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Post by andrew on Apr 27, 2021 12:57:18 GMT -5
Oh, my lord, the things we stumble across when we're looking for something else. I'm in the third row, centre, wearing a fedora with a red bandana, next to the busty blonde visible at the 5:06 mark. That was a good night...
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Post by andrew on Apr 27, 2021 14:47:49 GMT -5
In the bad old days of rock and roll, girl bands had a rough time of it. British metal band "Girlschool" had a tougher time than most. When Jeff Beck heard guitarist Kelly Johnson's guitar riffs on their cover single of "Race with the Devil" he declared, "There's no way that's a girl playing." Lemmy Kilmeister of Motorhead responded by taking the band under his wing in a collaboration tour. "I thought they were fucking great," he said, "I got them on the tour in the first place and everybody else went like, 'Ugh, girls,' and I said, 'Fuck you, they're as good as you.' Kelly Johnson, on a good day, is as good as Jeff Beck in his rock & roll days. She's a fucking brilliant guitar player."
I agree, Lemmy. I agree... Kelly Johnson died from spinal cancer in 2007.
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Post by andrew on Apr 28, 2021 17:43:55 GMT -5
Finding that old concert I'd attended from the 80s got me searching for others I'd seen. This one here was literally the worst concert I've ever seen. Not because of the acts - they were all great - but it was simply the worst organized event I've ever seen. It's a long, sad story really.
First off, it was in the middle of nowhere. Wiarton is in the ass-end of Ontario; it was hours of driving to get to the event, which was held on an airfield. Curiously, the stage was set up on the gravel runway, while the parking was on the grass, so there was nowhere to sit really. It was a day-long event, so I arrived early. There was an enforced parking ban for several miles around the airfield - and a $20 parking fee to park on site. I would have been okay with that if they had bothered to advertise it in the first place. As it was, it came as a rude shock. But, not wanting to walk several miles from town, I paid the 20.
Second, because they had set up on the runway, the venue was long and quite narrow. The gates were not yet open, so I had to line up outside the temporary fence. The problem was, all the food vendors with their diesel powered reefers were located on the other side of that same fence. For two hours I stood in 30 degree Celsius heat with diesel exhaust being vented directly onto me. I was sick and had a headache before ever getting inside.
Third, thanks to Ontario's medieval laws concerning alcohol, the "beer tent" was another fenced off area inside like some miniature Buchenwald - but first one needed to buy beer tickets. It was literally, no exaggeration, a two-hour wait to buy these over-priced tickets, which were only sold in threes. "But I only want two beers," I said, when I finally got to the table. "Well, it's two tickets for a beer," they told me. So now I learned I would need to buy six tickets. *sigh* So I bought the six tickets. I forget what I paid, but it was outrageous.
Fourth, the beer line was as long as the ticket line. Two MORE hours spent in a hot sun. In all this time I had heard, but not seen the first two acts of the day, but more on that later. When I finally get to the beer table, there's a two beer limit. "So why are they selling the tickets in threes?" I asked. I never did get a straight answer. My options were to take the two and spend another two hours in line to get the last one (which was never going to happen) or bugger off and cut my losses, which was always their game to begin with.
Finally, probably seven hours after I'd arrived, and four or five hours after getting a fucking drink (which had to be consumed inside the Buchenwald compound - can't take those onto the field) I finally get out to try and enjoy the show. As you can see from the really bad angles in the video, there's just no place to watch it from. The "arena" was maybe 50m wide and 300m long, but about 25m out from the stage was a huge, obtrusive, gantry structure with stage lights and so forth, completely obstructing vision of the stage. And so, literally tens of thousands of people were jostling and pushing and outright fighting for some place to actually see the show.
The experience was so bad it would ten years before I ever went to another concert. The headliners for this act was the Tragically Hip, but I'm not posting their video because I didn't even stick around to watch it after the first song, I was that disgusted with the whole event. Sam Roberts was the only one of the several bands I actually got a glimpse of that day.
It's a great song: Here's their original vid:
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Post by andrew on Apr 28, 2021 17:59:14 GMT -5
And this was the show I was at for the band that I started this thread with. What an amazing venue. Montreal FTW!
The angry-looking security guys parked in front of the stage were actually quite nice. (Confession time). I had too much time to kill before this show and had drunk too much and everyone around me knew it. In Ontario they would have thrown my ass out into the street, followed by my teeth. At MTelus in Montreal, they put their arm around my shoulder, told me they had a special spot for me, and put me on a stool on an upper level where I had a perfect view of everything, and said, "I'm putting you here to keep you out of trouble. Enjoy the show." And he meant it too. When the show was over, and I'd sober'd up some, I passed that guy on the way out and tipped him heavily. Montreal FTW!
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Post by andrew on Apr 28, 2021 18:23:22 GMT -5
My first outdoor concert. We imagined it would be the punk Woodstock. It wasn't, but vodka-infused watermelon everybody brought did make it interesting. In those days, selling alcohol at such an event was strictly forbidden - but I was only 16 anyway, even if they did.
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Post by andrew on Apr 28, 2021 18:37:07 GMT -5
My second multi-act concert. I wasn't an attendee though - I was a security guard. Fun fact: Although I had heard the Police on the radio and had one of their albums, I had never actually seen a picture of them. We were still on airwave TV in those days, and my mother didn't hold with those music programs, so I never got to watch them. At the concert, I was posted to the side of the stage, barring access to anyone trying to get backstage unless they had an AXP. During the show this very nice guy came up behind me and asked me how things looked "out there". I said everything was fine. He looked about for a bit, then wandered away. It was years later before I realized it was Sting.
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Post by andrew on Apr 28, 2021 18:46:41 GMT -5
My young nephew turned out to be a metal-head, so I took him to this. It was his first concert. I had never actually seen Iron Maiden back in the day. I can't say I was ever a fan, but I have to say it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. Consummate performers, all of them.
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Post by andrew on Apr 28, 2021 19:01:04 GMT -5
I went to this show because it was another band I'd missed the first time round and wanted to scratch them off the bucket list. I make no apologies. The best bit was before the show, waiting for the band, when all of a sudden everyone started stirring and standing up, applause started breaking out - but the lights were still up and the stage was quiet. It wasn't the band coming out - it was Canadian sex icon Shannon Tweed taking her seat up front. LOL
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Post by andrew on Apr 29, 2021 16:50:47 GMT -5
No, I never saw these lads, but if I had my life as a do-over, I'd make a point of it. The most famous band you've never heard of. The Beatles were their patrons. Almost everything they put out was a hit, but most of their songs are mistaken for Beatles offerings. They were one of the first bands signed to the Apple label. But in the years of lawsuits, criminal investigations and alleged mafia activity in the years after the collapse of Apple, literally half the members of this band would commit suicide.
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Post by andrew on May 4, 2021 13:30:47 GMT -5
I'll terminate these sad reminiscences (I'll stop now, I promise) with a pretty neat little documentary on a band I've seen more times than any other. If it wasn't for their name, they would have gone much further. At the exact moment they were poised to break into the US market, where the big money was, Jerry Falwall, Tippa Gore and their "moral majority" ilk were holding congressional hearings on pop music not dissimilar from the red craze of the 1950s. Yes, really. In brief, Teenage Head (whose name is referring to a youthful mindset) was ordered to changed their name in order to get record deals as it was sexually suggestive. The biggest concession they would make be to add an "S" and become Teenage Heads. But of course, that suggests drug use - equally reprehensible in the eyes of the MM. They did release one record in the US, but it got no radio or promotor support and thus fizzled.
Since most of you lot won't remember the MM, I'm including Dee Snider's testimony before the congressional hearings. He was the front man for the glam-metal "Twisted Sister", which brings me to the last of my reminiscences. In the mid 1980s, the same year this video was recorded, I went to see them with a young beauty I was desperately in love with. I was even shopping for a ring. After the concert, in the confusion of the exit, I lost her. When I saw her the following day, she admitted to slipping backstage. She was wearing one of the band's studded leather bracelet on her arm. I've never trusted women since.
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