I just recently finished up attending four out six of the Covid restricted half capacity Newport Folk Festival dates and the last of three full capacity Newport Jazz Festival shows. The Newport Festivals held at Fort Adams in Newport, Rhode Island every year are always one of my favorite live music events to attend and they sell out before any artists are even announced. There were many highlights but, for me, Allison Russell stole the festival with an extraordinary set of music.
Next up in September are The Black Crowes at Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theatre (the Robinson Brothers played an acoustic set at Newport Folk as “Birds of a Feather”) and Farm Aid at Xfinity in Hartford, Connecticut.

Live music is back so check out a show before the dreaded variants can change the musical landscape once again. There are plenty of great concerts on tap in the next couple of months but my gig at the US Tennis Open will keep me from seeing many of the great artists currently on tour (but saving me a lot of money on tickets not purchased).

Love the One You’re With

Folk on!

GQ

The second Talking Heads concert at Forest Hills Stadium took place just two days shy of exactly one year from the first; I guess the band liked the venue as years later David Byrne brought his pre-Broadway run of his American Utopia show there also (a truly exhilarating and joyful concert experience in and of itself). The two Queens Talking Heads concerts have blended together in my mind through the years and I have written about them before; the urinating on a security guard’s head, the getting removed from the tennis stadium but making it back to my seat as the lights went down and the Talking Heads hit the stage, and a stuffed animal tossed out the car window onto Queens Boulevard on a ride home. This particular tour became the “Stop Making Sense” concert movie and album which ranks up there with the best rockumentaries. I have loved the band since the third album arrived and have seen them live many times in a number of variations through the years. David Byrne broke off and went solo and never looked back; the now 72 year old Jerry Harrison has been off my radar screen for years and the married duo Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz continued on with the Tom Tom Club project with some success.

The Name of the Band is Talking Heads

Rock on!

GQ

From a vantage point in the rear orchestra of Madison Square Garden, I first saw the great David Bowie hit the stage on a tour that would later become the “Stage” double live album. The iconic chameleon David Bowie is one of my all time favorites but for some reason I never did see him perform in concert as many times as I probably should have. Every album that Mr. Bowie put out was a must listen with varying styles and artistic expression. Every year New York City’s City Winery presents a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall (with a rehearsal show prior at City Winery itself) featuring the music of one musical artist. It had already been announced that Bowie’s music would be presented by various musical guest performers when David passed apparently unexpectedly. As it turned out the very private Bowie had been sick periodically for years. The demand for the benefit tickets was so great that they added a second night at Radio City Music Hall; I was fortunate to have been able to attend both celebrations of the man’s musical legacy. Amazingly. David Bowie had secretly recorded the “Blackstar” collection for release after his death. Others have tried to replicate his rock and roll road map with varying degrees of success but Bowie’s extraordinary career is unparalleled. A pre-pandemic exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum spanned his entire career in music, fashion and style with state of the art headphones that guided you through the building with sound and vision.

Let’s Dance

Rock on!

GQ

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

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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

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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

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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