Posts Tagged ‘concerts’
Nicko McBrain’s Titanium Tart / Velvet Sky / Maximum Friction, Sanford, FL, July 25, 2025
Haven’t posted in a while but this one was important enough to share here…
Let’s flashback to about 1983. I wasn’t playing drums yet but I wanted to learn and a big reason for that was hearing Piece Of Mind and Nicko McBrain. They were becoming and still are my favorite band of all time, not matter that I generally haven’t cared about anything they’ve put out since No Prayer.
Flash forward to early 1988. I’m 17, a senior with terribly poofy hair and acne and local music store Abbey Music announces that Nicko, my favorite drummer ever, was doing a drum clinic and of course I had to go.
There were only about 30 people there as Whitesnake was in town touring for the ’87 LP. I was one of 2 people who actually got to get up on stage and play his drums with him standing right there. It was awesome. I still have the pair of his signature sticks! During one of his rambles, he mentioned the size of the crowd being small due to Whitesnake being in town. Under my breath from the front row I said “Fuck Tommy Aldridge.” Nicko stopped his speech and said, “Steve, give that man a beer!” So his tech handed me an ice cold Heineken which I had Nicko autograph after the show as we were getting a photo taken. I still have that bottle, unopened and it’s all chunky inside. I didn’t drink at the time so there was no reason to open it. It was an incredible night.
Flash forward to just a few weeks ago and I see a post online about Nicko’s Titanium Tart playing 4 Florida shows and offering a meet and greet. I had to do it. I sent the info to Kelz and we got on a long phone call to discuss logistics. Just based on price point, I decided to fly into Raleigh where he is and we’d drive down to Sanford, FL. BUT…we wanted to make sure we were able to purchase the meet and greet which was to go on sale a couple of days later. We got the tix dnd I booked my trip and that was that.
Thursday July 24
Kelz picks me up mid afternoon at the airport, we chill at his place a bit then run out for dinner at a coney dog place called Cloos’. It was excellent. Back to his place to chill for a bit and watch a movie. We planned to leave at 7AM on Friday.
Friday July 25
We did leave at 7AM and because of some traffic issues along that way, we got to our crash pad right at 5PM. Luckily we were just a couple of blocks away. We dropped our stuff, freshened up and walked over to The Barn. That humidity was no joke. Once there we checked in and got our meet and greet swag and do our obligatory pre-show shot. Mine was just Coke.
First band, Maximum Friction, opened up the evening. They’re all young high school kids and play as a 3pc with the bassist handling vocal duties. They played all classic metal covers by Ozzy, Megadeth, Sabbath, Pantera etc and one original. They were pretty solid and reminded me of School of Rock type kids. Good on em.
Another 3pc called Velvet Sky played next. Both bands played a side room and I didn’t watch any of Velvet Sky.
Nicko’s band started just before 8PM on the main stage and we grabbed a spot near the front stage right in the VIP section. You couldn’t really see Nicko because of his kit size but we could hear him fine. In general I’d call the song selection meh but I’m sure they’re doing the songs that best fit his physical condition. He did as well as I’d expected, especially after seeing three shows from that last tour. I was stoked to hear Infinite Dreams. Partially disabled by his stroke or not, the man’s right foot is still devastating as he proved throughout the night.
He’d come out from behind the kit every few songs and talk, tell jokes, introduced the band etc. I stayed up in that area for about the first third of the show and moved to the back of the room. Knees were stiffening up and I needed to loosen em up and walk around a bit. Kelz left the VIP shortly after and we watched the remainder of the show back by the soundboard. Looked like about 200-250 folks.
Immediately after their set, the meet and greet folks were told to wait by the stairs to the upper level. They sold 50 of those packages at $75 a pop. We were in the last 10 or so to cycle thru.
It was billed as getting “one on one time with Nicko” and only one item to get signed. Uh yeah. I was gonna try and work some mojo and get two items signed: The Book and the photo of us from 1988 for framing purposes. Nicko would engage with the folks almost as much as anyone wished to. Some folks opted for a quick sig and a photo and some engaged with him more. It was nice to see altho it slowed things down a bit. We had nowhere to be, right?
Kelz is up first and I filmed their interaction. He got his main two things signed: a cool old Sonor ad from Modern Drummer and his Powerslave cd which already had sigs by Bruce, Adrian and Steve. Pretty sweet.
I’m up next and lay The Book out in front of him and he signed it. He was pretty indifferent about it but was digging our photo. I started recounting the events of that night and mentioned his former drum tech (RIP) and the Heineken. That affected him a little and he said he missed that guy. He said, “this must’ve been from 89” and I showed him the announcement flyer and explained it was Feb 1, 1988 pre-Seventh Son and that night was the first time I’d heard the title of the upcoming album. I asked if he’d sign the photo and he obliged. They had someone taking pics using our cameras and Kelz filmed most of my interaction with the man. We did the one main photo and he shook my hand and I asked him for a hug. He obliged and I told him in his ear how much I loved him and thanked him for a lifetime of music. He thanked me back and that was that. I was hoping to recreate our original photo as much as we could’ve but it just didn’t play out that way and I’m good with that.
My San Antonio buddy Ruben and his lovely wife Jasmin were right behind us and get their stuff signed. He also had Nicko sign his leg which hopefully got tattooed in today.
We collected ourselves after the surreal moments with Nicko and Ruben gave us a ride back. Our adrenaline was still up and we ordered in a couple of sammiches, talked about the evening a bit more and crashed out. It was a perfect night.
We drove back Saturday the 26th, it was a little over 9 hours coming back and traffic was light for the most part. We got back here at 6PMish and just chilled out for the evening with a couple of movies.
The expense and time of this trip was worth every minute and dollar spent. Getting Nicko in The Book was a pinnacle moment and I’m considering retiring it. As I’m writing this eating breakfast tacos Sunday morning here in Raleigh with Kelz, we’re still quite a bit in awe of meeting Nicko. Glad we got to share the experience together as Iron Maiden has been a major part of our friendship for over 40 years.
All hail Nicko and always Up The Irons! Forever.
Video of Nicko and me:
Setlist: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/titanium-tart/2025/the-barn-in-sanford-sanford-fl-4b4283ae.html
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.
Y&T Concert Review, Austin, TX, April 14, 2017
Sorry to all 8 of my faithful readers, I’ve been super slack in keeping up with show reviews lately but trying to get my ass in gear again.
A strange thing happened Friday night in Austin, TX. A couple of things actually. Let’s just line these out:
- Y&T played in downtown Austin
- Y&T played an almost full house
- Y&T did not play San Antonio on this current tour
You may not see these things as strange, but San Antonio seemingly has had a lock on many of the classic hard rock and metal bands that still tour. Y&T has played there at least 6 times in the last decade and hadn’t played Austin since 1987. As many know, San Antonio had a legendary DJ named Joe Anthony who helped make a lot of bands popular in San Antonio and elsewhere for that matter. He did a lot for the scene and even years after his death (RIP), San Antonio still holds that era near and dear to their hearts, and rightfully so.
But it’s nice to see that the winds are changing a little bit. When this show was booked at one of Austin’s newer venues, 3Ten, I was a bit surprised. It’s in the fancier part of downtown attached to the W Hotel and Austin City Limits Live. I was really wondering how attendance would be for this location. To be honest, I imagined about 50-60 would show up.
I’d not been to this venue yet but took a ride into downtown loaded with my Y&T vinyl and ready to rock with Meniketti and Co. Upon arrival, I ran into some good friends and in we went. The venue is just basically an open box with the stage at the far end and a bar on the right side. But it’s a nice place and obviously owned by ACL Live.
There was no opening act and Y&T hit the stage promptly at 9. As we were getting our spots near the stage, we were all surprised by how many people were filling in. I was shocked. I would have expected this show to be booked at Dirty Dog or Grizzly Hall but whatever, this was a good thing. They hit the stage and dove right into Lipstick and Leather and followed that up with Don’t Stop Runnin’, which is my favorite song by them and easily in my top 20 songs all time by any band. I had goosebumps through the whole song. So many great memories of that song from a time long gone.
The band sounded great. They mix up the setlists every night but keeping most of the hits in there. Every song was great. The band have been road warriors since their inception and it shows in how tight they are. Upon introducing Winds of Change, Dave mentioned the recent deaths of original members Joey Alves and Leonard Haze and of Phil Kennemore in 2011. That’s got to be hard knowing you’re the only one left.
They totally killed it though. Their backing vocals are great and Meniketti is an underrated guitar god.
This may sound goofy but I was proud of this town for showing up and it was obvious a lot of long time fans were there as you could hear people singing along all throughout the venue. Granted one of their biggest cheers came from Summertime Girls, which I understand, but they had so many great songs. Of course people were just calling out song titles in between songs and Dave asked a girl in a wheelchair down front what she wanted to hear. She asked for Let Me Go and Dave said they had only played that 10 times or less since it came out…then they nailed it. Someone else had yelled out “Game Playing Woman!” from the first album. Dave laughed and started playing the riff. The other guitarist and drummer fell right in perfectly. The new bassist didn’t know that one. They only did a piece of it but it was impressive seeing Dave just whip it out off the cuff and still remember the riffs and words.
After the show, Dave came out to hang with the fans. It’s always great hearing his stories and he loves to talk about the olden days. Since I had a stack of stuff to get signed, I hung back to let folks say hi, get photos and such. He was super gracious signing my 7 LP covers and their 2010 CD cover. He talked about how extremely happy that they were about the show and that he was a little worried about attendance but that from now on, he’s planning to book Austin instead of San Antonio for future tours. Score! He said the last few shows down there weren’t very well attended or as enthusiastic as this one.
One observation: what’s with dudes my age and up in bedazzled jeans and shirts?
It was a great show all around and I highly recommend seeing them. If you weren’t a fan before, I guarantee you’ll be one after the show.
The Metal Files 
You must be logged in to post a comment.