A Crappy Year for Music...and Everything Else (2020)
2/24/20
– KISS / David Lee Roth @ Xcel Center – St. Paul, MN
1/16-17/20
– The Radiators @ Tipitinas – New Orleans, LA
3/10/20
– Bob Weir & Wolf Bros @ Fillmore – Minneapolis, MN
Okay…I recently went to my first concert in 15 months, so I decided to once again look at the previous year’s live music calendar. 2020 started off as another fun year of music, but then COVID quickly shut us all down. Ugh.
As always, the best way to start the year is with the Radiators reunion shows down in New Orleans in January. Always a great time with my best friends from Minneapolis and all over the country flying into town to see our favorite band. I got to see two out of the three nights and just had a blast with the usual crew.
Mofro was great as always…over the years JJ Grey has turned into the consummate showman, always delivering a professional show, but it lacks a bit of the wild and craziness of the earlier years.
A week later was the best show of the year for me and one of the funnest rock nights of my life, seeing my favorite 70’s band ‘UFO’ in Medina. I could have hardly scripted a better night of rock and roll…it felt like I was in the Make-A-Wish foundation. They were on their 50th Anniversary/Farewell tour and originally were not scheduled to come to Minnesota, so the previous October I had flown out to Vegas for one night to see them. In Medina I had a front row seat at the center table right in front of the stage.
As I did in Vegas, I wore an old tee shirt from Pete Way’s band (he was the original bass player for UFO) and during the concert the singer Phil Mogg kept pointing at me and giving me the thumbs up. Other band members would come up and jam right in front of me and smile at the shirt as well. At one point between songs, Phil pointed to my shirt and said: “That is an interesting shirt you have on there. I used to live with Pete…too long though.” Then looking up at the audience: “We have someone up here with a Pete Way shirt on. What is your name? Peter?! Another Pete!”
Over the years I have gotten to know the guy who runs the Medina Ballroom…we’ll call him Rick. He is a really nice guy, we love to chat about music, and he always brings my posters backstage to have the performers sign them. On this particular night he got my 1979 UFO poster I brought signed before the show, and after the show he got me into the band’s Meet and Greet for free…saved me $100. While the security cleared out all the fans from the venue, I just stuck to Rick’s side until the band came out for the Meet and Greet. All the people who had paid for it were milling around until Rick pointed to me and shouted out: “Okay, everyone line up here behind him.” Holy crap, I was first in line. I was kind of nervous…this was my chance to talk to and meet my heroes! This was really happening. I was not clear in my mind what all I wanted to say, so I let the two guys behind me go ahead of me. The band’s manager gave us all VIP posters for the band to sign, and then one at a time we walked up to the long table where the whole band was sitting.
When I first walked up the guitarist Vinnie Moore pointed at me and yelled out: “The Pete Way shirt guy!” and Phil yelled: “Peter!” I thanked each one of them for an awesome show, but started with Phil Mogg the singer first. With a gigantic smile plastered to my face, I said to Phil: “My favorite vocalist, in my all-time favorite band”. He smiled and continued the Pete Way story that he started on stage: “Yeah not only did we used to live together, we slept in the same bed. Our flat had no heat and it was so cold we would sleep together for warmth.” I asked him if he had a girl between them and he said: “Not usually…we weren’t that lucky. But we had our clothes on and it was a big bed.” I told him I just saw him a few months ago in Vegas and he said yeah, he remembered me and the shirt.
Next up was Vinnie. I told him how I got the Pete shirt…that about 10 or 15 years ago I was on Pete Way’s website looking at the merchandise. It was a rudimentary website and I could not figure out how to pay for the shirt I wanted. There was a phone number on the bottom so I called and a guy with a British accent answered. “Uh, hello?” I said. “Hello?” he said. “Um…is this Pete Way?” He said that this was Pete’s house in Cleveland, but that Pete was out of the country in England trying to get back into the United States. The US government was not letting him back in. We chatted for a while…a really nice guy, and he took my info and mailed me a t-shirt for $5.
Next up at the table was the guitar/keyboardist Neil Carter, who had recently re-joined the band after 36 years off. He was asked to re-join in 2019 when Paul Raymond died suddenly. Neil said that he liked the shirt, and I told him that I loved seeing him back in the band. I told him of course the circumstances of his arrival with Paul dying were horrible, but I was very happy that he took his place. I asked him if he called them or they called him. He excitedly said that UFO called him! He hadn’t played guitar in 10 years though…didn’t even own one. He played keyboards all the time, but had to relearn the guitar and get his chops back up.
Next up was the drummer Andy Parker. I knew from meeting him after a show many years ago that he was a really nice guy. I told him that was my 1979 UFO poster that he signed before the show. He said: “Ohh ho! That was awesome! Hey Phil! That was Pete’s old poster that we signed!” Then turning back to me he said: “Phil was mad because we weren’t top bill…I had to explain to him that for this poster the bands were in alphabetical order so that’s why we were at the bottom.”
Then lastly I came to the bass player Rob De Luca. He overheard my conversation with Andy and asked about the poster, and how I got it. I told him I was a collector…that I have hundreds of posters…most of them from the 60’s, like the Grateful Dead and other bands from San Francisco. He said he had seen four Dead shows. I told him my hair used to be longer than his and that Jerry’s last show was my 100th show.
We chatted for a bit, and then it was time for a group photo! The band all left the table, brought me over to a wall, and their manager used my phone to take a couple of pictures. The perfect end to a perfect night…the concert was smoking hot, Phil Mogg talked to me from onstage again like he did in a few months earlier in Vegas, they signed all my posters, and they were awesome dudes. I am really going to miss seeing them.
A week and a half later I was enjoying the cool and down-to-earth tunes from James McMurtry. A couple days later I was seeing my umpteenth KISS show on their umpteenth final tour. They were perfectly KISS…predictably awesome as always, especially from the great open seat I found next to the stage where you could practically feel your eyebrows singeing off from the massive pyrotechnics. Then two weeks later little did I know I was seeing my final concert for the next 15 months…Bob Weir at the new Minneapolis Fillmore. It was a surprisingly great show, but there was a weird vibe in the crowd as everyone was talking about COVID. Just three days later I was quarantined with the family, working from home…the world had begun to shut down.
Anyways, here is the list of what I managed to see last year while I could:
1/16-17/20 – The Radiators @ Tipitinas – New Orleans, LA
2/7/20 – Mofro @ First Avenue – Minneapolis, MN
2/13/20 – UFO @ Medina Ballroom – Medina, MN
2/24/20 – KISS / David Lee Roth @ Xcel Center – St. Paul, MN
3/10/20 – Bob Weir & Wolf Bros @ Fillmore – Minneapolis, MN
After the Bob Weir show on Tuesday March 10th, I was working from home and quarantined by Friday the 13th…the end of the road. In my little pink box of tickets at home I still had tickets to see later that year a bunch of events that all got cancelled or delayed indefinitely. These included the Harlem Globetrotters, Roger McGuinn, the Rolling Stones, Dude Perfect, Motley Crue/Def Leppard, Guns ‘n Roses, and Roger Waters.
Things are finally opening up, and I am looking forward to more shows this year! I have tickets for a few shows that I can’t wait to see…including The Iguanas with Camile Baudoin from the Radiators, Elvin Bishop, Black Label Society…and eventually G ‘n R, Motley Crue, Roger Waters and hopefully the Stones.
