into the trip, right where Mitch had been an hour ago on the porch…unsure of myself, giggling, nervous, the acid beginning to kick in strong.  With Freak giving directions in the backseat and me trying my best to follow our progress on the map, we wound all around town while Mitch and I laughed uncontrollably in the front seat getting higher by the second.

 

At one point, through tears of laughter, Mitch pointed through the windshield and asked:  “What do all those lights look like to you?”  Mitch was expecting me to give the usual trippy response and confirm what he was seeing…that everything was melting and full of trails.  I paused for awhile, staring nervously out into the great melting sea of lights, sound, people, cars and trails…unsure about Mitch’s driving, my directions, our ability to function in the world, unsure about anything and finally I answered with:  “Cops.”  We turned our heads towards each other and burst out into an enormous round of fresh laughter and tears.  When we had calmed down for a second we looked in the back seat.  Freak and Octoprotozoid were sitting there with terrified looks on their faces, hands against the front seat bracing for an impending crash, wondering if they should get the hell out of the car immediately while they were still alive.

 

Eventually Mitch and I succeeded in dropping them off safely though and we made our way to Tipitinas.  The Radiators were amazing that night, more awesome than usual with the acid turning the place into a giant steaming pot of human flesh and sweat and laughter as the music became a living entity, a river of sound carrying us on our journey.  I remember at one point we were upstairs looking down at the sea of dancing bodies and Mitch had a huge grin on his face, eyes half-closed.  It was at this point that he “figured it out that night”…that we were all the bucket of fish, which is a central theme in Radiators music and the title of an album they had just released 6 months earlier.  When we got home Mitch got a tattoo of a giant fish rising up on his calf to commemorate this night and this trip.

 

Time had become a hard concept to follow, but at set-break we went outside to see if we could find Arnie and see where he was in his trip.  There was poor Arnie…tripping his gourd off just like us and looking a little worried.  It was really strong acid.  Mitch remarked that we could go backstage if we wanted…that Reggie had invited him.  Arnie’s eyes got really big for second, and then he said matter-of-factly:  “I’m not going back there.”  We all agreed…the three of us we in NO shape to go backstage and try and be somewhat normal, civil adults and carry on adult conversations.  I had tried that once in San Francisco at a New Year’s Eve show while tripping on mushrooms.  When I got introduced to one of the band member’s wife, she had a giant bush growing out of her hair that confused me greatly.  I had to get out of there as soon as possible.

 

After very little sleep we got up the next day and headed back to the Fairgrounds.  Again, I cannot tell you exactly what we saw, but based on the list of bands these are some of the acts that we probably saw over the next 3 days at Jazz Fest:  Buckwheat Zydeco, Al Green, Funky Meters, Koko Taylor, Ernie K-Doe w/Jessie Hill, Rebirth Brass Band, Kermit Ruffins & the Barbecue Swingers, Wild Magnolias, Joni Mitchell, Little Feat, Subdudes, Dixie Cups, Charmaine Neville & Friends, Ivan Neville, Walter "Wolfman" Washington & the Roadmasters, B.B. King, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Anders Osborne…and of course, as always, the Radiators to close out the Fest on Sunday evening.

 

It was a monumental blast being in music-lovers heaven all week, but it was time to wrap it up with one last show Sunday night, May 7^th, before heading back home Monday morning.  After the Radiators finished their Fest-closing set we went back to Kathy’s and then out to the House of Blues in the French Quarter to see Los Lobos.  It was a great show but we were all incredibly tired…and sore.  The one thing about a week of Jazz Fest is the enormous amount of walking and dancing your feet have to endure…many, many miles and hours on our feet.  Mitch wore his black Rolling Stones hi-tops the entire week and by the time we got out of the Lobos show he simply could not walk anymore.  He tried at first, but with every step he let out an “Ow.”  Step “Ow”, step “Ow”, step “Ow”.  He gave up and Arnie and I literally had to carry him the several blocks from the bar to his car.

 

After a few hours of sleep Mitch and I got up very early to leave for home.  It was still dark and we had to get out of there before the giant rain storm that was just beginning to come down turned into a flood.  That historic storm later came to be known as the ‘May 1995 Louisiana Flood’, dumping 24 inches of rain, causing 6 fatalities and over $3.1 billion dollars in damage.  As the rain came down Mitch and I packed with a sense of urgency.  Suddenly, we looked at each other and said:  “Where’s Arnie?”  He was not in his room, the bathroom, kitchen…nowhere to be found and we had to leave.  We searched the whole house and eventually came upon Kathy’s door…was he in there??  We slowly opened the door and sure enough, there was Arnie laying there with a big grin on his face.  We told him to get up, the ark is leaving town.

 

We got out of there just in time, as the rain pounded New Orleans and the surrounding areas.  There has never been a comparable recorded flood in New Orleans history caused by rain alone.  As we raced north ahead of the worst of the storm, we wondered about our hostess with the mostess.  We found out later that the flood waters went all the way up to the top step of Kathy’s porch but did not get into her house.  It was a fantastic week of music and friends…typical for a New Orleans Jazz Fest and one that would be imitated year after year, but never repeated…this one was special.

Pain In The Neck

Yesterday I had my very first steroid injection to help relieve the neck pain that has persisted for the last year and a half.  That is how long the pain has been bad to the point where I can't look up and/or to the right without excruciating pain.  My neck has been bad however since a snowtubing accident 30 years ago.  One night my girlfriend Lona and I were walking through the neighborhood and noticed some kids tubing down a large hill a couple of blocks from her parent's house.  I asked one of the kids if I could try and he handed me his tube.  With beer in hand, I sat down on the tube cross-legged and gave myself a push down the long steep hill.  "Whooo hooo!" I shouted as I picked up speed.  Suddenly I was in mid-air, upside-down, going backwards, but still seated cross-legged on the large tube with beer in hand.  I never saw it, but I had hit a fairly large jump that the kids skillfully made at the bottom of the hill which had launched me airborne and rotated me 180 degrees.  Blammm!!!  I saw lightning as the back of my head hit the ground first and jammed my chin down into my chest.  I think I blacked out for a second and when I came to my neck swelled up huge, I couldn't move it for days and I have had a bad neck ever since.

After years of chiropractors and an attempt at physical therapy last year to try and alleviate the ever worsening pain and headaches, I decided to find out what is really going on up there.  My general doctor sent me to get an MRI...moderate to severe degeneration in the C4/C5/C6 area.  He then referred me to a neurosurgeon to see if I needed surgery.  I waited nervously for the doctor to come in...a little anxious about possible neck surgery but excited that I may finally be able to do something to get rid of my pain.   When the doctor came in she made it apparent right away that I was not a candidate yet for surgery and thus I was nothing but a damn nuisance to her...her day was not going to get any better until I was out of her sight.  She quickly went over my MRI, showed me where the bone spurs were and which nerves are being pinched, and then did her best to get me the f*ck out of her office.  "Do I have to spend the rest of my life with this incredible pain?"  I asked.  "I don't know, but surgery is not an option for you right now."  Almost on hindsight as she was fleeing from the room she grabbed a brochure on pain clinics from a file cabinet and shoved it in my hand.  Basically it was just:  Leave!  And don't come back until you have massive tingling in your arms and/or legs!

I walked out sadly in a daze.  I went back to work, looked up the clinic in the brochure but they were not in my insurance network.  I found another pain clinic and made an appointment with them.  They offered a variety of pain-solutions that did not include surgery, but their big seller seemed to be CT Scan guided steroid injections into the spine which is what they recommended to me.  Fine, lets go for it.  So I made a 7 am appointment for a couple weeks later.  I got there at 6:55 am, waited nervously for 15 minutes before they told me I was supposed to be in the other office down the hall.  Okay.  I waited another 30 minutes on the group W bench while filling out various forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there.

Eventually a nurse called me back, took my vitals, and asked if I wanted an IV with general anesthesia or just local.  While I have great affection for general anesthesia I did not have a driver so I had to opt for the local.  Then she asked me if I wanted nitrous oxide during the procedure.  "Excuse me?"  I asked, surprised.  She told me they use nitrous if you want and then asked if I have ever had it.  I enthusiastically told her "Yes!" … that I'd had it at the dentist, as well as out in the parking lot at numerous Grateful Dead concerts.  She looked at me strangely trying to decide if she had heard me right, and then she nodded and gave me one of those fake laughs you give when someone tells you a joke that you don't understand but you laugh anyways pretending that you understand so that you don't look stupid.

Awkward, but we moved on and I was no longer nervous...I was excited about the nitrous and sure I could handle anything with that fun little aid.  Next the doctor came in for 20 seconds and asked me where my neck hurt.  I pointed to the back right area of my neck, he made a little 'X' where I pointed to and walked out.  Really?  That's it?  Did he even look at my MRI?  Was he just going by what I said??  Is this guy a quack?  I thought this was an exact science, not some pin the tale on the donkey while blindfolded game!  They said it might not work the first time, or ever...well of course not if you're just gonna start jabbing drugs into the spine wherever the patient points to!

I was nervous again as they brought me into the surgery-like room and had me lay face down on the table with a hole on one end for my face.  They gave me the nitrous tube to fit over my nose and I greedily took huge hits while waiting for Dr. Douchebag to start stabbing me.  They told me they had the nitrous on strong, and asked me if the nitrous was too strong or should they turn it down?  I was about to ask if they could turn it up higher but suddenly I felt very happy and carefree.  I started to float away in a sea of happy thoughts...farther and farther away until I was completely gone....swimming...deeper and deeper...on a long, possibly enlightened journey.  I could have been at the bottom of the sea in Ringo's Octopus's Garden in the shade for all I knew. 

I wanted to learn more about this world but suddenly my happy thoughts turn to stark fear as I heard from far away up at the surface of the ocean a stern voice yelling "Stop it!  Stop it!  We have a very serious situation here!!"  It was the doctor.  What?  What the f*ck was going on?!  I could feel hands pressing on me and people yelling.  I felt guilty.  What had I done?  I was sure I heard somebody say something about mopping up the blood.  I thought I was in the ER...like something terribly wrong had happened and they had moved me to the hospital.  It seemed like I had been out of my mind for hours.  As I slowly came to I opened my eyes and noticed the nitrous tube below me but now detached from my nose...I was breathing just 'O' again and not 'N2O'.  Two much kinder voices belonging to a guy and a girl talked to me gently and told me it was over.  The doctor was gone.  They wheeled a gurney next to me and had me roll over onto my back on the count of 3.  I could not remember how to count to 3 so I just rolled over when it seemed appropriate while they helped.

I asked what the hell happened...how long was I 'gone'...what had gone wrong?  The lady said the procedure only took 3 or 4 minutes, but that I had suddenly started lifting my head up while the needle was in my neck...and that I was waving my arms around while they tried to restrain me.  Well of course I thought...I was swimming around at the bottom of the ocean.  She said that the doctor was not mad at me, just that he didn't want me flopping around with that needle in my spine.  She explained that my flopping was my body's natural, instinctive reaction to having a needle stuck in my neck, and that my mind could not stop that reaction because I was elsewhere.  The guy just smiled and said:  "You went to another planet."  His name tag read 'Doug' and I liked him instantly.  He seemed like the type who would leave his keys in the injection room on purpose, so that when it was time for everyone to leave at the end of the day he could hang back and huff some nitrous.

Doug wheeled me into a recovery room and introduced me to a waiting nurse.  "Maggie, this is Tim.  He's just had a spinal injection with nitrous and he's a little out of it."  I thought about that for a second.  Something did not seem right.  Was her name really Maggie?  Was my name really Tim?  Looking squarely at Doug's name tag for effect I said:  "Hey Steve, I think my name is Peter."  He looked confused, looked at his chart, and then apologized and reintroduced me to Maggie.  Still with the 'Maggie'.  I was flashing back to 1997...I shuddered.  Once we got the name thing straightened out she brought me some juice and crackers.  I noticed my 'One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish' boxers making an appearance from out of the side of my blue gown and wondered if that had been the catalyst for my nitrous-induced swim with the yellow submarine.  She looked down and noticed too and said that she would get out and let me get dressed as she pointed to my bag of clothes and then closed the curtain.

I was still woozy but got dressed and told them I was fine.  They told me I should make an appointment for two weeks from now in case it did not work and I needed another injection.  I wanted to play it cool so that the offer of nitrous still stood.  I didn't want to be blackballed from the nitrous.  I walked out of there in a daze, started my car and sat there listening to the Half-Assed Morning show for about 5 minutes and laughed my full-ass off the whole time...was it this funny or was I still loopy?  They were making Ross stand out on the Washington Avenue bridge with his childhood pillow named Lisa dressed in a bra and panties while listeners honked at him.  I'm pretty sure it was funny.  Then I noticed a large shiny spoon on the pavement right on the front/left side of my car.  I was backed into a space facing the building and I had to have stepped right over this giant spoon to get to my driver door.  The sun was glinting off it and blinding me.  How did I NOT see this spoon??  Wait...was it really there?  I decided not to find out, but as I pulled out I made sure to pull sharply to the right as to not run over it.

When I got to work at 8:30 am I was still woozy and a bit nauseous.  I read the sheet they gave me listing all of the side effects of steroids.  Great...for the next 3-7 days I was going to have to wonder if insomnia was from the steroids, or just the normal occasional insomnia.  Was my heartburn from the steroids or that large pizza with red peppers and red wine.  Normally when heartburn hits about once a month I just pop a Ranitidine and it is gone almost immediately...I picture Ranitidine as a little pharmaceutical Pac-Man, cruising around inside of me chomping up stomach acid. 

Let's see what other side effects I have to contend with...is my flushed face from the injection, or from saying something silly in front of a bunch of people at a work meeting.  Are my fatigue and muscle/joint aches from the steroids or from the normal wear and tear of being 52.  Are my headaches from the shot or just the usual ones I get from my sore neck.  Is my water retention and increased appetite from the steroids or just me getting fat because it's fun to eat a lot sometimes.  Are my mood swings including sudden rage 'roid-rage from the injection or just a normal reaction to my kids ignoring me for the 30th time when I tell them to get ready for bed.  Is my nausea from the shot or just another flu bug the kids brought home from school.  Well...it didn't list anything too serious like 'feelings of depression, thoughts of suicide, constipation, diarrhea, or death' like you hear in all the commercials.  And I was pretty sure I wasn't going to suddenly be afflicted with racism like Roseanne Barr.   

I didn't feel good though...nauseous and not able to focus very well.  I decided to put in 4 hours of work and then go home at 12:30 pm.  On the way home I was listening to a 1989 Grateful Dead concert and they went into a particularly trippy 'drums/space'.  I was at a stop light and I thought about what would happen if the Mickey Hart's 'beam' suddenly sent me into a nitrous flashback, flopping around in the front seat...the car behind me would start honking when the light turned green, then realize something was wrong and call an ambulance.  Of course that wasn't going to happen but my mind was still weirded out. 

When I got home I hadn't eaten anything all day so I had a pot-pie with a small glass of red wine and went upstairs for a nap.  I didn't think I had fallen asleep but I must have because I looked at my clock after what seemed like 10 minutes and it was suddenly an hour and fifteen minutes later.  Time was still playing tricks on me.  Okay.  I'll get up and write a blog.  And here we are the next morning.  I'll try and follow up with the results of the shot, the side effects, and whether or not I repeat the procedure in 2 weeks.  So far so good...I had insomnia last night and I have a headache, but the neck pain seems
less than normal...from it's usual 7 down to about a 4.  I have today off and I'm taking the kids to the condo to go swimming and fishing and explore the wooded peninsula.  Okay...we are out of here!
 

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.