Rick Springfield was supposed to open for Chicago on their 2020 tour but for some reason the rescheduled dates are only Chicago & their Greatest Hits. Chicago will be the first post pandemic concert to take place at the Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theatre next month and my wife and I will be front and center in the third row with a meet and greet before (how they are going to pull that off is anyone’s guess).
Jessie’s Girl
Rick on!
GQ
Bookending the July 4th holiday with Eric Clapton at Jones Beach, Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band performed at the Nassau Coliseum on Tuesday, July 5th, 1983. My wife’s favorite bands are Chicago, the Eagles and Bob Seger and, if memory serves me right, this date may have been postponed from an earlier date due to illness. I had picked up my then girlfriend in Elmhurst with Dad’s car to make the trip to Nassau County when we heard on the radio that it had been canceled for that night. We caught the farewell tour at Jones Beach and lastly at Madison Square Garden, where we had pretty good center orchestra seats, and had a joyous blast. Seger knew how and when to pull the pin as not too long after his final shows the pandemic shut everything down until now and the great Alto Reed has passed since.
Night Moves
Rock on!
GQ
Eric Clapton and opener The Blasters performed at the Jones Beach Theatre in Wantagh on July 4th eve in 1983. I vaguely remember the bald dude in the Blasters onstage, and maybe a way deep memory of Clapton on stage, but other than that the show is a blur. I have seen Eric Clapton many times through the years but this show with the great Slowhand does not stand out for any particular reason. Eric Clapton just announced a U.S. tour that will primarily hit Texas and a number of down south locations only. Tedeschi Trucks Band just released a live album of Layla tracks that I will be interested in checking out. Derek Trucks has played with Clapton on a couple of EC’s better tours a number of years back where Trucks’ guitar playing stood out big time.
Bell Bottom Blues
Rock on!
GQ
Gregg Allman played My Father’s Place in Roslyn, Long Island on a Sunday night in June, 1983 during one of several Allman Brothers Band hiatus’.
The cabaret style venue with table seating was always an interesting and slightly different way for us to experience a musical artist, and where you could catch a wide variety of acts on the way up, or on the way down. When the legendary Gregg Allman stepped on stage from the left, I remember thinking he appeared somewhat gaunt, and not looking especially healthy, but the killer blues voice was intact. Perhaps this concert took place during one of his legendary drug periods, or perhaps something else made him appear tired that evening, but the man had such a storied life, with I am sure still untold anecdotes left to be told, and this Long Island show was merely a speed bump on the road that went on forever for him. I read his autobiography while on vacation a few years ago and you just knew he likely did not remember half of the stuff written in the book; considering the incredible amounts of drugs that he reportedly ingested and injected it is a miracle we had him for as long as we did before his body finally broke down for the last time. The last concert that my wife and I attended before the pandemic made the music stop was The Brothers 50th anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden in March, 2020. At the time I thought that it probably would have been a good idea to cancel the one-off show with a full house and the COVID problematic MSG stairwells that were ripe for transmission, but we survived, had a blast, and enjoyed an incredible night of Allman Brothers Band music just before live music shut down completely for more than a year.
Queen of Hearts
Rock on!
GQ
My one and only time to have gone to the legendary Mew York City discotheque Studio 54 was, somewhat ironically, to attend a Lou Reed concert in support of his album “ Legendary Hearts”. This was one of my favorite periods in the career of Mr.Reed as this project was the follow up to another great album, “The Blue Mask”. I remember walking into Studio 54 and instantly knowing that this was not to be any ordinary concert as cardboard replicas featuring Lou holding a metallic looking motorcycle helmet from the “Legendary Hearts” album cover art hung above our heads. I have a vague recollection of seeing Lou onstage from way back center, but the enduring memory of the night’s festivities is having had the opportunity to see inside the iconic Manhattan venue, albeit past its heights of legend, to attend a concert by one of rock and roll’s greatest performers in the heart of his New York City hometown (alright, I know he was originally from Freeport, Long Island but he hated it and considered himself a New Yorker).
A great venue has a heart, vibe and history all its own and Studio 54, although a seemingly an odd choice at first blush, was the perfect club on this night for the artist known as Lou Reed and a New York City audience fortunate to have found their way inside on a Tuesday night in 1983.
Sally Can’t Dance
Rock on!
GQ
Night two of the Solo/Trans tour for me took us from Nassau Coliseum to Madison Square Garden to see Neil Young perform a wide mix of old and new songs. I always find it funny when some people, who clearly don’t get it, complain that Mr. Young did not perform this song or another and are somehow disappointed in a particular performance. A perfect example of this was the Neil Young & Crazy Horse tour supporting “Psychedelic Pill”. Some in the Madison Square Garden audience did not appreciate the beautiful distortion the band was making when married couples in the audience mistakenly showed up on date night to hear their favorite tracks off of “Harvest Moon”. I love it all; the beauty of the Promise of the Real tours are that POTR can play it all and it can be a brand new show on any given night. Now that live music is returning, we can look forward to what Mr. Young might do next; whatever it is, count me in as I continue closer from having been at 90 plus Neil Young performances to, hopefully soon, attending 100 and beyond.
Computer Age
Rock on!
GQ
I just checked set list.fm to refresh my memory and this was indeed the Neil Young Solo/Trans tour. The concert at Nassau Coliseum is interesting with songs from “Old Ways” “Trans” and older classics. There is a video of the Trans tour out there with Nils Lofgren on guitar that is quite good. This was near the beginning of Neil’s battles with Geffen Records about the music he was choosing to release at the time. Nils Lofgren played on the latest Crazy Horse project “Colorado” which followed a couple of dates in Winnipeg that I was fortunate to have attended (the polar vortex is real). This Nassau Coliseum concert, and the one at Madison Square Garden on the next night, followed my taking a “leave of absence” from Saint John’s University School of Law and my quest to figure out what to do with my life that led to a 32 year career in law enforcement. There are a lot of forks in the road of life to be sure.
Are There Any More Real Cowboys?
Rock on!
GQ
In August, 1982 I was celebrating the end of summer and awaiting my impending start at Saint John’s University School of Law. While I remember snippets of seeing The Clash at Bonds NYC, this concert at Pier. 84 on the west side of Manhattan does not elicit any recollection at all. Despite adequate grades in my first semester of law school, my stint at Saint John’s was short lived and I endeavored to find my way post- Queens College with jobs at local banking institutions until the civil service gods looked kindly down upon me and law enforcement opportunities began to develop. I missed The Who with The Clash at Shea Stadium, and I believe I missed the opportunity to see U2 during this time, but there would be no more concerts for me in 1982 due to the demands of law school (however 1983 would start off with the return of Neil Young to the tri-state area).
I Fought the Law
Rock on!
GQ
The Forest Hills Tennis Stadium is an interesting outdoor venue in Queens where I have seen quite a number of great shows through the years; The Who, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Robert Plant, Jethro Tull and, of course, Talking Heads, to name a few. The stadium had stopped having concerts for along time until a few ago when the stadium was updated and it hosts a limited amount of summer concerts with a 10 o’clock curfew due to the proximity to residential properties in the area. As with the other Genesis performances I have attended through the years, this one elicits no particular recollection. We will try again this December when “The Last Domino?” tour arrives for two nights at Madison Square Garden and the new Islanders arena located at Belmont Park.
Keep It Dark
Rock On!
GQ
The Ronnie James Dio version of Black Sabbath hit the Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands in New Jersey in August, 1982 with opener Johnny Van Zant Band. Ronnie James Dio would move on to front the band Dio; Johnny Van Zant would latrr tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd keeping their brand of southern rock alive for fans to enjoy for decades (Skynyrd’s “farewell tour” was interrupted by the pandemic and continues on to this day). I only went to the Brendan Byrne Arena on a few occasions, most notably a Neil Young & Crazy Horse tour which got me in video full frame during “F*!#in’ Up” and years later for an all star lineup with the Love for Levon concert. I also got to see the Black Sabbath line up with Dio at Radio City Music Hall as Heaven and Hell when there was a dispute over using the Black Sabbath name. Ronnie James Dio passed away a few years ago from stomach cancer but his legacy as one of the great heavy metal singers and lyricists lives on.
The Devil Cried
Rock on!
GQ