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I heard it said somewhere that for anything in life to be successful, there must be the right balance of light and dark, soft and hard, quiet and loud, etc., and so it goes with my music collection. For every Motorhead, Ted Nugent, Black Sabbath and Kiss on the dark/hard/loud side of my music spectrum, there are equal parts ABBA, Partridge Family, Bread and The Carpenters on my light/soft/quiet side, and the latter duo is the subject of this blog entry.
If you're a child of the '70s like yours truly, there was no escaping Richard and Karen Carpenter on Top 40 radio. It seemed at times that their music was played more often than the commercials on the AM dial, and while their stuff was pure '70s pop fluff, to be sure, much of their music has stood the test of time and has aged quite well. Several so-called "hip" '90s artists like The Cranberries and Sheryl Crow participated in the tribute album If I Were A Carpenter, so they must have done something right. I sure's hell don't see anyone lining up to do an Air Supply or Starland Vocal Band tribute album anytime soon...
Richard Carpenter was/is a very accomplished musician and songwriter, but of course the focal point of this duo was his little sister Karen, who was blessed with quite possibly the most distinctive voice in music history. About the only person I can think of who's even come close to rivaling her voice is Gloria Estefan, and even she is a stretch. It's also easy to forget that Karen was a multi-tasker—she also played the drums, both on their early records and on stage at times. Although she eventually stepped aside in favor of veteran session man Hal Blaine (in the studio) and former Mouseketeer Cubby O'Brien (on tour), it wasn't before some early '70s magazine (I forget which) named Karen best drummer of the year over Led Zeppelin's John Bonham—WTF?!? This naturally begs the question, did Bonzo at least out-rank Karen on the best singer list? Eerily enough, Bonzo and Karen did share one thing in common as their lives were both self-inflictedly cut way too short at age 32. Bonham died pathetically choking on his own puke while drinking himself to death, and of course Karen became synonymous with the medical condition Anorexia Nervosa. Extremely tragic losses in both cases, both of which could've been avoided, and they could easily both still be with us today...
What I don't get is why The Carpenters don't rate more airplay on Oldies radio stations these days, like Tony Orlando and Dawn (now Twilight) receive. True, some of their stuff was pure schlock like "Sing" and "Sweet, Sweet Smile", and I still haven't forgiven them for the travesty that was "Calling Occupants (Of Interplanetary Craft)", but it's no sin to like Carpenters music, folks! Their music stands up just as well today as it did in the '70s. Give them another shot, if you've been resisting...
My All-Time Carpenters Top 10:
10) "(They Long To Be) Close To You" (1970) The one that started it all. I remember not liking this one much when I was a kid, but it's grown on me over the years. Maybe it's the "waaaaah"s at the end that got to me...
9) "For All We Know" (1971) From the film Lovers and Other Strangers. Don't even waste your time with the flick—it sucked, big-time. Nice song, though.
8) "Please Mr. Postman" (1975) My all-time favorite version of this song—I like it even better than the Marvelettes' and The Beatles' versions.
7) "We've Only Just Begun" (1970) This song was all over AM radio when I first started listening to AM radio at the age of six. At age 43, I'd give most anything to be able to revert back to that carefree time in my life...
6) "Hurting Each Other" (1972) Song originally recorded by Jimmy Clanton in the mid-'60s. This version blows the doors off Clanton's.
5) "Yesterday Once More" (1973) While the full album-side version of this song went a bit overboard, the 3:30 version of it was brilliant. Shoo-be-doo lang-lang, indeed!
4) "Rainy Days And Mondays" (1970) See also #7. Oddly enough, neither rainy days nor Mondays get me down—not very often, anyway...
3) "Superstar" (1971) Co-written by Leon Russell, the way Karen sang this one made you think it was a true story for her.
2) "Merry Christmas, Darling" (1971) My #2 Christmas song of all-time, right behind Weird Al Yankovic's "Christmas At Ground Zero"—okay, I'm just as warped as Al is, so sue me! This one got a lot harder to listen to after Karen died, tho...
1) "Only Yesterday" (1975) Easily The Carpenters' most underrated song, and an all-time favorite AM radio hit of mine. Every time I hear this one, it takes me back to the summer of '75 in a heartbeat, as does The Eagles' "One Of These Nights" and John Denver's "Thank God I'm A Country Boy". Damn, I miss being a kid...
"You’re Getting Even, While We’ve Got Aud"
It’s hosted more NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament games (83) and Final Fours (9) than any other venue. I saw my first NBA game and first Kiss concert there. It’s been around since the Great Depression, and unlike other arenas of its era, it still has many many years of life left in it. I am referring to Kansas City’s venerable Municipal Auditorium, one of the coolest old buildings you’ll ever set foot in for a concert or sporting event.
Located at 13th & Wyandotte in downtown K.C., The Aud was built in 1936 as part of President Roosevelt’s WPA—Works Progress Act...AKA, “We Piddle Around”. It replaced the 35-year-old Convention Hall directly across the street that was built in an astonishing three months to replace the original Convention Hall on the same site that burned down just months before K.C. was to host the 1900 Republican National Convention. Ironically, K.C. was supposed to host the 1976 Republican Convention at Municipal’s current next door neighbor Bartle Hall, but Bartle wasn’t finished in time, so the GOP event was moved to Kemper Arena in the stockyards. Confused yet?
Similar in concept to New York’s Madison Square Garden, Municipal Auditorium is in fact four separate venues—the 9,500-seat main arena (sometimes called Municipal Arena or just plain City Arena), the 2,400-seat Music Hall, which is home to various high-brow musical and ballet events, the 600-seat Little Theater, which houses minor plays and musicals, and the Exposition Hall that runs beneath the entire complex. Its distinctive art-deco design is prevalent both on the outside and the inside, and the building features a grand foyer that takes one back to the days of Dillinger and the Three Stooges. It also features outstanding acoustics for concerts, and some of the finest sightlines for basketball of any venue in the world.
My first encounter with Municipal Auditorium was a Kansas City-Omaha Kings game with the Milwaukee Bucks on Christmas night, 1972, during which I got to see Hall of Famers Oscar Robertson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar play in person. The Aud was the temporary home of the Kings from 1972-74 after the Cincinnati Royals moved here (and to their home away from home, Omaha’s Civic Auditorium). The Kings moved to Kemper in ’74, but The Aud (or “The Muni” as some people call it) had one more stint as an NBA facility in 1979-80 after Kemper Arena’s roof collapsed. One of Municipal’s backboards also collapsed under the weight of the Philadelphia 76ers’ Darryl “Chocolate Thunder” Dawkins when one of his slam dunks shattered it in November, 1979, sending late Kings forward Bill Robinzine (#52 in white in this video) scurrying for cover. The Aud was also home of those dreaded Kansas City Sizzlers of the minor-league Continental Basketball Association for one season in 1985-86 after the Kings left town for Californy.
I attended one other Kings game there in 1973, and didn’t return until September 30, 1979 for the Kiss/Judas Priest concert, the first of many concerts I attended at the Auditorium, including three more Kiss shows and two Pat Benatar concerts, plus the closed-circuit TV broadcast of The Who‘s “farewell” concert from Toronto on December 17, 1982. Municipal Auditorium also spent one year in the twilight zone, so to speak, in 1991-92 as the indoor soccer home of the NPSL’s Kansas City Attack in their inaugural season after moving here from Atlanta and refusing to play at Kemper Arena (which the MISL’s defunct Kansas City Comets vacated the previous season). While Municipal’s sightlines are killer for basketball and concerts, it was just plain weird for indoor soccer, with its glassed-in hockey-like playing surface. The Attack moved to Kemper for good in 1992-93.
When my alma mater, the University of Missouri-Kansas City Kangaroos, made the jump from NAIA to NCAA Division I play in basketball in 1987, they moved from tiny Swinney Gym on campus (where I wrecked my right knee playing volleyball in 1985) to Municipal Auditorium, thus making The Aud the “Kanagaroo Court”. I attended several Roos games during the ’90s, but kinda lost touch with them until one night in 2005 when I attended their season finale against Valparaiso, which turned out to be an exciting game that the good guys won. I sat in the same seat I had for that first Kiss concert in ’79 (Row S, right next to the spotlight turret against the wall in the NE corner), and as exciting as the game was, I was even more floored by how beautiful Municipal Auditorium looked that night. The city put a lot of money and effort into refurbishing the place, and it practically looked like a brand new arena. Even cooler, the old time-of-day clock on the east wall was restored and fully-functional again, and parts of the original basketball floor were preserved as well.
The above-mentioned remodeling/ retrofitting has brought Municipal Auditorium back up to speed and made it worthy of hosting major basketball tournaments again, including the Big 12 Women’s Basketball Tournament, and NCAA Women's Tournament regionals as well as the annual NAIA Basketball tourney and various local high school tournaments. What’s really ironic is how history is repeating itself here as it did in places like Denver, Baltimore and Atlanta, where an older arena is still in use while the venue that was built to replace it bit the dust. Denver Auditorium, Baltimore Civic Arena and Alexander Memorial Coliseum—all still in use—were replaced by McNichols Arena, the Capital Centre and The Omni, respectively, yet those latter three are all demolished now, and I think the same fate awaits Kemper Arena in the next five-to-ten years. In fact, there was even talk at one time about 15 years ago of "building down" into Municipal Auditorium's Exhibition Hall and lowering the current floor to add a whole new lower level and enlarge the main arena to about 17,000 seats in an effort to replace Kemper, but the plan was deemed unfeasible. Meantime, if properly-maintained, Municipal Auditorium will easily live to be a hundred. I plan to see a game there in 2036...
After a brief pause, it's time to resume my chronicle of the concerts I've attended throughout the years...
41) and 42) Z.Z. Top/Jimmy Barnes (Sunday/Monday, February 16-17, 1986—Kemper Arena) Ticket price: $16.00
By the time Z.Z. Top’s Afterburner came out in the fall of 1985, they were at the height of their career in terms of popularity, with their videos in heavy rotation on MTV and they were hot enough to score a two-night stand here at Kemper Arena, and my friend Tom and I had great seats on the lower level for the first night.
While Afterburner was the weaker cousin of its predecessor Eliminator, it still packed enough of a wallop to make for a great concert anyway. Z.Z. opened the show with "Got Me Under Pressure", then followed with the single "Sleeping Bag", which was augmented by green lazers in time to the song. The stage backdrop was a mock-up of the dashboard of the mighty ’32 Ford Eliminator car from their famous 1983-84 videos. About midway through the set during the song "Legs", Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill (playing their infamous fur-lined guitars like in the pic) and drummer Frank Beard were accompanied by about half a dozen leggy showgirls prowling the stage, and near the end of the song, the band used some old "smoke and mirrors" tactics that made them suddenly "vanish" into thin air. Then some taped synthesizer music played overhead while the stage set morphed into the dashboard of the Space Shuttle Afterburner, and the band re-emerged and launched (launched—get it?!?) into "Sharp Dressed Man".
Other highlights included the new songs "Velcro Fly" and "Can’t Stop Rockin’", but I was a tad disappointed they didn’t also do the very-underrated "Delirious" from Afterburner. Z.Z. also did their usual encore triumvirate of "Tube Snake Boogie", "La Grange" and "Tush", the latter of which ended with some more sleight of hand by the band as a fake piece of scaffolding from the lighting rig fell to the stage at the climax of the song, followed by a man-sized dummy dressed as one of the spotlight guys. Tom and I didn’t fall for it, but I’m sure a few drunks in the crowd wound up with skidmarks in their drawers upon witnessing this!
Singer Jimmy Barnes opened the show and wasn’t too bad, as I recall, although I remember precious little about his set. This was even before he had his hit duet with INXS "Good Times", so we didn’t know much about him. I do remember he seemed to hold the crowd’s attention throughout his 30 minutes.
Long about 6:00 the next night, I heard on the radio that there were still some decent tickets available for the second show, and since I enjoyed the show so much the first night, I got a wild hair to go see Z.Z. Top again. I called Tom up and said, "Whaddya reckon?" and he thought I was nuts at first, but he thought about it a while and said, "Whatthefuck," and we headed back to the stockyards for another lovely evening with that Little Ol’ Band From Texas. We passed on Jimmy Barnes this time and arrived just as he had left the stage, and our seats were nosebleeders upstairs, but weren’t all that bad, and it was fun to view the show from a different angle. This was the first and only time I ever attended back-to-back shows by the same band on consecutive nights, as well as the first time I’d ever caught two shows on any band’s tour—a feat I would later repeat with Z.Z. Top a few years later, as well as a couple times with Kiss.
SET LIST: Got Me Under Pressure/Sleeping Bag/Waitin' For The Bus/Jesus Just Left Chicago/Gimme All Your Lovin'/Ten Foot Pole/Manic Mechanic/Heard It On The X/Rough Boy/Cheap Sunglasses/Arrested For Driving While Blind/Legs/Sharp Dressed Man/Can't Stop Rockin'/Stages/Party On The Patio ENCORES: Velcro Fly/Tube Snake Boogie/La Grange/Tush
43) The Cult/Divinyls (Tuesday, April 15, 1986—Uptown Theater) Ticket price: $13.50
A little background first: My friend Tom latched on to this Australian band Divinyls when they first became known here in the States in the summer of ’83 on MTV with their outstanding album Desperate. Unbeknownst to Tom and me beforehand, they were scheduled to play at Six Flags over St. Louis on the very day we visited there during our July road trip, which was right smack dab in the middle of the Great Heat Wave of ’83. We arrived when the park opened and it was hotter than hell that day, and of course the concert wasn’t slated until near dark around 9PM, but there was no way in hell we could’ve lasted the whole day in the blazing sun, as we were already frying like bacon by late afternoon, so we reluctantly headed back to our hotel and its wonderful shaded swimming pool.
I’ve always felt badly about missing that show too, because I know how badly Tom wanted to see it at the time, so when Divinyls came to town in support of their second U.S. album What A Life, we made sure to go see them, even though they were opening for The Cult. Lead singer Christina Amphlett—who I like to think of as a cross between a white Tina Turner and AC/DC’s Angus Young—prowled around the stage doing her best schoolgirl-gone-mad shtick, complete with her sailor uniform and thigh-high black stockings, while her partner-in-crime Mark McEntee held court on guitar. Surprisingly, Divinyls played almost an hour, which is longer than most opening acts, and they leaned on their new record quite a bit, including the singles "Pleasure And Pain" and "Sleeping Beauty". What A Life wasn’t a bad record, but not nearly as good as Desperate, which featured great songs like "Boys In Town", "Siren Song", "Elsie" and a killer cover version of the Easybeats’ "I’ll Make You Happy", which was the show’s encore. Wish we could’ve seen more of them, but what we got was a pretty good set.
I’d love to review The Cult’s set, but since we came to see Divinyls specifically and either I or Tom had an early college class the next day, we didn’t stick around for them. Knowing now what I didn’t know about The Cult then, I kinda wish we had…
44) Van Halen/Bachman-Turner Overdrive (Saturday, May 31, 1986—Kemper Arena) Ticket price: $15.00
Round Five for me with Van Halen brought with it a couple of changes. The most obvious one was Sammy Hagar being VH’s new lead singer, and the other being this was one of the few concerts I attended back in the day without Tom, who I think was unable to get the night off and had to work at his new job. Subbing for Tom was our mutual friend Jim—a mondo Van Halen fan in his own right—and his wife Cheryl. Come to think of it, Jim tagged along with us the previous two times we saw VH at Kemper.
Bachman-Turner Overweight—sorry—Overdrive opened the show, and while they played a decent set of hits, plus a couple songs off their new "reunion" album, it was pretty obvious this band was way past its prime. Randy Bachman was no longer in the picture either, and his presence was sorely missed. Meantime, during BTO’s set, we were rather entertained by these dumb kids in the row in front of us who smuggled their own booze in. They were really whooping it up as BTO played, and obviously knew nothing about the fine art of pacing themselves with the alky-hol. I gave Jim a nudge and pointed to them and said, "Rookies!" and sure enough, not even a third of the way through Van Halen’s set, at least two of these dummies were hunched over with their heads between their legs puking on their shoes! We laughed at them. Hard.
As for Van Hagar, it was quite a different world without Diamond Dave. Not a bad one, necessarily, just different. The focus was more on the music now and less on showmanship, and with Sammy Hagar also being a guitarist, this added a fresh new element to the band, which was showcased right away as they opened with Sammy trading solos with Eddie on Hagar’s "There’s Only One Way To Rock". Having the second guitar also came in handy to free Eddie up to play the keyboards on songs like "Why Can’t This Be Love?" and "Love Walks In". The set list naturally leaned heavily on the new stuff from 5150, with a couple Hagar songs thrown in. They only played three or four David Lee Roth songs, and one of those was "You Really Got Me", which DLR didn’t write anyway.
There were a few "Dave Who?" banners scattered about the arena, and the crowd seemed to embrace Hagar as the new voice of Van Halen, but for some reason, this show left me rather flat. It just felt like the band was going through the motions that night, and the fire just wasn’t there like it had been the previous four times I’d seen them. When I later saw the New Haven show they filmed about a month earlier on their Live Without A Net concert video, which was a much more energetic performance, my reaction was, "Where the fuck was all this at Kemper?" I don’t know if we just caught VH on a bad night or what, and I don’t mean to blame Hagar because the entire band was off that night, but this show should’ve been a whole lot better.
45) Paul Revere & The Raiders (Saturday, July 5, 1986—Liberty Memorial Mall) Ticket price: ???
My first memories of being alive are of listening to Paul Revere & The Raiders records when I was all of three. I got to see the real McCoy when I was seven at Starlight Theater in 1971, and the ersatz version of the group over the 4th of July weekend in ’86 at the Kansas City Spirit Festival. Liberty Memorial Mall is not a shopping mecca, but rather the land adjacent to K.C.’s war monument that bears more than a slight resemblance to an erect penis, and for many years, the city held these multi-day festivals that featured nationally-known acts on its grounds. Said grounds were pretty soggy that day, as it had rained almost the entire weekend, but since it didn’t cost squat to get in, I decided to take in da Raidas.
With their late ‘60s heyday having long since passed, PR&TR were strictly a nostalgia act by 1986, with Revere himself being the only original member still active. There had been a couple minor Raider reunions during the early ‘80s for one-off events and such, but lead singer Mark Lindsay had no desire to be a lounge act, so Revere put together a group of new Raiders, many of whom still work with him today in Branson (where careers go to die). I didn’t really have high expectations for this show, and it's a good thing I didn't, because I was fairly underwhelmed by it.
Revere didn't play music so much on this night, but rather more or less emceed the proceedings from behind his modified keyboard outfitted with the grill of a '66 Mustang on the front (complete with flashing headlights). "If you don't like the '60s," he declared, "then get the hell out!" While his new band of Raiders wasn't bad musically, I was pretty unimpressed with Lindsay's replacement, a singer whose name escapes me, but it's just as well because he was more of a poser than a singer anyway. Revere's on-stage antics were rather humorous at times, but what really cheesed me off was how they'd whip through the Raider repertoire as if they were double-parked out back, and spent more time playing other '60s oldies instead. I'm talking a minute-and-a-half of "Kicks" and a minute's worth of "Hungry", etc. Not to be overly-picky here, but when I go to a Raiders show, I wanna hear Raiders songs, not "Heard It Through The Grapevine" and "Mony, Mony"! I think it's great that Revere tries to keep the band's name alive, but this show failed miserably to do the original band justice.
Just as an aside, several years later at another Spirit Festival, Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle of The Who played at Liberty Memorial, and Tom and I headed down to catch the show. Along the way, we stopped off at the office at which Tom was working at the time, which just happened to be in the BMA Tower, which just happened to overlook the festival site from a distance. We figured we had plenty of time since Daltrey wasn't due on until 8-ish or 9-ish, so imagine my horror when I leaned against the window and heard the faint sound of someone singing "it's only teenage wasteland..." "Oh fuck!" was our reaction, as we realized the show had already begun. Evidently the schedule was changed without our knowledge, so we hustled out of the building to hoof it over to the festival, but we got about halfway there and said the hell with it, since the show was almost over by then. We just stood and listened to Entwistle singing "My Wife" off in the distance then retreated. I found out later that my sister was at the show and she said it was great. D'oh!
IT’S MADNESS, ALRIGHT…
Overall, I’m fairly pleased with the NCAA Tournament brackets, and I think they did a pretty fair job of selecting the right teams to play in it. Still, that didn’t stop Billy Packer and Dick Vitale from crusading for the ACC, claiming they got shafted because only four teams from their conference made the big dance. Well, I thoroughly agree with the rank and file of sports talk pundits regarding the bubble teams that are crying in their beer (Arizona St., Virginia Tech, Ohio State, Syracuse, et al) because they weren’t selected—try winning more games! If you schedule better non-conference opponents and win more games, you’ll make the tournament. Until then, good luck in the NIT. Meantime, can we please take Vitale and Packer (along with Digger Phelps and Bob Knight) and cast these babbling idiots adrift in a slow boat to China?
There is one little problem with this year’s brackets, however. The NCAA either needs a new United States road atlas or a refresher course on geography. How is it you have West Regional games being played in Tampa and East Regional games being played in Denver?!? These regionals are geographical in name only, so why don’t they just do like World Cup Soccer and refer to them as Group A, Group B, Group C, etc.? Or do like the NHL used to do with their divisions (Norris, Adams, Patrick, Smythe) and name each regional after someone—John Wooden Regional, James Naismith Regional, etc.
Oh, by the way, after careful deliberation I completed my brackets today, and I have three of the four #1 seeds making the Final Four—Kansas, North Carolina, and Memphis—but UCLA is going to be tripped up by my dark horse, Xavier. Watch out for those mighty Muscatels—er, uh—Musketeers! And even though I'm a Missouri fan, I have Kansas winning the whole shootin' match on the 20th anniversary of the last time they did it. Remember folks, you heard it here first!
EXCUSES, EXCUSES
Speaking of the Big Dance, according to the latest issue of Sports Illustrated, "An Oregon clinic is suggesting that men who need an excuse to stay home and watch the NCAA Tournament get a vasectomy." Unfortunately, that excuse can only be used once. Actually, if you're thinking about getting fixed anyway, it's not a bad idea. I had a vasexomy (as A. Bunker called them) myself about nine years ago, and thanks to my medical benefits, it didn't cost me a dime. It didn't hurt all that much—it just felt like someone had jabbed a baseball bat in my crotch a few times. It wasn't so bad once I got home and was able to ice it down with a bag of frozen peas, but the worst part for me was the drive home from the doctor's office. At the time, I drove a Honda Prelude, which has all the ground clearance of a cockroach, and that car rode rougher than a stagecoach across the Rockies, thus every bump was an adventure in pain!
EVERYTHING’S JUST PEACHY
Here’s what your President reminds me of as he constantly tries to re-assure America about our plummeting economy.
WHO DAT?
Here’s a still from a deleted scene from the new film Horton Hears A Who. BTW, did they really need to screw with this classic cartoon? Why do we need a full-length feature film to tell the same story it took 30 minutes to tell on TV?
ARTY FARTY
I came across this in the Sunday paper. It’s called "Super Slave Dome" by William Willmott, and it's on display at a local Black Cultural Heritage center. According to the K.C. Star: "It seems to suggest that one of America's favorite pasttimes is a vehicle for enslavement, as well as escape, and a key locus for racially charged influences. A football field encompassed by what looks like people seated in bleachers is at the center of the picture. Upon closer inspection, the bleachers reveal themselves to be a restructuring of the hatchways between decks into which men, women and children were packed aboard slave ships in the early 19th century." WTF?!? How do these arty types read such crap into stuff like this? All I see here is the seating diagram of the Louisiana Superdome—it really takes a lot of talent to pirate that! Folks who go out of their way to find racism in everything aren't high my list of people I respect either...
WELCOME TO "WHITE TRASH THEATER"
This week's episode: "Shit Or Get Off The Pot" . You may have already heard this story on the TV news recently, but here it is again. I couldn't even dream of making this kind of shit up! The late Jim Morrison was right for one of the rare times in his screwed-up life when he said, "People are strange..."
With that in mind, please wish me luck on the Powerball thing tonight. Being as the #9 has been very prevalent in the news this week, and being as I had exactly nine Yankee dollars in my wallet during my trip to the store last night, I took that as a positive sign, thus I purchased nine lottery tickets. I have plans for that $275 million, too. Number 9! Number 9! Number 9!...
MORE ON MORON SPITZER
Speaking of #9 in your lineup, a couple more thoughts on the dearly-departed Gov. Spitzer. First off, when I saw the whore-rific (sorry!) photos of the prostitute that did him (in), my first thought was, "you paid $4,300 for that?!?" His wife is a helluva lot prettier. I also love the way Republican readers of the Kansas City Star have been raising a fuss because the paper never once mentioned that Spitzer is a Democrat in the inital articles they ran. This man is an elected public official who (literally) fucked around and broke the law—what the hell difference does it make what party he's from? Get over it, already, all you Larry Craig sychophants...
MOTHER NATURE'S COLORS WERE SHOWING...
...in Atlanta last night when severe thunderstorms disrupted the SEC men's bassit-ball tournament at the Georiga Dome, blowing a couple holes in the roof and scaring the shit out of 18,000 people. They were actually able to resume and complete the game that was interrupted, but the final game of the evening was postponed, thus causing the first "rain-in", as well as the first "twi-night doubleheader" (for Georgia) in college basketball history!
WHITE SAID FRED
Today's Kansas-Texas A&M game in the Big 12 men's tournament here in K.C. was the final broadcast in the career of Fred White, one of the longtime voices of ESPN's college basketball as well as the Kansas City Royals. Fred recently announced his retirement, and I'm going to miss him quite a bit. He teamed up with Hall of Famer Denny Matthews on Royals radio broadcasts in 1974 and was part of the soundtrack of my summers for nearly 25 years, until the team threw him under the bus in 1997 and fired him for no good reason other than to shake things up. Gee, our team sucks, so let's fire the announcer—brilliant idea! They replaced him with Ryan Lefebvre (son of former L.A. Dodger Jim Lefebvre), and while Ryan's a nice guy, he's a fairly dull play-by-play man. The Royals did rehire White a few years ago as their director of broadcasting or some such thing, and he did get to do some fill-in work on broadcasts when Matthews took time off, but I still think he got a raw deal. Anyway, I'm going to miss his easygoing delivery and Midwestern drawl, like when he pronounces Missouri "Missour-uh" and possession as "po-ZAY-shun". In a very classy move, they stopped today's game briefly at the Sprint Center to recognize Fred White and honor him—bravo to the Big 12 people, and bravo especially to the man himself—ya done good, Fred!
It was also great that for his final game, White was teamed with former Royal Paul Splittorff, whom I worked with briefly during my stint at KKJC in Blue Springs in 1987. Splitt got his start in broadcasting at the "Mighty 1030" as a color analyst on high school football and basketball games. High school sports on local radio and TV is fairly commonplace now, but back then it was almost unheard of, and we were one of the few stations to carry high school sporting events, so I kinda like to think we pioneered it in some ways. Anyway, Paul's delivery was very tentative and wooden at first, but he got better and more confident as the years went on, and sounds very polished now, and even does play-by-play on Royals telecasts in addition to color. I can also say that Paul Splittorff is a truly nice man—what you see on TV is pretty much what you get in person. He's very affable and has a very wry sense of humor—very cool guy.
OTHER BIG 12 TOURNEY MUSINGS
It appears that the new Scent Printer is a big hit with out-of-town Big 12 fans, as is the adjoining new Power & Light entertainment district. The entire area has been quite zoo-like the last three days, and I'm tickled to see downtown Kansas City come alive again—it's been long overdue.
Memo to the Big 12: You might re-think a couple of your corporate sponsors for this conference tournament. There are only like two Chik-Fil-A restaurants in K.C., and there ain't a Whataburger within at least 200 miles of Kansas City (let alone Nebraska, Colorado or Iowa). You might wanna recruit sponsors that all Big 12 TV viewers can actually patronize, okey-dokey?
And in a sure sign of the apocalypse, during the Big 12 game last night between Texas A&M and Kansas State, I heard one of the pep bands playing "Shout It Out Loud" by Kiss. Black Sabbath, Metallica and AC/DC also get the college pep band/marching band treatment from time to time these days. I never thought I'd live to see the day when college bands would be playing heavy metal songs!
EATING CROW?
I just had to chortle yesterday when I read that singer Sheryl Crow is joining Fleetwood Mac. Evidently, Horsey-Face is now the ersatz replacement for Christine McVie. This is akin to Kid Rock joining the Eagles...
ATTACK OF THE KILLER ANAGRAMS!
Some baseball fanatics with way too much time on their hands came up with the following funnies:
Alex Rodriguez = Regularized Ox
George Herman Ruth = Rather Huge Monger
San Francisco Giants = Fascinating! No scars!
Los Angeles Dodgers = All Negro Goddesses
San Diego Padres = Ignored Sad Apes
Derek Jeter = Jerked Tree
The Cincinnati Reds = Indecent Christian
Andy Pettite = Tainted Type (can that one be any more ironic?!?)
Milton Bradley = Notably Milder (ditto)
Tony LaRussa = Sour Analyst
Gary Sheffield = Large Fed Fishy
Hideki Okajima = Hi, I am a joke, kid
Chase Utley = Eyelash Cut
Pedro Martinez = Note: Prized Arm!
Carlos Pena = Anal Corpse
Fantasy Baseball = A Baseball Fan Sty
Tom Seaver = Arm Vetoes
Oscar Charleston = Anal Crotch Sores
Roy Oswalt = Wooly Rats
Kansas City Royals = Ink Ya Salary Costs!
Tom Glavine = Angel Vomit
Greg Maddux = Max-Drugged
Bruce Sutter = Cubs utterer; Butt rescuer
Jose Offerman = Major Offense
Al Kaline = Alkaline
Cal Ripken = Lean Prick; Pain Clerk
Travis Lee = Versatile
Stan Musial = Lust Is A Man
Chris Capuano = A Crap Cushion
Lou Piniella = I, Paul O'Neill
Dustin Pedroia = Super Addition
Dmitri Young = Dim Orgy Unit
Magglio Ordonez = Glamorized Goon
And one non-baseball item: Jennifer Aniston = Fine in torn jeans
Yours truly, Brian Holland = Land Ho, Brain L!
Anybody out there remember Fotomat? With the advent of digital cameras and One-Hour Photo, et al, this bygone edifice of American culture is now about as obsolete as VCRs and the Yellow Pages, but for no particular reason, I was reminded of them the other day. Here's what a real one looked like, but I wasn't able to save the pic to my hard drive because of site limitations.
And here's what one looks like today, after having been subjected to the carbon-freeze process!
Disregarding the hair and skin tones, the similarity in the facial expressions is just uncanny!
Y'ever listen to that Henry Lee Summer song, "I Wish I Had A Girl" and say to yourself, "Who the fuck is Leroy?!?" I have on numerous occasions...
WANNA GET AWAY?
I bet New York Governor Spitzer wishes he was in one of those Southwest Airlines commercials right about now. I believe Spitzer's man-sized predicatment was best summed up by that noted philosopher B. Bunny many, many years ago: "What a maroon!" Client #9 ain't got that many political lives, that's for sure...
SOMEBODY PLEASE HIDE HIS HELMET!
I don't know which is crazier, QB Trent Green still wanting to play football, or the St. Louis Rams signing him yesterday for $8.9 million a year for three years to do so. This guy is one more concussion away from becoming a Zucchini permanently, and I can't believe the Rams think they're going to get three games out of the man, let alone three years. Trent, buddy, I admire your competitiveness, but you're a tragedy just waiting to happen...
IF A HALL OF FAME CEREMONY FALLS IN THE WOODS AND NOBODY HEARS IT...
Did anyone waste their Monday evening on that Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame folderol last night? I most certainly didn't. I would've sooner watched three hours-worth of "Roseanne" reruns. Oh fuck—did I say that?!?
THE PUCK STOPS HERE—AT THE HOUSE THAT RUTH BUILT?!?
Talk is heating up about the NHL staging another outdoor regular season game next season, this time at the soon-to-be demolished Yankee Stadium in Da Bronx. Baseball purists are viewing this as heresy if the final event there is a hockey game, but I have a solution to this dilemma. Why not stage one more Yankees game there at the end of Spring Training in 2009? They could then have a big "passing the torch" ceremony similar to the way Montreal closed out The Forum about ten years ago, followed a few weeks later by imploding the place on national TV—with George Steinbrenner in it, of course...
KICKIN' IT OLD SCHOOL
I love old neon signs like these—they're becoming a dying breed. Vess Cola is a regional soft drink bottler based in St. Louis whom former Cardinal shortstop Ozzie Smith used to do endorsements for, as I recall. I stumbled across this pic online the other night, and I believe this sign is just a couple blocks north of the Ram Dome in St. Louie. There's also a beautiful (and huge) Anheuser-Busch neon sign along 40 Hiway west of downtown St. Louis that I'm dying to get a photo of at night, but it's really hard to access.
CHOICE MUSIC, INDEED
In lieu of the Hall of Fame thing and/or "Roseanne" reruns last night, I flipped over to my '70s Music Choice channel on my cable, and spent the most enjoyable hour listening to oldies from my youth that I'll probably never hear on over-the-air radio again in my lifetime unless I buy my own station and play the damn things myself! Here's a little sampling of what I heard during a 60-minute span last night:
"Holly Holy"—Neil Diamond
"Smokin' In The Boys' Room"—Brownsville Station
"One Tin Soldier"—Coven
"Only Yesterday"—The Carpenters
"Wildflower"—Skylark
"Theme From Shaft"—Isaac Hayes
"Shannon"—Henry Gross
"Everlasting Love"—Carl Carlton
"If You Leave Me Now"—Chicago
"Burning Bridges"—Mike Curb Congregation
"I Woke Up In Love This Morning"—Partridge Family
"Have You Never Been Mellow"—Olivia Newton-John
"Popcorn"—Hot Butter
Okay, I know about half of those songs get regular airplay on Oldies stations, but my point here is look at how well they peacefully co-exist on Music Choice. So my question to all you program directors and corporate radio suits out there, is what the fuck do you have to lose by broadening your playlists and adding songs stuff like the Carpenters and such? You can't tell me that all people want to hear is "Joy To The World", "Stayin' Alive", "Heard It Through The Grapevine" and "Play That Funky Music" every hour—no wonder terrestrial radio is dying! Take a chance, people—throw in "Run Joey Run" or "Indiana Wants Me" now and then! Even some Ohio Express would be a step in the right direction...
Regular readers of my blog know quite well that I like T.V. evangelists about as much as I like liver and onions, John Mellencamp and diarrhea, so with that in mind, I present to you the Top 10 T.V. Evangelist-Bashing songs of All-Time:
Honorable mentions:
"Would Jesus Wear A Rolex?"—RAY STEVENS (1987) Brother Ray posed some interesting questions here. "Would He wear a pinky ring?" Well, would He?
"Long-Haired Country Boy"—CHARLIE DANIELS BAND (1974) Not about evangelists per se, except for the verse that goes "Preacher man talkin' on TV, puttin' down the Rock 'N' Roll/Wants me to send a donation, 'cuz he's worried about my soul..."
"The Wages Of Sin"—THE RAINMAKERS (1987) Again, not about preachers per se, but I love the line "If heaven is guilt, no sex and no show, then I'm not sure that I really wanna go..."
10) "Just Put Your Hands On The Screen"—MARTIN BRILEY (1983) Sounding rather Peter Gabriel-ish, this was Briley's forgotten follow-up to "Salt In My Tears". Video is pretty self-explanatory.
9) "Bad Religion"—Motorhead (1992) As usual, my man Lemmy cuts right through the bullshit: "Evangelistic Nazis—you cannot frighten me…I need no burning crosses to illuminate my night."
8) "Satellite"—The Hooters (1987) A song I wouldn’t have expected from these guys, but they were quick to capitalize on the whole Jim and Tammy Faye scandal. "Hush, little baby, don’t you cry—God’s gonna buy you a satellite." Great video, too.
7) "T.V. Crimes"—BLACK SABBATH (1992) Not so much a slam on the evangelists, but the gullible fools who support them. "Send me a plastic Jesus—there’s a check in the mail today."
6) "Mary Long"—DEEP PURPLE (1973) "How did you lose your virginity, Mary Long?" ML was actually an amalgam of two people, one of whom was Mary Whitehouse. According to singer Ian Gillan, Whitehouse was "a female Jimmy Swaggart" in England, self-righteously preaching celibacy, while in private Mary was apparently (in the words of Dr. Niles Crane) "randy as a stoat!" "What we do in full-frontal view is more honest than your clean-up mind..."
5) "Ticket To Heaven"—Dire Straits (1990) Mark Knopfler deftly put together this wickedly subtle slam on money-grubbing TV preachers, orchestrating it with lush strings and pretty steel guitar. "Now I send what I can to the man with the diamond ring…"
4) "Thou Shalt Not—Kiss (1992) Back when Gene Simmons was still my idol, he sang "Kindly reconsider the sins of your past—I said, ‘Mister, you can kindly kiss my ass!’" Here's what it sounds like if you don't mind watching a video of some ugly fat guy lip-synching to the song!
3) "I’m Alive"—W.A.S.P. (1986) This song applies perfectly to Rev. Fred Phelps and crew: "Force suppression, that’s what you do—tell me, what’s in it for you? Listen I’m on to your game…All your lies are the same!...Damn you, holy man alive…" Preach, Brother Blackie, preach!
2) "Jesus He Knows Me"—Genesis (1991) It’s like Phil Collins saw about 15 years into the future, as this one could’ve easily been about the whole Ted Haggard saga. "I believe in the family—got my ever-lovin’ wife beside me; She don’t know about my girlfriend—or the man I met last night…"
1) "Miracle Man" —Ozzy Osbourne (1988) The Ozz-Man scored a direct hit on Jimmy Swaggart ("Little Jimmy Sinner") and Oral Roberts on this classic. I loved Ozzy’s rant on his Live & Loud CD about Roberts: "I’m gonna die tomorrow if I don’t get $8 million. Well then fuckin’ die, asshole!" Amen, brother!
If you’re wondering why I sometimes give my blog entries such non-sequitor titles, it’s because I try not to repeat the same ol’stuff all the time, like "Odds and Ends", "Misc. Thoughts", "This and That", etc. Plus, I kinda like being irreverent now and then.
LET’S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN…
Don’t forget to set your clocks ahead one hour tonight, as Daylight Savings Time is already upon us this year. Although I prefer setting them back and gaining one hour instead of losing one, it’s still kinda fun to be able to manipulate time like this.
Speaking of the "Time Warp", I rented Rocky Horror Picture Show again on DVD this week. I’ve seen this thing at least three times now, and I still don’t get what the big deal was. I know it was a big cult classic and total camp and all—camp can be a lot of fun, sometimes—but I still think it’s overrated as hell. I guess it’s one of those "you had to be there at the time" kinda things to appreciate the full impact of it.
SAD ALL OVER
I’ve been meaning to acknowledge the passing of Mike Smith, former lead singer of the Dave Clark Five, who died last week of pneumonia. Smith suffered a debilitating fall in 2003 that left him paralyzed, which came on the heels of the accidental death of his son three months earlier, and I remember reading about a benefit concert staged for him to help offset his medical bills a couple years ago. Like most people, I automatically assumed that Dave Clark was the singer of the band that bore his name, but in fact DC was the drummer and Mike Smith sang and played keyboards. He's not to be confused with late drummer Mike "Smitty" Smith of Paul Revere & The Raiders, who died in 2001. DC5’s Mike Smith’s passing is eerily similar to that of singer Dusty Springfield, coming just days prior to induction into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame.
While I’m on the subject anyway, here’s my all-time Dave Clark 5:
1) Try Too Hard (1966)
2) Any Way You Want It (1964)
3) Glad All Over (1964)
4) Catch Us If You Can (1965)
5) Bits And Pieces (1964)
ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE
Quite possibly the flukiest Top 5 hit single in history was Hurricane Smith’s "Oh Babe, What Would You Say?" from late, 1972. Smith warbled this piece of ‘30s-sounding pastiche that was unlike anything else on AM radio at that time, yet in the '70s it fit right in! If you're not familiar with that song, here's what it sounds like, although this video is totally unrelated to it. Born Norman Smith, Hurricane was nearly 50 when he recorded the song, and was already well-known in the music industry as the studio engineer on all of The Beatles’ albums up through Rubber Soul (John Lennon dubbed him "Normal"), and he passed away earlier this week at age 85. He also worked with Pink Floyd and several other bands during his career. I never even knew what the dude looked like until I found this video of him on YouTube doing a song that sounds similar to "Oh Babe".
ANOTHER THING I CAN REALLY DO WITHOUT
Is anyone out there as tired as I am of these stupid Internet ads with these two hoochie-mamas reacting to something as if they’d just won the lottery? Yes, I know it’s just an attention-getting tactic, but one of these chicks looks like she’s about to wet her pants, and I’m finding it very hard to believe that anyone would get that excited over new low mortgage rates!
DUMB QUESTION, BUT…
…why is it most corporations only hold job fairs on weekdays when people who have jobs they hate can’t attend? I see these things advertised on TV and in the papers all the time, and they’re always on weekdays, which is fine for the unemployed, but why don’t they ever conduct job fairs on weekends or in the evenings when normal nine-to-fivers who might be thinking of changing jobs/careers (like me, for instance) can attend without taking time off?
FAVRE OUT!
Packers QB Brett Favre announced his retirement this week, thus setting off the BFLF (Brett Favre Love Fest), which is still ongoing on ESPN. Don’t get me wrong—I have nothing against Favre, but I’m so sick of the way the media fawns over him the way they do. I was mildly surprised that he’s not coming back for one more season, but then again, what more does he have to prove? Kind of a shame, too, that the last pass he ever threw was an interception. Favre also violated one of the basic tenets of football during his farewell address Thursday: There’s no crying in football—except at Dick Vermeil press conferences…
YOUR BOULEVARD UPDATE
The jury is still out on whether our new Rock station in K.C., 99.7 The Boulevard, is going to fly or not. I'm still hearing way too much Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison and Eric Clapton on there for my liking, but every once in a while they surprise me with some good stuff like Pete Townshend's "Slit Skirts" from 1982. Unfortunately, one has to sit through drivel like Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" and Edie Brickell's "What I Am" to get to the good stuff. Station still needs some tweaking, but there's hope anyway...
IT WAS 27 YEARS AGO TODAY…
…that I officially became a working stiff. I began my first real job on this date in 1981 as a busboy at Waid’s Restaurant just outside of Raytown. Yes, for $3.35 an hour, I got to clean up after people in my itchy brown double-knit uniform. Oh well, I had to pay for all those concert tickets somehow! I eventually worked my way up the food chain and became dishwasher, baker and fry cook over the next five years. If nothing else, I learned how to cook for myself there, and I can proudly say that I never worked at a McDonald’s…
Through the past darkly...on we go!
36) Elton John (Thursday, September 20, 1984—Kemper Arena) Ticket price: $15.00
After Elton’s spectacular show two years before at Starlight, I was naturally pretty stoked about seeing Captain Fantastic in concert again, and while this show wasn’t quite as good as ’82, it was still pretty good stuff. Once again, Elton toured with what I think is quite possibly the greatest backing band any musician ever had—guitarist Davey Johnstone, the late Dee Murray on bass and drummer Nigel Olsson—along with second guitarist Fred Mandel. Why Elton ever broke that band up is total mystery to me. This concert also marked the debut of my own little personal innovation at concerts—a handy notepad for to keep track of set lists on!
With no opening act, EJ played a longer set than in ’82, and there were quite a few changes to his set list on this tour, right from the opening numbers "Tiny Dancer" and "Levon", as well as adding "Philadelphia Freedom", "Candle In The Wind" and "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me". He also leaned rather heavily (too heavily for me, actually) on tracks from 1983’s Too Low For Zero, even more so than his new album Breaking Hearts. Apart from thumpers like "I’m Still Standing" and "Li’l ‘Frigerator", Elton was getting a bit complacent and falling into a comfortable rut, as all his albums started sounding the same with fluff like "Sad Songs (Say So Much)" and "I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Flu—er uh—Blues", a trend that plagued him throughout the rest of the ‘80s. There was one song from Breaking Hearts I was hoping he would perform called "In Neon", but he sadly omitted it, and "Rocket Man" was much shorter and not nearly as sonically trippy as the way they played it at Starlight, but overall it was still a great show. To get a good taste of it, there are several clips from Elton's Wembley Stadium concert from that same tour included on the recent Elton At 60 DVD. Here be a little taste of that show. Hercules! Hercules! Hercules!
THE SET LIST: Tiny Dancer/Levon/L'il Frigerator/Rocket Man/Daniel/ Restless/Candle In The Wind/Bitch Is Back/Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me/Who Wears These Shoes?/Sad Songs (Say So Much)/Bennie & The Jets/Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word/Philadelphia Freedom/Blue Eyes/I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues/Kiss The Bride/Too Low For Zero/I'm Still Standing ENCORES: Your Song/Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting/Goodbye Yellow Brick Road/Crocodile Rock/Medley: Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On/I Saw Her Standing There/Twist And Shout
37) Iron Maiden/Twisted Sister (Monday, December 17, 1984—Kemper Arena) Ticket price: Free
I had no idea I would even be attending this concert until about two hours beforehand, when my friend Tom called to inform me that he’d somehow snagged some free tickets for it. I was rather torn about attending at first because I had a final exam the next day, plus missing "Monday Night Football" on TV was sacrilege to me back then. Also, I wasn’t terribly familiar with Iron Maiden’s material at that time, other than "Run To The Hills", thus I was suddenly put into the following quandary: "Whadda you wanna DO with your night?!?" But, since I really liked Twisted Sister, and since you can never beat free tickets, I said "I Wanna Rock!", and we attended. Turned out to be a pretty good move, too.
In spite of being the opening act, Twisted Sister’s stage set was pretty much like what you saw in their video for "We're Not Gonna Take It" with the chain-link fence, etc. The way they played, you’d have thought they were the headliners too, as Dee Snider and the boys were well-received by the relatively small crowd—about 6,000 as I recall. Their set was great, but I did have issues near the end when Snider was trying to get the crowd all worked-up and make noise, etc., and he pointed out some guy in the crowd standing with his arms folded and Snider began berating him for being a wimp and not getting into the show. I think it’s very uncool when performers try to bully their audience like that. I myself was usually pretty passive and stoic during concerts, and preferred to just kick back and soak the whole show in, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t truly into it. Sorry, Dee, but I’ll enjoy the show in my own way—I don’t need to be told what to do! In spite of all that, I do like Dee Snider a lot, and TS played a damn good set that night. Too bad that band didn’t have a longer shelf-life…
When Iron Maiden’s stage set was revealed, I was already impressed with them before they even played a note. Their stage was an Egyptian-themed motif to match the cover of their new Powerslave album, and it seemed even more massive than a Kiss stage set. And even though I was unfamiliar with most of the songs they played, I was impressed with their musicianship, especially bassist Steve Harris, who might well be the fastest bass player in the world. Singer/screamer Bruce Dickinson was pretty good too, and I remember the standout songs that night were "2 Minutes 2 Midnight" off the new album, as well as "The Number Of The Beast" and the encore "Run To The Hills". And then of course, there was IM’s ever-present 20-foot-high mascot Eddie, who dropped in during the middle of the act for a visit. I was impressed enough that I picked up Powerslave shortly afterwards, and while to this day I have trouble getting into some of Iron Maiden’s mythical and/or gothic subject matter in their songs, I do like the testosterony-ness of their music. Not a bad concert for free, either!
38) Kiss/Queensryche (Wednesday, December 26, 1984—Municipal Auditorium) Ticket price: $12.50
When Tom and I first saw Kiss in 1979, we had back row tickets at Municipal Auditorium. The second time we saw them in ’83, we upgraded to the loge section about halfway between those back row seats and the stage. For our third sojourn with The Hottest Band In The World, we upgraded all the way to the second fucking row at stage left—for a whopping $12.50 a ticket, no less! Hell, $12.50 won’t even cover the damn convenience fee for second-row Kiss tickets today. I was stunned to snag such phenomenal tickets after only waiting in line for about three hours at the old Love Records store in Midtown K.C. (remember them, friends?). As we came to find out later, though, second-row seats aren’t necessarily what they’re cracked up to be because between sets during the inevitable rushing of the stage by the people behind us, our chairs got so scrambled around that I wound up standing parts of three different ones and sharing them with other people the rest of the night. My ankles were killing me the next day, too. By the way, is it just me, or does Paul Stanley look as if he's about to puke his guts out in the above photo?!?
In addition to Tom, for this concert I also had a new co-pilot, my first-ever girlfriend, Lisa #1 (there was a Lisa #2 a few years later, hence the distinction), to whom I had just lost my virginity two nights earlier on Christmas Eve. We’d been seeing each other about three months, and being the good boyfriend that I was, I invited her to the concert even though she was more of a Country music fan, and didn’t know squat about Kiss. If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t have brought Lisa along, because she didn’t have a very good time, which I couldn’t really fault her for—second row at a Kiss concert with Gene Simmons and his tongue hovering over her was probably not the best way to break in a Rock concert rookie! It also didn’t help that because of the stage-rushing chair scramblefest, she wound up about arm’s length from me and we never could get that close to each other until the show ended. Truth to tell, Lisa and I didn’t have much of a relationship anyway, one that can be succinctly summed up by a classic Bob Seger lyric: "I used her, she used me—but neither one cared." Not real proud of that, but at least I'm being honest. And I digress…
As for the show itself, it weren’t too shabby. This was Kiss’ Animalize tour, but since they didn’t play here on the truncated Lick It Up tour with the dearly-departed Vinnie Vincent the year before, there was plenty of new stuff for them to play. As was the case on the Creatures Of The Night tour, we got acquainted with yet another new lead guitar player for Kiss, and it wasn’t even the one we were expecting. The late Mark St. John, who replaced Vincent for the Animalize LP, was unable to perform because of an arthritic condition called Reiter’s Syndrome, so Bruce Kulick was brought in to temporarily fill in for him. St. John’s condition never improved, and young master Kulick took over permanently. While not very animated on stage, Bruce was/is a damn good guitar player, and he served this band well for the next 11 years. Meantime, Eric Carr was really hitting his stride as a drummer by this point in his career, and his solo was even longer and more powerful than the last time, with his drum riser even going mobile toward the front edge of the stage. Gene and Paul even threw "Little Caesar" a couple bones by letting him sing lead vocals on both "Young And Wasted" and "Black Diamond".
Oh yeah, there was this other new wrinkle, too—this was the first time we saw Kiss in concert without make-up, and while the look was definitely different, the show was still pure Kiss, and they were just as good without the white stuff as they ever were with it. Minus the platform boots, the guys were much freer to romp around the stage, plus it was plenty loud, there was still plenty of pyro, and seeing them up close was a special thrill, in spite of being twisted like a pretzel while standing on the seats. You could literally "feel my heat" during the chorus of "Heaven’s On Fire" when the flashpots lit up—it felt like my eyebrows had been singed! We were even close enough that I could see the seam on the side of Gene’s leather pants was about to bust open at mid-thigh. This was also the tour that Gene wore that blatantly-obvious wig (see "Young And Wasted" video) to conceal the haircut he’d gotten for his recent role in Tom Selleck’s action flick Runaway. I never understood what he needed the wig for—it’s not like he got a crew cut or anything. His hair wasn’t all that much shorter than it was during the Music From The Elder era three years earlier, and he didn’t have a problem performing live with that hair length. By show’s end, Gene’s perspiration made that damn rug looked like a drowned rat!
Speaking of show’s end, there was a rather curious occurrence before the encore as Paul Stanley thanked the crowd, when these two guys emerged onto the stage from the shadows—it was none other than Robin Zander and Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick. Paul whirled around and exclaimed, "Hey—it’s Cheap Trick!" and the pair came out and waved to the crowd while Gene mockingly sang, "Surrender—Surrender, but don’t give yourselves away…" then just like that, they disappeared into the night. Don’t know what they were even doing there—Cheap Trick had no concerts in the area then that I was aware of—but damned if this wasn’t a great missed opportunity for a fun little jam session. Just as well, I guess, I’ve read that Kiss were lousy jammers, Gene and Paul especially. Anyway, if you want a real good taste of post-make-up live Kiss, I highly recommend the Animalize Live Uncensored video, which was taped about three weeks prior to this show. It’s out on DVD now, and my copy even has Spanish subtitles—Viva el Beso! It’s one of Kiss’ better live recordings, and Eric Carr’s drum solo here is phenomenal.
Queensryche opened the show with a fairly lackluster set. This was long before they got big, and I’ve always had trouble getting in this band. Although I liked parts of 1990’s Empire, I was pretty turned-off by all their pseudo-intellectual psychobabble—dudes, this is Heavy Metal, not Quantum Physics class!
THE SET LIST: Detroit Rock City/Cold Gin/Creatures Of The Night/Fits Like A Glove/Heaven's On Fire/Under The Gun/War Machine/Young And Wasted/I Love It Loud/I Still Love You/Love Gun/Lick It Up/Black Diamond ENCORE: Rock And Roll All Nite
39) Deep Purple/Giuffria (Wednesday, February 13, 1985—Kemper Arena) Ticket price: $13.50
One album that got a tad more than a few spins on my turntable during my Fall ‘84 semester at UMKC was Deep Purple’s reunion album Perfect Strangers. This was one of those rare times when once-estranged members of a major band reunited and more or less picked up where they left off, and it was one of my favorite records of the year. The subsequent concert tour was quite successful as well.
During the Winter ’85 semester, I had an evening class on Wednesdays, so we arrived just as the opening act Giuffria (a Gene Simmons discovery) was doing their encore, their one and only hit "Call To Your Heart", so I can’t really comment on their set. I only recall that they had really really big hair!
Purple’s set was quite good, although not nearly as loud as their legend cracked them up to be. The set list was about half new stuff and half old stuff, and both sets of stuff were very good. The only one of the old songs I could’ve done without was the long and drawn-out "Child In Time", especially since singer Ian Gillan couldn’t scream it like he used to. Beyond that, he was in great voice, and as I remember was fairly jovial with his between-song patter. He even worked in a bit of an inside joke during one song with the line "I don’t want to drink your poison" from his role as Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar several years earlier. The new songs that really stood out were "Knockin' At Your Back Door" and "Nobody's Home", a personal DP favorite of mine. Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore had a much better night this time than he did with Rainbow at Arrowhead in ’82 (see "Concert Trek"—Episode 3), and much to my surprise, he was even willing to play "Smoke On The Water" which he’d developed a pretty healthy aversion to after playing it so many times over the years. The other standout on this night was Jon Lord on the keyboards as he did his trademark rocking of his organ (no, not that organ!) back and forth, and his extended solo was accompanied by an animated rockin' Ludwig van Beethoven on the rear-projection screen.
I came away from this show with a pretty good impression of this band. While it wasn’t quite Made In Japan-ish, it was a pretty good concert, anyway, and I still can’t fathom why these guys aren’t in the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame.
40) Kiss/W.A.S.P. (Saturday, January 25, 1986—Municipal Auditorium) Ticket price: $14.00
After attending 39 concerts from June, 1979 to February, 1985, I’m a bit stumped as to why I went nearly an entire year without going to any. I'm not sure if there just weren’t any good tours during that time, or if it was money or school or work or what. One factor was quite possibly the 1985 Kansas City Royals, as I went to quite a few ballgames during that magical champeenship season, plus Tom and I took a pretty lengthy vacation in August too, which could at least partially account for the lack of concert-going on my part that year. And of course, Animotion and A-ha never made it to town, either...d'oh!!
Anyway, it was back to the good ‘ol Aud again for yet another Kiss show. After our slightly harrowing experience in the second row in ’84, Tom and I retreated back to the relative safety of the loge section for this one. For the first time, we saw the same Kiss band lineup for two consecutive shows, as they toured in support of their new album, the underrated (even by the band itself) Asylum. I was very disappointed that Kiss chose to only play two songs off the new album ("Tears Are Falling" and "Uh! All Night") when there were several good ones to choose from like "Any Way You Slice It" and "King Of The Mountain". They also tried throwing in a cover version of The Who’s "Won’t Get Fooled Again" that came off rather flat. The stage set was also not one of my favorites, featuring their new gargantuan light-up Kiss logo that had multi-colored lights within the framework of the letters. [Memo to G. Simmons: Bigger isn’t necessarily better!] The stage was also flanked by yellow staircases shaped like lightning bolts that extended out toward the audience on the sides, but the band hardly used them. Bruce Kulick said later that he hated those stairs because he kept roughing up his knees on them. Oh, and then there were those gawd-awful day-glo get-ups the guys wore on that tour. Even Simmons admits total ignorance for his fashion faux-pas: "I looked like a drag queen!" At least his hair was real this time. In spite of all that, it was a good show, but hardly a great one.
As I did when Motley Crue opened for Ozzy, I was very interested to see this latest outrageous opening act, W.A.S.P. Their stage set-up was festooned with 3-D likenesses of the four band members’ heads on bloody stakes, but that’s about as outrageous as they got, as I’m sure Kiss politely asked them to water down their act for this tour. Still, I was still fairly impressed with Blackie Lawless and the boys, who were kind of a cross between Motley Crue and Twisted Sister. "L.O.V.E. Machine" and "Blind In Texas" were the highlights of their set, and Blackie scored a few points with the crowd (and me) when he said, "Come on, make some noise, Kansas City—you got the best fuckin’ baseball team now!"
One other aside—this was the only other concert besides Styx in ’81 that I can recall being physically ill at. I felt okay to start with, but started coming down with something as the show wore on, and I was laid up with some kind of virus the next day during Super Bowl XX as the Bears pummeled the Patriots. My fever finally broke the following Tuesday morning, right about the same time as the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In other words, it was a rather eventful time...
THE SET LIST: Detroit Rock City/Fits Like A Glove/Cold Gin/Uh! All Night/Young And Wasted/Heaven's On Fire/I Love It Loud/I Still Love You/War Machine/Love Gun/Lick It Up ENCORES: Tears Are Falling/Won't Get Fooled Again/Rock And Roll All Nite
For those of you just joining in, this is not a countdown, but rather a chronological anthology of every concert I've ever attended. And believe it or not, I'm barely even a third of the way through...
31) Genesis (Sunday, January 29, 1984—Kemper Arena) Ticket price: $11.50
I had always heard a lot of good things about Genesis in concert prior to seeing them, both aurally and visually, and those rumors were quite true. Their self-titled 1983 album was still high on the charts and the videos from it were all over MTV around the first of the year. With no opening act, it was all Genesis, and they put on a very good show, indeed, and this was my first and only indoor concert to ever have a weather-related delay.
The set list was pretty much filled out by songs from their three most recent albums, Genesis, Abacab and Duke, with a couple from the ‘70s thrown in like "Follow You, Follow Me" and "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway". In addition to the core trio of Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks, the band was augmented by guitarist/bassist Darryl Stuermer and drummer Chester Thompson, both of whom are excellent musicians who don’t get a whole lot of ink. Collins spent about half the show singing up front and the other half behind the drums, while Stuermer and Rutherford traded off playing bass and six-string guitar and Tony Banks manned his phalanx of keyboards. Highlights included "Mama" and "Home By The Sea" from the new record, as well as "Abacab" and "Turn It On Again".
Another potential highlight was dashed about a minute into "Illegal Alien", when the arena went totally dark briefly and the emergency lights came on. It was windy as all get-out that night, and one of the transformers near Kemper Arena evidently blew its top, causing a momentary power outage. The band left the stage and someone from the arena staff came on to reassure the crowd that it was a house problem and that everything was okay. After about a ten-minute delay, Genesis returned and Phil Collins grumbled about the "great electrical system you have in this town", and instead of restarting "Illegal Alien" (a favorite of mine), they launched into the ever-droning "Misunderstanding" (not a particularly big favorite of mine).
In spite of that blemish, it was a fine show with outstanding audio, and Genesis employed one of the best light shows I’ve ever seen, apart from maybe Kiss and the Rolling Stones. Even from the nosebleed seats on the stage right side at a severe angle, the view was spectacular. As good as they were, for whatever reason, I never have seen Genesis in concert since.
32) Ozzy Osbourne/Motley Crue (Saturday, February 11, 1984—Municipal Auditorium) Ticket price: $12.50
My first concert encounter with the Ozz-Man, as well as this upstart band Motley Crue that reminded me a lot of Kiss—this turned out to be a terrific double-bill.
The Crue opened with a nice, tight 45-minute set that featured their second LP, Shout At The Devil. Motley Crue wasn’t quite as outrageous as I was expecting them to be—Ozzy’s camp probably made them tone down their act—but I was fairly impressed anyway. Oddly enough, I haven’t seen them in concert since, and I’ve heard very iffy reviews about their subsequent tours, especially their most recent ones.
This was Ozzy’s first tour with guitarist Jake E. Lee, who replaced the late Randy Rhoads for Bark At The Moon, and he acquitted himself quite well. While not quite as flashy as Rhoads, he was still a standout, and handled the inevitable comparisons to his late predecessor pretty well. This was also my first look at drummer Tommy Aldridge, whose work in Black Oak Arkansas in the ‘70s I enjoyed very much—this guy is a primo basher on the skins, on which he even uses his bare hands during his drum solos! If memory serves, I believe Bob Daisley was the bassist on this tour, as Rudy Sarzo had left Ozzy’s band the year before to join Quiet Riot, and Don Airey played the keyboards.
Meantime, Ozzy was Ozzy, ambling around the stage all night exhorting the crowd to make noise. There was no bat-biting on this night, of course, but he put on a surprisingly good show anyway. One highlight was "Centre Of Eternity" (great song, btw) when these guys dressed like monks carrying candles wandered on stage during the song’s mournful intro chant with the bell tolling, creating a rather ominous scene that fit the mood of the evening perfectly. Outside it was unseasonably warm that night, and the area was in a Tornado Watch when we arrived—a rarity around these parts in mid-February.
I was a bit disappointed there were no lazers in this show like I’d seen Ozzy use on prior shows on MTV, but they weren’t really needed, I guess. Much was made about Ozzy’s new song "So Tired" being his first slow ballad (how quickly everyone forgot "Changes" from Black Sabbath’s Vol. 4), and there was a lot of speculation about whether or not he’d do the song live. He didn’t—they merely played the album track on the PA when the lights came up at the show’s end. The rest of the set was filled with Ozzy’s biggies, like "Flying High Again", "Crazy Train" and "Paranoid", as well as new stuff like "Bark At The Moon" and "Rock ‘N’ Roll Rebel". I was hoping he’d do two others from Bark that I really liked, "Slow Down" and "Waiting For Darkness", but we can’t have everything, now can we? Overall though, it was a pretty good (and loud) night of Rock ‘N’ Roll.
33) Van Halen/The Velcros (Wednesday, June 20, 1984—Kemper Arena) Ticket price: $13.50
Another fun show, as Van Halen managed to put up a pretty good public front that made things seem like business as usual, but as we found out later, the rifts in the band were beginning to form. By this time, David Lee Roth insisted on arriving at gigs separately from the rest of the band and have his own dressing room, etc., and he and his ego were becoming intolerable to deal with. Little did we know this would be our fourth and final round in concert with Diamond Dave as VH’s frontman.
The stage itself for this tour was Van Halen’s biggest and sleekest yet, complete with plenty of room to romp, stacks and stacks of speakers and amps, and the ever-present gym mat in front of Alex Van Halen’s drum riser for DLR’s jump landings. Apart from "Hot For Teacher" and "Panama", I thought the stuff on 1984 was pretty weak, and my dislike for "Jump" is well-noted on this blog. Fortunately, VH didn’t lean all that heavy on their new record, and the setlist covered their entire career to that point. The highlight of the night was during the encores when a huge cake in honor of bassist Michael Anthony’s birthday was paraded onto the stage, and a major league food fight ensued, as the boys trashed the stage with the cake. I can’t remember if it was Eddie Van Halen or Anthony, but one of them damn near fell on their ass while slipping on some cake.
VH also continued their time-honored tradition of bringing along another nameless, faceless band to open the show. This time the honor went to the nondescript Velcros. The only thing I recall about them is one of the guys resembled the late Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy. Beyond that, fuhgeddaboudit!
34) The Jacksons/Chris Bliss (Saturday, July 7, 1984—Arrowhead Stadium) Ticket price: $28.00
Remember all the uproar Michael Jackson and his brothers caused when they announced their Victory tour, and that you had to buy four tickets via mail order, and they were 28 bucks a pop? Remember how outraged everyone was at the exorbitant ticket price and strident ordering system? Remember how they tried to justify the ticket price by saying that Broadway shows charged $50 bucks a pop at the time, so this was a bargain by comparison? Remember when Michael Jackson was still a good-looking black guy? Well, one almost longs for those days now, since $28 for concert tickets would be a fucking steal today, and Michael Jackson has been replaced by a walking-talking child-molesting zombie!
The eyes of the world were focused on Kansas City that weekend, as The Jacksons kicked off their much-anticipated Victory tour with a three-night stand at Arrowhead Stadium. Not since Raquel Welch starred in Kansas City Bomber had this town received so much attention! Okay, I’m just kidding there. I really wasn’t too keen on forking over $28 to Michael and his bros., but my friend Tom went ahead and sent off for tickets anyway, and damned if we didn’t get some for the second night, so I attended "under protest".
As good as my memory is, and for all the anticipation and build-up, you’d think I’d remember more about this concert than I do. That’s not to say it was a bad show at all—it was a very good concert, but for whatever reason, I’m having trouble dialing up too many details about it. I do remember the set list was about half-Jacksons and half-Michael solo stuff, and MJ danced his ass off all night. "Billie Jean", "Beat It" and "Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground)" were high points, but that’s about all I remember. Oh wait, I also remember Tito Jackson sported a shirt with his first name in big letters on the front, but his guitar strap covered up the ‘O’! That’s about it, really, apart from walking away feeling like I’d seen a good concert, but still hardly worth the kind of money they were charging.
Instead of a music act, the Jacksons opted to have comedian Chris Bliss open the show for them. His act had one distinctive feature—a juggling finale bit he did under black light to make the objects glow in the dark and set to the tune of The Beatles’ "Carry That Weight/The End". The only reason I remember this is because I saw the same comedian doing the same bit at one of the comedy clubs a few years later...
35) The Go-Go's/Red Rockers (Friday, September 7, 1984--Sandstone Amphitheater) Ticket price: $11.00
My first concert outside of the state of Missouri was also my first visit to one of my least-favorite concert venues, the newly-opened Sandstone Amphitheater near Bonner Springs, Kansas. I was very underwhelmed by the Spartan-like amenities of the place, not to mention the crappy sightlines from the lawn area we were camped out in. At least the lawn came in handy during the opening act, Red Rockers (of "China" fame)—it enabled me to stretch out and take a nap during their lame performance!
In what turned out to be The Go-Go's final tour before breaking up (the first time), they were actually touring on a much better album (Talk Show) than the last time we saw them in '82, but the spark just wasn't quite there anymore. I've watched concert videos from this same tour, and although it wasn't readily apparent then, the strains of touring were beginning to tear the group apart, and it was a case of too much, too soon. This wasn't a bad show, mind you, but overall it was just okay. Some things just aren't meant to last.
I heard it said somewhere that for anything in life to be successful, there must be the right balance of light and dark, soft and hard, quiet and loud, etc., and so it goes with my music collection. For every Motorhead, Ted Nugent, Black Sabbath and Kiss on the dark/hard/loud side of my music spectrum, there are equal parts ABBA, Partridge Family, Bread and The Carpenters on my light/soft/quiet side, and the latter duo is the subject of this blog entry.
