Posts Tagged ‘norfolk’
Rolling Stones Review – Bomb Scare Show – 10/06/05
As you may know if you’ve either known me for a while or read back through some of my ramblings, I am a huge Stones fan. My #2 band of all time actually, only to be beaten out by Iron Maiden. I finally got an oppurtunity to see them in 2005 at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, VA. I originally bought 5 tickets, 3 nosebleeds and 2 good ones. I planned to use the good seats for myself and whoever I decided to bring along with me and resell the other 3 for a profit. Yep. Capitalist pig I am! But…I ended up selling the 2 good seats to my friend Jeanne as she wanted to take her mom to the show. No profit to be made.
Right about a year or so before I got the tickets, I started to frequent the Taphouse in the Ghent section of Norfolk, VA. I had been there before with friends but never really “hung out” much there. I liked the place and started going there mroe often for shows and such. I lived about 25 minutes away so I didn’t do much of my partying there because of the drive. As I was sitting at the bar one afternoon, I was talking to one of the owners, Al, about how I had some spare tix for the Stones show if he knew anyone that wanted them. He said he’d buy them and take his guitarist along. Done deal. We ended up going to the show together with his brother as his guitarist bailed at the last minute.
I didn’t really know these guys that well but what the hell. I knew a lot of people who knew them and they were good to me as a patron in my early days there. These 2 guys play in a band called Rylo. Rylo is a boogie/honkytonk/jazzy/upbeat type band. Hard to classify really but they do what they do very well. Of course in my car I only brought metal stuff to listen to. Maiden, Dokken, Mercyful Fate, KISS, etc. Ended up that these 2 dudes were metalheads. It was the beginning of a wonderful relationship.
We drove to the show, a 3 hour trip, and had a blast. We met Jeanne and her mom in town for some Italian food then parked and walked to the stadium for the show. We parked in some dude’s yard for $20 and walked about a mile. No biggie, the weather was perfect.
We definitely had nosebleed seats. Trey Anastasio of Phish opened up. B O R I N G. I was amazed at how many people left after Trey played. Whatever. The Stones were the Stones. Sloppy. Energetic. Funny. To be honest, I shed a tear when they hit the stage. Lifelong dream for me to see them.
Halfway through the set, Mick stops and does introductions then says they need to take a break per the “authorities”. We figured someone called and complained or something. Turned out to be a bomb threat. They cleared the floor for the first 40-50 rows and brought in bomb sniffing dogs. No bomb. Of course. The big treat for me was that they played Sweet Virginia. They NEVER play that song.
They came out and finished their set. From what I understand we only lost 2 songs…Infamy and The Worst. No big deal.
We decided to drive back to Norfolk that night. It was slow getting out of there but we had a blast. Mountain Dews, beef jerky and Doritos all around for the ride home. It was a blast, almost as fun as the show.
Soonafter that I moved to Ghent and the Taphouse became my place. I ended up working there as a doorman as needed and loved every moment of it. I made some friendships there that will last forever. I miss that place a lot and when I go to visit Virginia, it’s usually the first place I stop in.
Setlist:
- Start Me Up
- It’s Only Rock’n Roll
- Shattered
- Tumbling Dice
- Rough Justice
- Ruby Tuesday
- Sweet Virginia !!!! with additional sing-along after the song had ended
- All Down the Line !!
- Night Time is the Right Time
— band intros, thru Ronnie.
Time: 9:43pm
“We have to take a 10 minute break, according to the authorities”. Band leaves the Stadium, they bring in bomb sniffing dogs, clear out the stage people entirely, and vacate everyone in the first third of the field and the seats at the ends of Mick’s catwalks.
Time: 10:38pm - Miss You (to second stage)
- Oh No, Not You Again
- Get Off My Cloud
- Honky Tonk Women (from second stage)
- Sympathy For The devil
- Midnight Rambler!
- Paint It Black
- Brown Sugar
- Jumping Jack Flash
- You Can’t Always Get What You Want (encore)
- Satisfaction (encore)
Race With The Devil On Spanish Highway
Right about the time that Riot released Privilege of Power (which I still love), I was reading the credits in the cassette’s liner notes. Remember cassettes? Anyhoo, I went to the mall record store and looked DiMeola up on their database 
and purchased Elegant Gyspy (on tape). At that time it was a name that I was unfamiliar with as I really wasn’t listening to any jazz/fusion at the time. Mahavishnu Orchestra was really the only band I was familiar with from that genre. I remember popping the tape in my car’s cassette player (1982 Pontiac Trans Am!) and just sitting in the parking lot with my mouth wide open. I was completely blown away. All I could think was “This dude is a badass! Holy shit. Listen to that drummer!”
I had a full time job with VDOT at the time but was also working a few hours a week at a local drum shop, helping the owner build his new store. I brought the tape in one evening and said, “What do you know about Lenny White?” He was already sitting behind a drum set and started playing some of the amazingly fast paradiddles and other licks from this album. Again…mouth wide open. Drew was a fantastic drummer.
I listened to this tape incessantly and even practiced drums to it…as much as my abilities let me anyway. I was no Lenny White.
It’s easily in my top 10-15 albums of all time. Al’s playing on this is so fluid. It’s jazz, it’s a little rock, it’s a little metal, it’s flamenco…it’s everything. The album flows so smoothly from beginning to end. I usually listen to it at least twice every time.
A few years ago (2006?), Patrick (Buzzard) and I got tickets to see DiMeola in downtown Norfolk. We were both pretty excited to see the show as we were both big fans. We parked near the venue a while before the show so we could grab some food and a beer or 2 prior to going in. We had some NY style pizza and a few beers and walked over to the theater. As we got closer I could see that something was taped to the door. “CANCELED” My heart sunk. What a total letdown. We were both pretty annoyed. Apparently Al’s drummer quit that day or something. Damn! So we ended up going back to our neighborhood and barhopped.
Last year it was announced that Return to Forever was reuniting and that their first 2 shows would be in Austin at the Paramount Theater. Doug Morrison and I scored 2nd row center seats on the balcony. $125ea and worth every penny. The view and the sound were perfect. You could hear Al’s footswitch when he changed channels on his amp. Everyone was quiet and attentive while RTF played. It was pretty impressive. It was doubly special for me because I finally got to see Lenny White play drums live.
Of all of Al’s other solo works, I really only liked Land of the Midnight Sun and Casino. The others got a little too modern sounding for me…But Elegant Gypsy is the cream of the crop.
So Mark Reale, if you’re reading this, thanks for turning me on to DiMeola. I owe you bigtime! :)
Pat Travers – Putting It Straight
When I was still collecting vinyl, Iron Maiden was my #1 interest. As you probably know they released a ton of stuff and I had a good selection of it
thanks to Unicorn Records, Skinnies Records, Electric Smiles, Fantasy, eBay and trading through some pen pal type things from the backs of magazines. Oddly enough there were never any problems with the traders. I never got ripped off once. Honest lot those metalheads! As a subset to collecting Maiden stuff, I also was trying to collect everything that Nicko McBrain had played on. Not an easy task as there were some pretty obscure British things out there.
So my former supervisor and I were good friends and he told me about his record collection that had been sitting in his closet for 15 years. Knowing Mark like I did, I knew these were in near perfect condition. The guy was meticulous about everything. So I randomly stopped by Mark’s house one day (1993ish?) when I was in the neighborhood and we were just hanging out and catching up a bit as we hadn’t seen each other in a while. After a while I asked if he still had his records. He said he still had them and wanted to sell them. I wasn’t in the market to buy the collection but I surely wanted to peruse his crates. So he pulls out these 3 huge crates of records and I start flipping through one by one. Tons of 70s rock. You know, BOC, Zeppelin, Stones, Bob Seeger, Poco, America, etc etc. Nothing too obscure and surely nothing that a record collector would have paid more than 3-4 dollars each for.
There near the end of perusal, there it was. It was one of those heavenly “ahhhhhh” moments where it seemed like the clouds parted and the sun shone down on this box of records. Pat Travers’ Putting It Straight with Nicko on drums! Mark still claims to this day that I was shaking when I was holding it. I don’t doubt that I was. I was pretty excited. I said, “How much?” He responded, “Not for sale.” What a douche! But he did tell me to take it with me until I found my own copy. It was in pristine shape. PERFECT even. Shortly thereafter I found another vinyl copy at Skinnies and a year or 2 later he had the original and rare Jap pressing of the CD which I also bought.
I adore this album. It’s got Nicko’s signature drum licks written all over it. My favorites are Life In London, Offbeat Ride, Gettin’ Betta and It Ain’t What It Seems. The album as a whole is good and I highly recommend it if you’re into 70s hard rock.
Around 1994-1995 Pat came to town to play Wicker’s in Portsmouth, VA. I did my usual “show-up-to-the-gig-super-early” routine to hopefully meet the band. I lucked out as they were all inside getting ready to eat. I walked up to Pat and asked him to sign a few things for me and he was really cool. He signed my vinyl copy of this album and my CD cover. I asked him to talk about how it was to play with Nicko and he didn’t have many nice things to say. “Good drummer but a complete asshole after that whole Iron Maiden thing.” Apparently after Nicko joined Maiden, he landed his helicopter in Pat’s yard and bragged about his success. Who knows? I wouldn’t be that surprised if it was true. Not important to me either way. The guy that was sitting with us while we were talking about Nicko was Aynsley Dunbar. Of course I didn’t know that at the time. Had I known he was drumming for Pat, I would have brought my Jefferson Airplane and Journey stuff!
Nicko also played on Makin’ Magic which is also worth tracking down.
Hey Doro! Nice ass!
Yes, I said that to her, to her face even. What a schmuck! I was 18 and one of the first 5 people in line to 
see Megadeth, Warlock and Sanctuary(!). We got there early because we wanted to be on the barricade at the Boathouse for the whole show. We were so excited to see Sanctuary…getting to see Warlock and Megadeth was just icing on the cake. But…this whole story is about Warlock.
So there we were in line when a van pulls up and Doro gets out with a few big body guard looking dudes flanking her. She walks right by us and I was trying to think of something to say. Being 18, my groin was doing most of my thinking at the time so I said, “Hey Doro!” to which she politely replied, “Jah?!” in her thick german accent. I pulled the total Butthead moment and said, “uhhhhh…nice ass!” Instantly in my head I said ‘d’oh!’ A big smile crossed her face and she said, “Oh, tank you!” Man, I felt like such a dumbass. I was such a dumbass.
But Warlock kicked total ass that night. Now if you have known me for longer than a minute, you probably know that I am not a fan of metal bands fronted by women, save a few exceptions. Warlock is one of those exceptions.
I remember it was right after meeting a former friend from high school in 1986, he introduced me to CK at the Triumph/Yngwie show. Years later I ended up in a band with CK. Good times, bad times…but back to Warlock. So we were at CK’s place and I was flipping through his records and saw Warlock’s first 2 albums, Hellbound and Burning the Witches. So he put on Burning the Witches and I was digging it. Instant fan! I proceeded to go out and buy those 2 on cassette as well as True as Steel a little later.
I remember reading in Circus magazine that they had a new one coming out called Triumph and Agony. I picked it up the week it came out and loved it. I still do. It’s not as raw as the previous 3 albums, but it’s great. Getting to see that tour was such a treat. I think there were only a few people there who actually knew anything about Warlock (or Sanctuary for that matter) and we let them know that we were fans. We were raising holy hell for them and they appreciated it. Doro made several comments about “this group of guys over here who know what the hell is going on! All of you should learn how to rock like these guys!” Sure, cheesey stage banter but to a bunch of 17 and 18 year old fans, it was pretty cool.
I was pretty disappointed when they broke up after that tour. Doro’s solo albums never did a lot for me but her debut, Force Majeur, was good enough to stay in my collection.
In order from best to worst:
- Triumph and Agony
- True As Steel
- Burning the Witches
- Hellbound
They played a good cross section of all of the albums in their set. I was super excited when they went into “I Rule the Ruins”.
Doro has played San Antonio at least twice since I moved here and I should go the next time she plays. Everyone says she still kicks ass live.
If you can find the Warlock: Live in London DVD, I highly recommend it.
The Metal Files 
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