I think I still prefer the "Fame"/"Fame Monster" songs. All this hullabaloo reminds me of the protests Madonna used to get whenever she tried to tour Southeast Asia or Italy. It's the same old usual suspects protesting and puffing themselves up in false outrage. Glad to see nothing's changed in the last 20-30 years...except that more children were raped under the guise of religion.

Man, if I was in Blighty I'd take you up on your offer in a New York minute! But I'm not...sorry I can't help you out Henry. But I urge anyone who is in the UK to take henrybonzo up on his offer. The new Jack White album is a good one and he's got a cracker of a band with him...all girls, including a violin player, and can play as well as being easy on the eyes. He plays White Stripes chestnuts as well as Raconteurs and Dead Weather songs amongst his new songs. When I saw him at the Mayan April 30, he opened with "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" and the crowd went apeshit when he played "Hotel Yorba". If you're thinking of going, don't hesitate...just GO!!!

Drats! There goes my chance for an A+.

After nearly 20 years the LA Kings are back in only their second Stanley Cup Finals!!! Plus, went to a good concert tonight.

I hope you are talking about the 1976 original "Bad News Bears" and not the lame remake from a few years ago. It's Buttermaker...although I think one of the kids calls him Boilermaker in reference to his drinking. "Bad News Bears" is one of the most awesome-est movies ever...especially if you're a kid. The kids all actually LOOK like kids and not the typical prettified kid clones Hollywood usually casts in movies. All hail Jackie Earle Hailey! Who actually has been having a career resurgence lately...he's in the new "Dark Shadows". The kid who cracked me up the most when I was a kid(I was 14 when the film came out) was Tanner...he didn't take shit from nobody, haha! Tanner: "Hey Yankees...you can take your apology and your trophy and shove 'em straight up your ass!" Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal had great chemistry together and let's not forget the late great Vic Morrow as the opposing coach. I loved this movie when I was a kid and I love it still today. I have had the pleasure of introducing my nieces and godson to the pleasures of the "Bad News Bears" and when my nephew gets old enough, I'll turn him on to it, too. A right fucking classic!

Lots of live Spiritualized, including the great Live at the Royal Albert Hall cd. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfgTlbdZzTQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

May 22: SPIRITUALIZED @ Wiltern Theatre! After Brian Jonestown Massacre, another trippy band comes to the Wiltern to exorcise the bad vibes left behind after the recent Creed/Live concert at the venue. Spiritualized is one of my favourite British bands from the past 20 years...the post-Nirvana, or if you're British, the post-Stone Roses era. This will be my 10th Spiritualized show...but my first one sober. No drugs or drink for me tonight. One of my favourite quotes by anyone is this one from Spiritualized leader Jason Pierce: "We take drugs to make music to take drugs to".

Post #13: "STAR WARS" ARRIVES...ONE MORE MONTH TO GO DATE: Saturday May 21, 1977 It had now been 110 days since we bought our Led Zeppelin tickets for the run of Forum shows that long ago day in January. And there was still a month to go before June 21 arrived! Almost half a year would pass between the time of purchasing the tickets and the concert transpiring. That is a helluva long wait for anybody, let alone a 15-year old. I was constantly nervous and paranoid about the concerts...would something happened to the band on tour? Would the dates be postponed again? Would I lose the tickets...or misplace them? Never before or since have I had to safekeep concert tickets for 5 freaking months. Have you? It's positively nerve-wracking. The other nerve-wracking thing with the wait, was having to make sure I kept my nose clean so as not to fuck up and get grounded and miss the Led Zeppelin shows. No parties, no sneaking out to shows on school nights...in fact, I curtailed my extra-curricular activities quite a bit in the months before the Zep concerts. I didn't want to give my stepmother any excuse to ruin my summer. But I wasn't a complete hermit. Fortunately there were a few good shows scheduled on the weekends that I could get permission to attend. I believe the last concert I posted about on this thread was the April 1 Runaways/ Cheap Trick show. I'll take the opportunity now to catch you up on the timeline since then. Friday April 15, 1977 Iggy Pop w/ Blondie @ Santa Monica Civic Having been a fan of The Stooges, I was already interested in seeing Iggy's first tour since the "Raw Power" days. But when word came out that David Bowie was playing keyboards on the tour, this concert became a must! "The Idiot" had been released a couple months prior...to almost no mainstream radio airplay...and I knew that Bowie was involved in the album's production. But playing in Iggy's band? That was a trip. The album was okay...not as good as any of the Stooges records but it featured "Funtime", "Nightclubbing" and "China Girl", which David Bowie later covered to much success. In my opinion, it would be the next album, "Lust for Life", released later in 1977, that would firmly establish Iggy's comeback. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anyone who wanted to go to the show...and I needed a ride. At the last minute I cajoled my dad into giving me a ride. The Santa Monica Civic wasn't sold out, and it was far from full for Blondie's opening set. I had just recently seen Blondie open for the Ramones at the Whisky, and nothing I saw this second time changed my opinion of them. If it wasn't for the presence of Debbie Harry, there wasn't anything of note about them. Iggy, however, was Iggy...and well worth the wait. Mixing in a few choice Stooges cuts amongst the songs from "The Idiot", Iggy spastically rubber-banded around the stage from beginning to end. If the overall effect and sound of the band wasn't as corruscatingly charged and warped as a Stooges show, Iggy was still a magnetic and feral presence on stage. Oh, Bowie handled his keyboard and backup vocals with aplomb, but another interesting tidbit about Iggy's band on this tour was that it featured the Sales brothers, Tony and Hunt, on bass and drums respectively. Tony and Hunt have played with lots of people over the years...Todd Rundgren was probably their first gig of note...but if you're of a certain age, you recognize the name Sales from their father, comedian Soupy Sales, who I would always see pop up on television in the 60s and 70s. I never really found him to be funny, and I doubt anybody under 50 recognizes his name. Saturday April 16, 1977 Television @ Whisky a Go-Go The good news about this show was that I was able to cross another "New York" band off my list. I had already seen the New York Dolls, Patti Smith, and the Ramones in previous years, and 1977 had offered up Blondie and Television so far. The Talking Heads would come to L.A. later in the year. I had read rave reviews(including Nick Kent's famous one in N.M.E.) of Television's debut "Marquee Moon", which convinced me to buy the album a week or so after its release. It took a while for me to get used to the vocals, but what was instantly clear from the opening track "See No Evil" was that both Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd were better than your average punk guitarist. More importantly, their approach to riffs and solos and texture was so refreshing and different than the usual blues-rock cliches that were getting stale by 1977. These guys were definitely more arty and cerebral than the Ramones or the English punk bands...which wasn't always a good thing. But they had guitar solos, which made it easier to convince an older friend who had a car to go to the show. There was another lure for my friend...one of those new-fangled punk bands that everyone was hearing and talking about, but few in the U.S. had actually seen. You see, originally the opening band was supposed to be The Damned...one of the original English punk bands. In fact, it was the Damned and not the Sex Pistols who released the first punk record and were the first punk band from the UK to play the U.S. Aa a kid who for the past year voraciously read all the stories coming out of the U.K. about these "punk" bands, I was highly anticipating my chance to see an actual live UK punk band in the flesh. Would they spit on the audience? I realize that this sounds dopey in hindsight, but I was 15...whaddya expect. Television and the Damned were scheduled to play 4 nights at the Whisky...Thursday April 14 thru Sunday April 17. Since Friday was already taken by the Iggy show, Saturday was the only night I could go. Well, we get to the Whisky Saturday night only to find the Damned aren't on the bill. No explanation given either...at least nothing more than vague excuses. Right off the bat, my spirit was a little deflated. I had been curious about the English punk scene for so long and felt superior to my MOR schlock-loving classmates because I was gonna finally get a peek at one of these supposed scourges of society. But no...no Damned. Instead we got...hmmm, I'm not entirely sure who we got as the opening band. Probably The Quick...they seemingly opened for EVERYBODY in 1977, especially at the Whisky. So, being a little annoyed about the Damned's no-show, I reminded myself that I was still getting to see Television...and I was spending a night away from my annoying stepmother, which was always a plus. I'd love to say Television knocked my socks off...and indeed, there were moments that gave me goose-bumps. "Marquee Moon" for example was all I wanted it to be and more...guitars ringing in my ears for days. But their stage presence left a lot to be desired, and the vocals were definitely an acquired taste. I don't know exactly why...but I was kind of expecting more, you know...like I was going to be blown away. And I wasn't. Still liked the album, though. Later I found out that Television had kicked the Damned off the tour...apparently the band had offended Television's delicate sensibilities. After much last-minute scrambling, the Damned were offered two nights at the Starwood club the following week, April 18-19. Unfortunately those were school nights so I couldn't go. Damn Damn Damn! Yes, this was the same Starwood where Van Halen and Quiet Riot played early gigs, along with many of the first wave of LA punk bands. It has a seedy backstory thanks to its Eddie Nash connection...which I will expound upon when I have more time. But among its pluses was the fact that it was all-ages. Sadly, now it's a mini-mall. Saturday May 7, 1977 Pink Floyd @ Anaheim Stadium This will probably ruffle some feathers...good thing Electrophile isn't here to see this...but this was one of the most dreary, soulless concerts I've had the displeasure of seeing. And it had nothing to do with the rain. Pink Floyd was playing two nights at Anaheim Stadium(baseball stadium for the California Angels), a first for any band...me and my friend and some stoner pals of his went to the second night. It was a rainy weekend in May, but most of it stopped by the time Pink Floyd began playing. Still, it was wet enough to think about heading into the stands for shelter...the stands were reserved seating while the field was general admission...but we stuck it out on the field for most of the show. I think I retreated to the stands during intermission. I'd had enough of the animals in the crowd. Yes, this was the "Animals" tour...which is not exactly my favourite Pink Floyd album. Musically it is boring in many stretches...about 5 minutes of good ideas stretched to a 18 minute snooze-fest. Thematically, the idea of taking on Orwell's "Animal Farm" is intriguing, but in actuality it comes across as a cold and remote subject. It's a hard album to wrap your arms around. Which, given Roger Waters increasingly misanthropic manner, was probably the point. But apart from the fact that I disliked "Animals", I still was looking forward to the concert. I hadn't seen Pink Floyd since the first time I saw them at the Hollywood Bowl in 1972. They played a bunch of stuff I hadn't heard of, which we later discovered was their yet-to-be-released new album "Dark Side of the Moon", and a second set of their early glories: Echoes, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Careful with that Axe, Eugene and more. It was a great show and the special effects enhanced the concert without overshadowing the music. I missed the April 1975 Sports Arena shows due to being grounded for three months. These shows became infamous when the LAPD went crazy arresting hundreds and hundreds of kids at the concerts...Pink Floyd and lots of other bands vowed never to play the Sports Arena again. Oh, and the people that went to the '75 concerts also talked about the plane crash. Anyways, I did like Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here...even if I thought the tempos were getting a little sluggish. I didn't think Nick Mason was all that great a drummer. So I was hoping to hear copious amounts of both albums at the Anaheim Stadium show, along with the "Animals" material. Well, as it turned out, the '77 setlist was the "Animals" album played first, an intermission, then "Wish You Were Here" in its entirety, followed by an encore of "Money". The sound suffered the usual problems that plagued outdoor shows...the quality, loudness and depth of the sound came and went with the wind and the elements. Sometimes you could hear the vocals, othertimes not. And even with the addition of Snowy White on second guitar, along with Dick Parry on sax, the sound was lacking a physical presence. It certainly wasn't a force like the Who show the previous year at the Stadium. Which helped give the Pink Floyd concert rhis cold, distant feeling. Not to mention, the demeanor of the band itself, which seemed as if they would have preferred being anywhere else that night. But then, Pink Floyd never was a band that gave the impression of enjoying playing on stage. I could go on and on...but I'd rather not at the moment. I'll just say that it was this concert and subsequent Pink Floyd interviews that led me to reevaluate my feelings about Pink Floyd and their music's place in my life. The pig catching fire and burning up was pretty amusing I must admit. Saturday May 21, 1977 "Star Wars" @ Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood The movie had come out the day before on May 20, but my dad wanted to take us to see it at the Chinese Theatre, so we waited for the weekend to make a day of it. The 70s was a decade full of films that became huge social and cultural events...each one pushing the envelope further and further regarding what a "blockbuster" meant money-wise and how long people would stand in line for a movie. There was "Love Story" in 1970, "The Godfather" in 1972, "The Exorcist" in 1973...and even "Deep Throat". But the stakes really changed when "Jaws" broke the $200 million barrier in 1975. When "Star Wars" followed in 1977, the transformation of the idea of a "summer blockbuster" was complete. Henceforth, the studios pretty much abandoned the adult-market during the summer to focus on catering to kids and their repeat-business. That's what I remember most about "Star Wars" that year...the constant and endless lines of people waiting to buy tickets and then waiting to get in the theatre. Theatres were screening the film nearly round-the-clock...I think the first screening at the Chinese was at 8 am. In fact, so many of the showings were sold out in advance, we had to get tickets for a late-night screening. We ended up walking around Hollywood and then had dinner at the Tick-Tock restaurant on Cahuenga Blvd. They had a great turkey dinner and to-die-for cinnamon rolls. "Star Wars" was pretty nifty, a fun popcorn movie. But to tell you the truth, 1977 will always be remembered by me more for "Annie Hall" than "Star Wars". "Annie Hall" had a much more profound effect on my life than "Star Wars". I saw "Star Wars" about 8 times that year...I saw "Annie Hall" around 20 times. But one lasting effect "Star Wars" did have was that it provided me with a way to describe Jimmy Page's theremin part of his guitar solo on the '77 tour. I always said it sounded like a light saber battle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHQAE5PGeM8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Not a particularly big Joe Bonamassa fan, but I liked what he played during the Freddy King tribute segment at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year.

No. THAT would be the Allman Brothers Band.

Only thing worse than an Eagles thread is a Journey thread, hehehe.

Anyone that gets the Muslims upset is okay by me. 'Atta girl Lady GaGa!

Well, it's been ages since I've checked this thread...seems there's a lot of unhappiness I've missed. I'll try to touch all the bases. FOOL IN THE RAIN: My first thoughts immediately went to poor little Leo...so young to get the pox. I'm relieved to read in your follow-up posts that the little grommet is doing better. Must be the Aussie toughness in him. And did I read this right: BD doing chores? Has the world flipped its axis?!? ALLY: I sort of knew you had back troubles but I had no idea the extent of the hip and back pain you've been suffering, my man. I feel bad for you having to go through this, and henceforth will spare you any of my sarcastic and caustic remarks. Hope the medical experts find you relief soon. MAJOR MAJOR: The man so deaf you have to call his name twice. As you can see, you'll still get a dose of my sarcasm...but being a Brit, I know you can take it. But egads my lad...mum-in-law squatting while the wifey's away?!? Sounds like a plot to have her spy on you to make sure you don't have a bird or two in the bush as well as the hand. Try some arsenic in her soup. That'll get rid of the old git, hehe. Tongue firmly in cheek, of course. JANGLES: More mommy troubles. Since my mother has been out of my life since I was 5, and my two subsequent stepmothers are also absent(one by choice, the other by suicide), that is one problem I am blessedly free from. But you have my sympathy, Jangles. I don't know how old you are, but if you're under 18, just try to survive until you graduate and then you'll be free. Good luck to you all...may your unhappiness be short-lived.

Mayve if it was 1976-77. I have a bootleg video of Stereolab playing the Cat's Cradle in 1996, and henceforth, I've always been curious about the place and hope to eventually see a show there. We are now in the 5th month of the year and I have only seen 10 concerts...I must be slowing down in my old age. Fortunately I'm picking up the pace...saw Jack White and his new band The Peacocks play the Mayan the last day of April(amazing as always) and I'm booked for at least 4 concerts this month, beginning tonight. May 12: Brian Jonestown Massacre @ the Wiltern This will be my 13th Brian Jonestown Massacre show. Lucky 13. The last time I saw BJM was 2005 or 2006, when they played a spectacularly psychedelic set, including a nearly 30-minute jam on "Sailor"...and I wasn't even on drugs. So it's been a good long 6 years or so and I'm curious as to how the band sounds now...or even who is in the band( besides Anton of course) given the revolving-door nature of BJM. I just hope Tambourine Man extraordinaire Joel Gion is still manning his post. I don't know anything about the opening band Blue Angel Lounge. But then, it doesn't matter as I am seeing a movie first, then going to the concert, so I will miss the opening bands.

Sounds good but Jagger will probably ask him to lose weight before he can play with the Stones again. Tickets will be $1000.

Got any pics from Hong Kong Juliet or Walter? I've seen the Lady GG three times(2 times on her own and once at a benefit with Yoko Ono), and she does what a pop star is supposed to do: put on a fun and glitzy show. She still comes across as a little too derivative of Madonna sometimes, but Madonna is a little long in the tooth to be "Madonna" these days, so Lady GaGa gives this generation of kids a more viable pop alternative than dreck like Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Katy Perry, Jonas Bros., Justin Bieber, Ke$ha, and Nikki Minaj. I hope to take my nieces when GaGa tours L.A. again. Madonna will always be my #1, though.

Can't wait for both the book and Demme's "Neil Young's Journeys". Neil Young has always remained in my All-time Top 10 while others have fallen...I'm looking at you Pink Floyd and the Doors.

I like the Dirty Mac set. Of course, the Who set was the most memorable for me, but the Stones aren't as bad as Mick feared. I first saw the complete "Rock and Roll Circus" in 1987 at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, as part of a Rock Film Festival that Bill Graham organized. That was also the first time I saw Robert Frank's by-now legendary "Cocksucker Blues"...Mick Jagger sent his personal print for the screening.

Hey now, at least you got to see Tony Iommi in this early version of Jethro Tull. Funny to think how Jethro Tull got the gig because Mick Jagger passed on Led Zeppelin. Mick thought there were enough guitar-heavy groups on the bill already.

Maybe where you lived, but cassettes were in all the cars in Southern California in the 1970s. Hell, go watch "Two-Lane Blacktop", which came out in 1971; Warren Oates plays nothing but cassettes in his GTO. Maxell tapes were everywhere in the 70's...who could forget those great ads? One of the rituals of buying albums in the 70s was along with the record, you would buy some blank Maxell C-60s or C-90s, so you could make copies of the record for the car and for your friends. Where I came from, 8-tracks were not desirable at all...their sound was inferior and they often screwed up the song order and long songs would get spliced into two and so on. 8-tracks were considered car stereos for poor people. Cassettes were better, fidelity-wise and for staying true to the original album's format, than 8-tracks...both in the car and in the home. Growing up, just about every car I remember my folks and friends having, had car stereos with cassette players. I can only recall a couple people who had 8-track players. One was this guy down the street who had a van, and even he replaced his 8-track with a cassette system by 1975. And if you had a Blaupunkt in your car, you truly were the envy of all your friends. That was everyone's dream...to get a Blaupunkt for their car. Or at the very least, an Alpine. Obviously, reel-to-reel trumped both cassette and 8-track for high fidelity, but try hooking up a reel-to-reel in your car.