Posts Tagged ‘concert’
Triumph / April Wine, San Antonio, TX, May 21, 2026
I’ve been a triumph fan since the early 80s. Best I can remember I found a cassette of Progressions of Power in the cutout bin for $0.25 around 1981. I was hooked forever.
I first got to see them in 1986 on the Sport of Kings tour with Yngwie opening and that was a pretty special night in general as it was the first time I’d met a few folks that became lifelong friends and even bandmates at some point. It was a great show but it was the only time I caught them live unfortunately. I moved to Austin in November 2006 and got to see Rik Emmett solo in San Antonio at Tiffany Billiards in February 2007. That was the first paid meet and greet ($50!) I had ever done and was totally worth it to get his sig in The Book.
Triumph was pretty much done forever it seemed and they put out a good documentary a couple of years ago that I was hoping would spark enough interest in a tour. In 2025 they played the fan park at the Edmonton Oilers stadium and announced an upcoming tour around that time. I was stoked.
As soon as tix were getting announced I automatically looked into the meet and greet as I wanted to get Gil Moore and Mike Levine in The Book. The price for that was around $850. You read that correctly. $850. This is an all time favorite band and pretty much the only chance I’d get to attain those signatures. So I said “fuck it” and bought the ticket. Ouch.
It was announced pretty early that Levine’s appearances would be few and far between and I was hoping San Antonio would be one of them since that’s where they got their start in the US.
Day of show I take off work early and drive to San Antonio to beat traffic. I had plenty of time to spare until the 6pm checking and grabbed a burger and Sam’s Burger Joint. First time there and it was a fine burger. I headed over to the Frost Bank Center, park and just do some work and doom scroll for a bit.
I mosey over to the check in and it was a mess in general. I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to get in with The Book as the bag I carry it in was slightly oversized. I ran into my buddy Juan and were discussing the meet and greet, the show and just general catching up. The bag gets thru no problem and I’m stoked. We check in, get the swag and a stamp that allows a few of us to see the band’s traveling museum. It was cool for what it was but very small. We got to shop merch ahead of gates and I was pleased to see a Texas only shirt.
After that, they herd us to one section of the venue, then moved us to another section. Then to another. It was a real clusterfuck especially as they had opened doors to the public. Finally we get herded to the bowels of the venue and I put myself last in line. The Live Nation rep starts going into details of the m&g and finishes with “no personal autographs”. lol wut? I asked her to come over and showed her The Book and explained blah blah blah. “No signatures and please don’t ask them.” Ugh.
There were about maybe 20 of us total and we got brought in the room 2×2 to shake hands and get a photo with the band. Juan is ahead of me and when it’s my turn, I shake hands with the band with The Book in my hand. Rik asked what it was and I showed him his signature. Phil X was asking questions about it. So I said, “I was hoping to get Gil to sign it but they said no personal autographs” and Gil says, “yes, that’s right.” I was pretty frustrated and said “So I spent almost $1000 for a photograph? Cool.” Surely I sounded like a total choad but that was that. They took the picture with me holding The Book and I’m sure my face will tell the story when they post them. I was pretty deflated.
We get herded to our seats and I’m on the first row in the first section stage left. Almost ln the floor without being on the floor. A couple of minutes pass and one of the band crew walks up and says, “Give me The Book” and I say “for what?!” He says, “I’m taking it backstage to get Gil to sign it.” He said Gil felt bad and he had to follow Live Nation’s policy since they were paying the band for this. I was stunned. I handed him The Book and my sharpie and the page was already bookmarked. That book has only been out of my sight twice before and I was really nervous about it. A few minutes later he comes back, opens to the page and shows me the sig. I’m not gonna lie, I got a little choked up. I thanked the guy, offered him a tip and he waved me off, shook my hand and said, “Gil said thanks you for coming. Triumph cares about their fans.” Squeaky wheel gets the grease sometimes. Lemme tell ya something, nothing else really mattered after that. Nothing.
I chill in my seat and the lights go down for April Wine who I’d never seen before. They were great and seeing Just Between You and Me and Sign of the Gypsy Queen live was great. The whole band was killer.
After they finished I went to the outer ring hoping to be able to run The Book and swag out to the truck but no ins and outs. Ok. Back to my seat and Boys are Back In Town starts then transitions in Time Canon and a short video. The band opens to When the Lights Go Down, Somebody’s Out There and Spellbound. The way they’re set up now is that Gil and the other drummer are pretty much playing together on most of the songs. A couple were just Gil or just the other guy. Phil X, who replaced Rik and played on the Final album handled 2nd guitar, lots of backing vocals and some lead vocals. Rik is 72 and Gil is 73 and they were both better than expected. Gil was out front singing solo on Rocky Mountain Way and some other stuff and his voice still sounded strong as did Rik’s. The set had pretty much everything you’d expect from a hits driven tour and while we didn’t get Mike Levine, the new guy was great and his vocals were top notch. Rik didn’t play every solo but it didn’t detract from anything for me. It was cool that Phil X did a snippet of Little Texas Shaker.
I love Triumph and have most of my life. It was a great show and I’m glad I went. I didn’t expect to Have Rik and Gil on stage as much as we did and that was a pleasant surprise.
I don’t see another paid m&g in my immediate future but I’m glad that Gil and that roadie came thru for me. I’ll never forget it.
Never Surrender.
New Kids On The Block, Paula Abdul, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Austin, TX, July 12, 2024
Friday night in Austin, TX marked the 3rd time I got to meet Paula Abdul. When presale tickets went on sale a few months back I snagged a front row aisle seat and hoped that a meet and greet would eventually be advertised, which it was.
My good friend, Amparo, who is also a client also bought the meet and greet and accompanied me to the show. We got parked and walked over to the VIP tent and got checked in. There were only about 9 of us while NKOTB had at least 150. That was nuts. We walked through the venue down to the backstage area where there was a Paula backdrop. Her meet and greet manager, Mitch, gave a few instructions and shortly after Paula walked out. She’s so preciously tiny and beautiful. I got all giddy seeing her again.
Most of the line got their stuff signed and photos taken then it was my turn, which went something like this:
“What are you getting signed?”
My arm again if you don’t mind.
“Oh, I remember these now. How are you?”
*passes out. Gets back up quickly*
One of her assistants says, “hold on, I want to film this” and he airdropped the video to me after we did our photos together.
When I had her in my arms for the photo, I mentioned that I may come up for her headline tour in Calgary and asked “can a brutha get a hookup?”
“You’d come up there to see me?”
So many responses ran thru my head but I only said, “yes ma’am, of course.” After the photo she called her assistant over and said, “get his contact info and put him on the list for Calgary.” *swoon* Purposely I had a business card with me. 😄
It was a great few minutes with her. After the meet and greet ended, we were walked back out to the main area of the venue and got to check out the merch and grab a drink before the crowd was let in. I wanted a Paula shirt but not having tour dates on the back killed it for me. We grabbed a drink then went to our seats to check out DJ Jazzy Jeff’s set. He had a rapper/hype man with him to keep the crowd involved and he did a good job. Jeff spuns stuff from the likes of OPP to the Cheers theme song to some dance hits that I have no idea who they’re by to Don’t Stop Believing. It was a very white girl crowd and and during the journey song I looked at the super white girls next to me and said, “he definitely knows his audience” and the girls said, “you’re not wrong!” Haha
He finished up and the changeover was about 15 minutes and Paula’s show started. She opened with Straight Up and went into Vibeology. No surprises in the set and there was a medley towards the end of the set that included pieces of some deeper cuts. Also no surprise that she’s not singing through most of the set, but mainly because she’s dancing and moving around a lot. At 62, she’s more mobile than most people I know. Impressive.
Neither Amparo nor I cared about NKOTB so we left during the second song. Meh.
Even though this is the third time I’ve met her, I always forget how tiny she is. She’s perfectly dainty at 5’0”. While this was a very expensive day, it was really worth it to me and I hope to see her again in Calgary, hooked up or not. She is and always will be forever my girl.
Paula Abdul setlist here: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/paula-abdul/2024/germania-insurance-amphitheater-austin-tx-b54814e.html
KISS Review, Raleigh, NC, May 17, 2022
This is a story about many things, but mostly of friends, KISS and how small of a world we live in.
Let’s just start with me being a huge fan of 70s KISS. I’ve told the story often about how my older brother Robert (RIP) stole a copy of Dressed To Kill from Montgomery Ward when I was a kid and that got me hooked on KISS immediately. Forever thankful that my brother was a thief I guess. Haha. I do prefer the 70s and some of the 80s stuff, but mainly the makeup era for sure.
But let’s get on with this story. I play poker…A LOT…and a couple of weeks prior to this show I was playing at a friend’s house where we play about every other month with fellow friends in our industry as well as some other friends of Steve’s (the host). That night a friend of a friend came to play and was seated next to me. He is in his early 60s and we got to talking about music and we connected pretty quickly. He tells me that he manages Earth Wind and Fire, Smokey Robinson and works with Doc McGhee (KISS). I tell him about how big of a KISS fan I am and show him some info about “The Book” and how much I’d love to get those guys in there. “I can make that happen.” Oh? He gives me his card and says to contact him over the weekend and he would see what he could do for the upcoming Raleigh show. He left mid-poker game to take care of some band business and that was that.
The next morning I send him a text with my contact info and he said he’d get back to me. I didn’t book my flight yet because you never know how real stuff like this is. I didn’t hear back from him until the following Wednesday and he said, “You’re all set up. I couldn’t get the meet and greet as it was filled up and still very limited, but I have you +1 and you’re gonna love your seats.” WHAAAAAAT? Sweet! I thanked him about 20 times then went and booked my flight. My best friend Chris lives in Raleigh so he was going to be my +1, mainly because he was available and I needed a place to sleep while I was there, not because I wanted to see him again so soon after Hell’s Heroes. Ha.
So I get to Raleigh on Monday afternoon and we go and grab dinner and a couple drinks before heading to his place. We get there, hang out with his wife and then crash out.
We get up Tuesday and he’s got to get his boys ready for school and work and I also had work to do, so we took care of business as we needed to and then got ready to head to the Walnut Creek Amphitheater for the show. We hit a record store, found nothing of interest and went across the street to a little bar and grabbed dinner and a couple of drinks and made our way through the show traffic to get parked. I was a little nervous since I didn’t have tickets in hand that maybe we didn’t get hooked up so I went to will call and gave her my ID and she handed me an envelope. Whew. We were prepared to buy cheap seats just in case we didn’t get tix. I opened the envelope and I saw that we were in section 2, row N. Ooooooh, those sound close.
Once inside, we bought an overpriced drink and meet up with some friends for a bit. After that we go to our seats and WHOA…we’re close. We’re dead center in the front section and only about 10-12 rows back. I was shocked to be honest. These are not cheap seats, especially at a KISS show.
As we’re sitting down, I have a woman and her kid next to me and we get into a conversation. She was in visiting from Corpus Christi, TX and I tell her I was in from Austin. Come to find out, she got hooked up through the same guy I did. Her best friend is this guy’s neighbor and her friend got them hooked up for the show. Oddly enough, I know her friend as well. Her daughter is 11 or 12 and is a massive KISS fan. I sent a message to the guy and their picture and he was ecstatic that we had connected. What a small world! Just a crazy connection.
So there we were, all anticipating KISS hitting the stage. Chris isn’t a fan, but that was only because he didn’t get that exposure in his younger years like many of us did, but he was also looking forward to seeing it live. And then boom, the curtain drops and there they are opening with Detroit Rock City and I got an instant boost of energy. They rolled through the same set that they have been playing for a while but it was a solid list overall minus Say Yeah and Psycho Circus. Of course I would have loved more from Rock and Roll Over but oh well. They were solid and both Gene and Paul’s voices sounded good. There was only one spot in one song that I think Paul used something canned, but the rest of the night sounded natural to my ears. The show was absolutely fun and I had only seen KISS one other time and that was within the last 10 years. One of the things I loved the most was watching Jeanette’s kid have such a great time seeing her favorite band. KISS knows how to put on a show. Towards the end they dropped large KISS balloons and I caught one to give to her kid. She was excited about it. I had such a great time and getting to see my best friend enjoy a band he wasn’t all that into and meeting new friends made it a wonderful night all around.
The show ends and as we’re walking out covered in confetti and Jeanette mentioned that she was going to try and get an Uber to get back to their hotel. I told her she’d likely be waiting forever and that we could give her a ride. So we get back to Chris’ vehicle, throw the large balloon in the back and head to their hotel. Quick hugs and goodbyes at the hotel and we were off to find a late night snack and drink. We found it, but it wasn’t that great. Whatever. Back to the house and we crashed out pretty quickly.
The next morning, we both do some work, catch his wife up on how the show went and the “small world” story. Once we both got caught up on work, I packed and showered and we headed off to hit a BBQ restaurant to get my belly filled with some eastern NC style pork BBQ since I can’t get that style here in Texas. Off to the airport from there. I had a connection through Atlanta and ran into a poker buddy there who was headed back to Austin.
What a great time. No matter that KISS is still Gene, Paul and “those other guys”, they still kill it live. They’re obviously not young guys anymore but can still put on as good of a show as anyone.
KISS FOREVER. And a million thanks to Mike for the hookup.
Lamb of God, Anthrax, Deafheaven & Power Trip Concert Review, Austin, TX, February 8, 2016
I went to last night’s show solely to see Anthrax and Power Trip. I think Deafheaven and Lamb of God are awful. Boring, really.
Originally I wasn’t going to go then I saw that Anthrax was doing a relatively inexpensive meet and greet and I’ve wanted to meet them and to get them in The Book so I got my ticket and ordered the meet and greet. Shortly after the M&G was announced, a local record store posted that they would be doing an in-store as well and to get anything signed, you had to buy a deck of their playing cards and no photos. Oh well.
Doors were at 4:30PM (wow) and we were told to be there at 3:15PM. Ultimately there were only 4 of us and we got taken to the backstage area where the band came out to say hello, sign stuff and do a few pictures and talk for a few minutes. It was pretty obvious that Scott Ian didn’t want to be there, so I just shook his hand, had him sign The Book, a photo and my Spreading the Disease CD cover. Charlie was checking out The Book, looked up and saw my Loudness patch and said, “I bet Loudness isn’t in here.” I let him know that they were and that I had sigs from 3/4 of the original band. Then he started rambling off other bands, some of them nu-metal shit, and I said that there were no bands after 1991 in here. “Oh, cool. Where do I get one of these?” So I directed him to Amazon blah blah blah. Joey and Frank were extremely nice and super chatty as was their new guitarist, Jon Donais of Shadows Fall. I wish I had recognized him at the moment because I love Of One Blood by Shadows Fall. I mentioned to Joey and Frank that I had first seen them on the Among tour at The Boathouse. Scott heard me and said, “Geez, I remember that dump. We played there a few times.” Three to be exact, but whatever. It was good to meet them and we were all given a deck of the Anthrax cards, a record mat, a band photo to get signed and the M&G laminate. We were also given the opportunity to buy merch on the way out so I got a tour shirt.
Since Power Trip wasn’t going on until 6PM, I went over to Lambert’s for some awesome food and a beer as it was only 430PM when we were led back out of the venue. I’m back at the venue are 530PM and see a bunch of friends and hang out a bit before Power Trip’s set.
I head up to the mezzanine area and sit for a few minutes. I’ve had some back issues lately and I was seated on the back corner of the back row (only four rows in this section) and could get up as needed. I ended up standing for most of the show as it was more comfortable. Power Trip started promptly at 6PM and the crowd was trickling in. I’ve seen them several times and I really enjoy them in a live setting. I think they gained some new fans by then end of their 30 minute set. They were solid as usual.
Deafheaven was up next and I just went back out to the lobby area to hang out with some friends. They bore me to tears.
Anthrax came on right at 745PM opening with Fight ’em Till You Can’t from their Worship Music album, which I really liked. Having Belladonna back in the band has been great, for me at least. They rolled effortlessly through an 8 song set that had 2 songs from their forthcoming album, For All Kings. I liked the 2 new tracks a lot. They played In the End, Caught In a Mosh and Indians as well…and two covers. FUUUUUCK. I mean, I know they’ve always played covers live, but throw us a bone every now and then. On some of the shows where they’ve had a longer set, they’ve included as many as 3 songs from Spreading the Disease. HOLY FUCK I’d lose my mind if I saw Lone Justice live. *sigh* Oh well. Charlie Benante is still ungodly on drums and Frank Bello is basically the Angus Young of the bass. I’ve always loved his playing and his backing vocals are superb. Joey sounded great, too. Jon is a killer guitarist and played Spitz’ parts perfectly as well as his own.
After a short break, Lamb of God comes on. I stayed for the first song and that was enough for me. Never liked their stuff. Bro-metal.
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- Photo by Jerry Milton
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- Photo by Jerry Milton
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- Photo by Jerry Milton
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- Photo by Jerry Milton
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- Photo by Jerry Milton
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- Monkey Boy with Anthrax
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- Photo by Monkey Boy
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- Photo by Monkey Boy
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- Anthrax playing cards
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- I couldn’t get the page flipped quickly enough to have Joey NOT sign this photo
The Metal Files 
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