van halen

van halen
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc

In it's own way, this little gem is far more embarrassing than Danzig.

I know.....that seems off. I mean, Van Halen is royalty. The single most wonderfully talented guitar player of his generation, and one of the great American bands of all time. How on earth could this be more embarrassing than a short little guy who looks like the neighborhood mechanic and spends most of his energy trying to convince everyone that he's evil?

Simple really: This is Hagar-era Van Halen. And Van Hagar was a horrible, horrible facsimile of everything that was awesome about Roth-era Van Halen.

There are people who sometimes try to debate this with me, and I can't even bring myself to form a full argument without losing control. When I think of the VH Roth era, I think of other great American bands like the Ramones and Areosmith and the Allmans.

When I think of the Hagar era, I can't quite think of anything much more impressive than Eddie Money. Or maybe Journey. I think of guys that I can only see as perpetually-middle-aged, slightly paunched, and past the point of being all that interested in groupies and blow. I think of guys that have sobered up, guys who hawk hot sauce, and guys who write weak-ass Buffett-style anthems about tequila.

Why, then, did I go see the Hagar-era Van Halen??

Because my roommates made me.

It was the last week of senior year of college, and my roommates were a pair of guitar nerds. We were all about to go our separate ways, and these guys totally thought that Van Halen at the Spectrum would be a great way to cap off college.

That....and they called the arena the day of the show to see if any tickets had freed up once the stage was constructed to the venue's specs (an old trick, but a very effective one).

Front row, stage left. How on earth was I supposed to turn this down?

So this was the Balance tour, a tour behind an album for which I can't even remember one single. Not one.

Still I can't honestly say that it was a bad night.

It was one of Eddie's first sober tours, and we were actually on his side of the stage. At one point he and I actually made eye contact, and I made some sort of shocked face when our eyes met. Without missing a note, he mimicked my facial expression, grinned, and moved on. It was pretty awesome, I must admit...In fact, I smile anytime I think of that exchange. It was a great, great moment.

At the end of the night, someone threw a hat on the stage, and Sammy Hagar threw it back in the crowd. I caught it and gave it to one of my roommates.

Collective Soul opened, and did a respectable job for themselves.

Somehow, I still find it embarrassing, despite what a wonderful memory it is.

danzig

danzig
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc

OOoh boy. This one's gonna be tough.

Despite a singularly excellent debut album, I probably don't need to tell people why I was roundly mocked for liking Danzig so much. The pageantry, the macho bullshit, the cartoonish satanic imagery, the nods to bear-culture.....it's easy to forget that this guy was at one time, one of the better song-writers to come out of the punk generation, and arguably one of the single best vocalists punk rock vomited up.

Nope. Now he's just the MUUUUTHA!! guy.

Now, I don't quite remember whether this was before or after Beavis and Butthead gave Glenn their endorsement, but needless to say, even the smart kids with Misfits records thought that Danzig was a joke.

Me? Not so much, I guess. I like cartoons. I like scary stuff. I like camp. I like baritone voices. I like loud guitar rock.

And, yeah, yeah, everyone already thought that I was gay in the 90s, so I guess I'll go ahead and say that I like little short guys with big muscles and tattoos, even though I totally just thought that Danzig was just kinda cool and bad-ass, and I never actually wanted to suck his dick as bad an everyone assumed I did.

(Listen, fuck you all, ok!? I was not a particularly masculine individual and maybe I just liked to idealize men who were not as testosertonially challenged as I was. Not that anyone reads this shit, but I'm getting tired of defending myself around here).

Shocker: Ended up going to this one alone because my friend got really sick and I didn't know anyone else who wanted to go. This would be the first in a long string of concerts where I learned that if you're going to insist on having questionable tastes, you're just going to have to go see bands by your damned self.

This was the Danzig IV tour - probably his second-best album since the debut, and a fairly high point for his songcraft, I still believe.

Danzig had just fired Chuck Biscuits and I didn't much care for the new drummer. It took Glenn about one minute into the the first song (Brand New God) to leap into the crowd and start beating on a guy who threw a piece of ice at him.

Danzig is such a 'tard sometimes.

Eerie Von looked like a walking corpse (as advertised in videos and on album photos), and John Christ was stiff but had a pretty awesome guitar sound going.

I also remember that Danzig got his mic cord tangled up under the drum riser during "Long Way Back From Hell" and had a minor tantrum over that for a moment. Literally tug-of-warring the cord while his roadie ran around trying to free it up and looking like he was ready to throw a cup of water in the AC adapter.

"Snakes of Christ" and "Bringer of Death" both sounded good that night.

Type O Negative opened, and they totally delivered on all the underground hype around them. Peter Steele didn't pull and of that macho crap that Danzig was so big on (and that Steele regrettably came to embrace in a similarly homoerotic way), and yet the band was infinitely more scary and intimidating. They looked like complete dirtballs, and their music was loud and thick and layered and sludgy in a very good way (For real, it was an excellent performance, and the acoustics of the theater were very kind to their sound).

These three goth girls in the balcony with me actually shrieked during the intro to "Black # 1". You definitely got the feeling that you were tapping into an upcoming band at the right time.

Of course, I would ruin this for myself by obsessing over the band to the point that friends of mine literally stopped being their fans. More on that in future posts.

stones at the vet

stones at the vet
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc

At some point I'll have to explain myself for continuing to see the Stones over and over and over again. To a great many music snobs, this is simply unconscionable in the face of their rising ticket prices and declining studio output.

What can I say? They're my favorite band. And they've built an increasingly robust set list over the past several tours, eschewing the "by the book greatest hits" song selection that bands with half as much material prefer to do.

Second show of this tour for me. Not as stellar as the first, but at the very least they got rid of some of the cornier theatrics from opening night in D.C. (like the inexplicable guy in stilts that came onstage during "Monkey Man"... Yikes).

Opened the show with Not Fade Away. Awesome, awesome seats on the floor/field, maybe 15 rows back. Most of the set list was the same as the first night, but they did a different cover instead of "Can''t Get Next to You" and the swapped out "Memory Motel" with "Wild Horses."

No idea who opened for them.

metallica

metallica
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc

Me and Metallica had some good times together. And as tired as it is to discuss how one band or another had some profound impact on one's life, the fact is that Metallica meant a lot to me for a long long time.

As someone who has spent the majority of his teen and adult years defending his questionable tastes, the very presence of that "Ride the Lightning" tape in my collection was a massive validator....even if it did appear along side of various duds by Tesla, Whitesnake, and that preposterous second album by Danzig.

Even with all the smart kids scoffing at metal, I knew that Metallica was quality, and that they were doing sometime pretty damned amazing that everyone else was missing out on. (I'd like to think they all caught on sometime in college -- the same way that I finally begrudgingly accepted the awesomeness of Morrisey -- but who the hell knows....Metallica crapped out "Enter Sandman" about a week before I touched down at college, and maybe that silly, toothless Metallica is the the only Metallica they know).

Whatever....

I guess the point I'm getting at is that this was kind of the beginning of the end of me and Metallica.

Now, this was supposed to be a triple bill with Suicidal Tendencies and Alice in Chains.

Well, no one knew that Layne would get himself a case of the heroin and not be able to make it. So, Candlebox took over the tour.

Yes, Candlebox. Lars must have had his face in a Tony-Montana-sized mountain of cocaine when this decision was made.

(Gah...Fuckin' Candlebox!?!??!? This decision irks me to this day.)

To be fair, Suicidal was pretty terrific. It was a rainy summer day, and a handful of very excited people on the lawn went nuts, turning the slope on the lawn into a giant mud slide.

Then, there was Candlebox. Candlebox was...boring.

Not that it mattered to the crowd. This was not a metal crowd.

The ST guys were legit hardcore nut cases But 80 percent of the rest of the crowd seemed to be made up of Marines, blonde chicks and frat boys who would be just as happy at a John Cougar Melloncamp concert as long as they served beer, and lots of it.

On to Metallica's set...

Metallica, unfortunately, was also forgettable. The highlight, without a doubt, was the performance of "So What?" during the encore.

The Lowlight? Cramming all the "Ride the Lightning" and "Kill 'Em All" songs into a Vegas-style medley. (Newsflash: your old fans want to hear more than 75 seconds of "Whiplash").

You used to go to a Metallica show expecting to be knocked on your butt. Nothing of the sort happened this night.

On top of it all, Hetfield was still refusing to chop off that fucking mullet. And I could be wrong about it, but I seem to remember that Lars had those goddamned stretch pant-shorts on. It was arguably the peak of Metallica's irrelevance.

Like I said, me and Metallica weren't really ever straight with one another again after that show. No doubt, they have done a handful of things I've enjoyed in the past 15 years. But it's pretty fucking hard to forgive them for boring the shit out of me that night.

stones - opening night voodoo

stones - opening night voodoo
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc

This was he opening night of the Voodoo Lounge tour. I think Counting Crows opened, but I'm not positive on that one. I know we missed them, whoever they were. And the fact that this didn't bother me tells me that I was finally starting to grow up musically.

This was a pretty great show, but my strongest memory was what a jackass I was being that night. Even though we were seated somewhere in the 400 level, it was somehow very important to me that I stood up throughout the show.

That was rude. And I am 6'3", which means it was also cluelessly rude.

People yelled at me, and I deserved it. Still, I don't really "get" paying $40 to sit down all night. (It wasn't long after this that I stopped going to stadium shows).

It was honestly a pretty exciting show. They opened this tour with a heavy, plodding version of "Not Fade Away"...an odd choice, considering the frantic, nearly punkabilly interpretation they gave when they originally recorded it.

Highlights included "Money Man," which I'd never known them to play live), and "Shattered," which was great, except the rhythm section sort of fell apart during the bridge - something painfully evident in a bootleg of the concert I stumbled upon a few years later....

And then there was "Memory Motel," which was one of the single best performances of all the Stones shows I've ever seen. Jagger played piano, and the jumbotron shot him in a back and white split screen; half the screen was tight on his face, and the other half was grainy stock footage of run-down beach towns. It sounds corny, but it worked. (Fuck you. I liked it).

Lowlights were the cover of "Can't Get Next to You" and a painful extended version of "Hot Stuff".  I love that band but some days they can't tell the shit from the peppercorns...

keith richards

keith richards
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc

It's not lost on me that I'm a fortunate person, who has led a fortunate life. And yet, moments of triumph have been few and far between for me on this planet. It makes those memories, as Whitman might say, both sweet and sad.

Everything about the decision to attend this concert was foolish: the show was in Washington on a Wednesday night. I was attending college in Philly...and didn't own a car.
But I bought the tickets anyway.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I looked at the class syllabus in January and realized that I had a test the afternoon following this concert.

Throwing common sense to the wind, I decided to take the train home to D.C., go to my parents' house, grab dinner, round up my brothers, and jump on the metro.

Keith opened up by covering Eddie Cocheran's "Something Else" and it just might have been the sharpest moment of the show. 

I remember that he played "999" and "Time Is On My Side", as well as a healthy number of other Stones covers.

But the moment of the evening was when the band went past their allotted time, and the sound was cut off during an extended vamp on the end of "Happy".

Yep, they pulled the plug on Keith Fucking Richards.

Don't ever let anyone tell you D.C. isn't a union town.

I overslept the next day but still managed to make my train back to Philly. And I got an A on the exam. 

And this, my friends, was probably the closest I came to a moment of triumph in the year of 1993.

Washington Bullets vs Atlanta Hawks

Washington Bullets vs Atlanta Hawks
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc

Is it an admission of bad taste to say that you're a Bullets fan?

I'm not talking about the Wizards, with their awesome downtown stadium that basically revived everything east of Metro Center. 

I'm not talking about that team that boasts a handful of playoff wins and the league's wackiest player. 

I'm not talking about the team with which that The Greatest capped (crapped?) the end of his playing days.

I'm talking about the Bullets. The team that played in Landover, Maryland. The team that deducted laundry fees from their players' paychecks. The team who's owner was so cheap that he forced the team to stay at his brother's lousy motel every time the team came through Seattle, and who also managed to LOSE their franchise player for a day.

In the era of Magic, Jordan, Bird, Nique, Ewing and Barkley (to say nothing of Olajuwon, Rodman, Worthy and far too many others to name), choosing the Wizards as your team  might better indicate immense loyalty rather than bad taste.

But either way, it certainly indicates bad judgment.

I remember nothing about this game, which is really sad. How on earth does one not remember seeing Dominique Wilkins play????? 

I think I went to this game with my friend Meghan.

Kiss

Kiss
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc

It's hard not to like KISS. 

In fact, it's hard for me not to love KISS. I spent my mid-teen years bouncing around my bedroom listening to "KISS Alive," and one of the very first things I did once I had an iTunes account was to make sure I had a digital version of "Strutter."

But the unfortunate reality is that it's also nearly impossible not to loathe KISS. The band's output through the 80's is awful; in fact, were there such a thing as art crimes against humanity, Paul Stanley would certainly be at the Hague at this very instant for crafting the lyrics to "Let's Put the X in Sex."

And then there's Gene Simmons, and all of his contempt for his fans and their hard earned money.

And I suppose that's where my little ticket stub comes in.

My college roommate of three years was a huge KISS nerd. Totally obsessive, completely apologetic for the band, and boundless (infectious, in fact) in his enthusiasm in seeing the tour behind the completely terrible "Revenge" album.

I have no excuse. He totally convinced me to go to this. 

I think this was the last (or one of the last) KISS tours before they put the makeup back on.

It was not a memorable show by any stretch. Gene looked as though his thighs and ass had been coated in Crisco to get him in the XXXL leather pants, but that didn't stop him from attempting a handful of clumsy dropkicks that made Elvis look like Mr. Miagi.

I missed the first half of this concert because I had to do a gig with the college jazz band earlier that evening. Not only did I miss "Parasite", but I think that I also missed Faster Pussycat opening up for them.

I never thought I'd find myself regretting missing Faster Pussycat, but weird things happen as you get older...

black crowes

black crowes
Originally uploaded by tonbabydc

Another fun night with Fran and this Greek kid Andy, who also had accompanied us to see Guns'N Roses that summer.

This was on the "Southern Harmony & Musical Companion" Tour, which I can't help to think of as the band's peak. (A handfull of mp3's I stole off the Internets, however, indicate that the Crowes never stopped doing awesome live performances and sick covers on tour).

Opened with "No Speak No Slave" -- and it killed.

There was actually a small amount of controversy surrounding this show, as Chris Robinson got into an argument with a security guard, resulting in his allegedly kicking the guard in the head from the stage. Assault charges were subsequent filed. (Anyone who remembers how sickly and thin the Robinson brothers were in those days can appreciate the ridiculousness of these charges).

Chris Robinson may have also been threatened with charges for inciting a riot, as he repeatedly urged the people from upstairs to rush the stage. This is a big no-no in the ultra-posh Constitution Hall. (As was standing on the theatre chairs and doing the white-man dance during "Hard to Handle", for which Fran the Man received a stern warning from a DAR usher).