Tag: concert

Macca

Paul McCartney is now “feeling great, rocking and rolling.”

McCartney.OutThereTourPage
There are plenty of musicians I’ve never seen play live, who I’ll never see play live. Probably should have seen The Who in the mid-1990s when they were in Albany, NY.

And when the announcement came that Paul McCartney was going to play Albany, NY, I figured he’d be one more. I know someone who was working with his people, but there were no comps to be had, the tickets were pricey and were expected to sell out quickly, and I resigned myself to not going.

Heck, Ringo Starr was in town LAST month, and I missed him, too.

But my friend said, “You MUST go.” She’d seen him play, and she knew how much I loved his music.

Then Paul got sick with some viral infection, where he canceled dates in Japan and South Korea in May, and the June 14-26 shows from Lubbock to Louisville would be postponed until October.

Now that Paul McCartney is now “feeling great, rocking and rolling,” The ‘Out There’ world tour will now resume July 5 in Albany, NY. Somehow, that made it much more of an imperative.

Through some sort of circuitous route, I managed to get a couple of tickets on Tuesday, which is to say four days ago. Who to take? Well, I had to take the second biggest Beatles fan in the house, the one I gave Beatles #1s to four or five years ago, The Daughter. And The Wife is actually quite all right with this.

The Daughter’s first concert was some American Idol runners-up, back when she was four. Neither of us much remember it; this, I suspect, we will.
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Paul McCartney – ‘Save Us’ (Fan Video) 2014

Luis Suárez interviews Paul McCartney – Uruguay, April 2014

Paul McCartney & Wings – Got To Get You Into My Life [1979]

Beatles’ Relay Race
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“Weird Al” Yankovic would like to set the record straight

T is for Talking Heads

The album Speaking in Tongues had come out only a couple months before the SPAC concert, featuring their only American Top 10 hit, Burning Down the House.

Frantz, Weymouth, Harrison, Byrne
Frantz, Weymouth, Harrison, Byrne

One of the two greatest concerts I ever saw was the August 1983 performance of Talking Heads at the Saratoga Performance Arts Center, which someone put online; actually, here’s another recording. It starts with David Byrne by himself on guitar and percussion. He’s joined by Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, who were married in 1977, on drums and bass, respectively, for a song or two, before Jerry Harrison joins on guitar. That was the core band, but then the additional players are added in; the process was so organic.

This is the same tour from which the classic Jonathan Demme film Stop Making Sense was taken, but this is the complete concert, not just a truncated show.

The album Speaking in Tongues had come out only a couple of months earlier, featuring their only American Top 10 hit, Burning Down the House. LISTEN to the whole album. I always associated that album, along with a few others of that period, as forerunners of the compact disc, for the versions of several songs on the CD, which I got a number of years later, were longer than the versions on the LP, which I had purchased soon after it came out.

The new wave band Tom Tom Club was founded in 1981 by Frantz and Weymouth as a side project. Their big hit Genius of Love [LISTEN], which is in the Talking Heads concert, has been sampled by several artists , including Mariah Carey on her hit single Fantasy.

LISTEN to Psycho Killer from Talking Heads ’77, and the parody Psycho Chicken by The Fools.

 

ABC Wednesday – Round 14

Up on a rooftop, Beatles, quick.

I just figured out that the rooftop concert was on the 16th birthday of my good friend Fred Hembeck

BeatlesAcrossPage495Only recently did I realize that today is the 45th anniversary of the Beatles rooftop concert above Abbey Road studios. This was performed and recorded as part of some album/movie project, both of which would eventually be called Let It Be.

Here’s the 20-minute performance until the cops shut things down.

Of course, as Beatles junkies know, the project was scrapped and the band essentially split up, for a time. Yet they were able to get together again and put out the Abbey Road album and a few singles in 1969, which I’ve long thought was extraordinary.

Let It Be, the album was released practically simultaneously with Paul McCartney’s first solo album, McCartney, in April 1970, which was the final blow in the breakup.

It’s interesting how brief their stay as an influential working band was, six years in the US, a bit longer in the UK. Of course, their post-band impact remains enormous.

Funny too that I just figured out that the rooftop concert was on the 16th birthday of my good friend Fred Hembeck, who inspired my blogging. He was/is a massive Beatles fan – here’s his Beatles section on his now unused blog. He’s now on Facebook and, most notably, Tumblr.

So if Fred was 16 and that was 45 years ago: hmm, 16+45= Fred’s older than I am for the next five weeks.
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Fred’s birthday, 1992. It involves Superman.

 

Picture (c) and used by permission of Fred Hembeck.

Promoting the Concert

In general, how many days ahead of time do you plan attending an event? How has it changed with life circumstances?

There was a nice article in the [Albany, NY] Times Union newspaper on Saturday, November 5 about a concert of Mozart music taking place at First Presbyterian Church in Albany on Sunday, November 13; I will be participating. This led to some discussion about how people decide to go to events.

One parishioner thought that, while it was a great piece, it was too bad that it did not appear the day before the concert. Apparently, some people see an article on the Saturday religion page in the TU and are primed to go the next day.

Whereas I almost never see an event on that page that I have the means to attend a day or two out. Likewise, even in my single days, it was rare that I saw something that I first learned about in the TU Preview section or in Metroland on a Thursday and was able to attend within 48 hours of reading about it. An article might provide additional info beyond what I knew, but it would not be the initial inspiration for a night out.

Besides, the article published a week earlier allowed one to tweet and Facebook about it, and blog about it, especially to those who DON’T READ THE NEWSPAPER. Then other people might retweet and reFacebook (is that a word?) about it as well.

My question then: in general, how many days ahead of time do you plan to attend an event? How has it changed with life circumstances?

Anyway, it’ll be a busy weekend for me, with a dress rehearsal on Saturday and the concert on Sunday. If I’m slow approving your comments or visiting your blogs, you’ll know why.

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