Thursday, August 12, 2010

It's been a while...

Yeah, it's been a while since I last posted, but- what do you do? I'm lazy.
Just wanted to share my thoughts on the Crosby, Stills & Nash/Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers show at Philips Arena last night.
CSN was tremendously enjoyable- much more so than I even had anticipated. I was also surprised to find out Stephen Stills is a guitar virtuoso. I mean, I figured CSN's part of the show would be sort of a mellow, 70's radio-type throwback show- heavy on the acoustic and vocal, with not a lot of emphasis on the rest of the performance.
While the songs definitely took you back, I was not expecting for CSN to rock the way they did. The solid, intense rhythm section held together the mostly electric set, featuring some seriously blistering, bluesy guitar solos from Stephen Stills (another surprise- I didn't realize he was such a virtuoso).
Age has robbed Crosby and Stills of some of their vocal abilities, but Graham Nash seems to have found some sort of Fountain of Youth for his throat- and they put on an outstanding show.
Tom Petty and crew, of course, were awesome. They cranked up the volume, which was already plenty loud, as they rolled through their not inconsiderable catalog to get the crowd going, and the five or so tracks they did from their new album ("Mojo") were great. (A bonus is that you get a free download of the album with the purchase of a ticket to the show).
Petty's distinct voice has shown no real signs of aging and the Heartbreakers were incredibly solid- you could tell these guys have been together a while, and have formed a wonderful working dynamic that plays up everyone's strengths to the fullest.
Also, Philips is a pretty good place to see a show.

Unfortunately (and you knew there was one coming) most of the people in the crowd around us seemed to be more interested in flapping their face holes than watching the show. Seriously, the people around us talked non-stop for the entire show.
The only time we weren't being assaulted by the prattling of the two beefheads behind us was when they went to get more beer which, unfortunately, meant they'd come back even more intoxicated and their volume would go up even more as they regaled each other with their fucktarded tales of beer and whiskey and whatever other inane crap they found more interesting than the goddamned show itself.
Not like they were the only ones (just the loudest), plenty of people up and down the rows just kept right on vomiting their inanities on us throughout the show- all the while escalating their volume to be heard over the music.
I mean, really- we were there with out of town guests and we didn't spend the show talking- I always figured if I paid good money for a concert ticket I'd do something novel, like enjoy the damned concert!
So, what I'm left with is- I loved the show, but I hate people (no, that's not really news). Why can't they just shut the hell up instead of foisting their fuckery on the rest of us?

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