In what has become something of a Yuletide tradition, because I’ve done it twice, I’m ending the year with a recap of the concerts I saw this year. Three times makes a streak, so here you go.
(Now I just need to plan a concert or two for next year)
This year, I only went to two concerts, but each of them featured three bands. So that’s, like… crap, more than one hand’s worth.
Three of the bands I had pretty much never heard of before, but it was a venue I had always wanted to go to. The other three bands I have known about for forty years, but never saw.
Since it’s two concert, and it’s 5,000 words, I’ll split it up into two posts. Come back later this week for Part Two. It’s what the business people call “synergy.”
Concert One:
One day, my wife stood at our Echo Dot and had a moment of indecision.
“Alexa, play… something.”
Yes, we are those people that only use this wonderful piece of technology for one thing. Weather alerts and alarms? Pshaw. Smart lights? What are those? It’s all about the portable DJ, baby.
“Okay,” Alexa responds. “Here’s something you might like. Shuffling songs by the Tedeschi Trucks Band.”
What the fuck is a Tedeschi Tru… Hey, this is pretty good. Alright then, let’s just ignore the fact that this AI knows what we want better than we know ourselves. I think this is how “The Terminator” starts, but what’s a little Singularity when I can discover new music? And how much do I have to pay Amazon to have Alexa suggest my book to people?
Fast forward to spring of this year, I was trying to come up with gift ideas for my wife’s birthday. She’s always wanted to go to Red Rocks amphitheater outside of Denver. So on a whim I decided to check the venue’s website to see if I could find an excuse to take her there, and who happens to be playing the weekend after her birthday? Why, it’s Alexa’s favorite band!
So the next thing we knew, we were flying into an airport that serves as the headquarters for the New World Order in order to watch a band we only liked because our robot overlords made us like them.
Hey, more synergy!
Of course, the real reason we were there was for the venue, and it’s not like I know any specific Tedeschi Trucks Band songs, nor can I tell you which riffs come from the album and when was either Ms. Tedeschi or Mr. Trucks (yes, that’s their names) improvising. Nor could I tell you which one plays which instrument. Because Alexa doesn’t show me videos. Alexa tells me to go sit in the corner until my chores are done or I’m going to bed without dinner because she won’t read the recipe to me, and the instructions on the Macaroni & Cheese are too complicated for a mere human to follow.
So yeah. Red Rocks was beautiful. Seriously, it was sublime. I wish I could make a joke, some reference to the Native Americans or the ancient Greeks with their outdoor auditoriums or whatever, but I really can’t. Hearing the naturally amplified sound while watching the setting sun reflect off a red and orange and tan mosaic rising out of the earth like the sinking Titanic, only with better music than Celine Dion playing, was worth the trip. I can’t complain about much.
But who comes to my blog to read platitudes? I think I’ll complain a little bit.
The hike up to the auditorium is a little bit of a “Holy Christ, I’m going to die.” You’re already up at, like, a million feet elevation, where the air is only, like, one percent as much as at sea level. And then they put the parking lot maybe seventy-five miles away. And ten thousand feet below, so you have to hike the last seventy-five miles directly uphill. Barefoot in the snow. Both directions.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t as bad as all that. I mean, according to my FitBit, my heart only stopped nineteen times during the hike.
The real problem, though, came after the hike. The line to get in stretched practically back to the parking lot.
And look at how it’s so precariously suspended in midair. Why, there’s nothing wrong with milling about on a free-standing structure with thousands of your human brethren for the forty-five minutes it’s going to take us to get up the stairs. I’m sure they built it with millions of pounds of stationary American girth in mind. But hey, can we maybe not stand four-wide the whole way up? They don’t have earthquakes in Colorado, do they? Or tornadoes? Or wind?
And although I have a tendency to exaggerate for comedic effect, the forty-five minutes we were stuck in line was, if anything, an underestimation. We missed almost the entire opening set. So sorry, Marcus King Band, but you sounded wonderful from my vantage point clinging to the other side of rock encampment that’s playing as nature’s own reverb machine for you.
Okay, maybe the Marcus King Band didn’t sound wonderful. But they were definitely passable.
The worst part about the long line to get in was that we had stopped for a couple of drinks in town, not wanting to be those people who showed up too early for a concert. Little did we know that, at this particular venue, arriving early means parking closer and actually getting into the venue. Damn you, Colorado. Have you never seen when your Rockies play in San Francisco or Los Angeles? Arriving on time is so gauche.
No, you know what? The wine bar wasn’t the most annoying part. The really annoying part was that we had at least three friends who had been to Red Rocks before.Each one of them discussed the majesty and the splendor and the truly breathtaking spectacle that was to be greeting us tucked away in this Rocky Mountain Garden of Edens. But not a one told us to get the fuck there early because it would take two hours to get from the parking lot through security.
Once we were through security, it was another hike up to the top to get food. Fortunately, the beer was a lot close, which was good because that wine bar seemed a month ago by now. And I needed a beer for fuel to get me up to the top to get food. You need to get calories to burn calories, people. This body doesn’t happen by chance.
Plus the opening band had just finished, so what better time to get in a food line? Oh I’m sorry, did I say what better time? I meant what worse time. Maybe we should have tried to find some seats during this intermission. But nah, why would we want to compound a mistake with a success, when there are so many other things to compound it with.
The food was good.
The seats, on the other hand…
The concert was mostly general admission. There were a few seats in the middle of the seventy or so rows that had reserved seating, but everything down by the stage and everything near the back was general admission. The typical row was a bench with approximately 140 seats. So there should have been somewhere around five thousand general admission seats. And we couldn’t find a fucking one.
“I’m holding that spot.”
“You mean those ten spots?”
“That’s why there’s a blanket there.”
“Can you scoot closer?”
“No.”
So much for Colorado people being polite.
So we watched the second band from a raised tree planter off to the side of the seating, near the stairs. And we weren’t the only ones. There were maybe ten planters, one every five or six rows, each standing ten feet high. Each planter had anywhere from five to twenty patrons, either leaning against the tree or dangling their feet off the ten-foot drop between the front of the planter and the passageway below.
Seriously, how many tickets did they sell to this thing? You might think they keep selling “general admission” because there’s no way to accurately count the number of seats. But no. Because this concert had been sold out when I searched for tickets. I had to pay extra on the Ticketmaster-sponsored ticket exchange, because if they can’t fuck you over with the initial purchase, then by golly, they’ll fuck over both the original purchaser and the secondary purchaser.
So they clearly only sold as many tickets as there are seat. It’s just that the fat fuck in row sixty-two is clearly taking up one-and-a-half seats. And the blanket cuddle orgy over to the left is looking for more lebensraum than the goddamned Schlieffen Plan.
But I can’t complain too much. From my vantage point all the way stage left, I had a beautiful panorama of those eponymous red rocks rising out of the earth stage right. In fact, from this angle, those rocks made a wide v-angle with the stage that continued to change as the sunset approached and then passed.
I never would have noticed this natural wonder had I been in the seats, able to focus my sight on something quaint like the video screen or the stage. And it’s not like I knew what the band members looked like and needed to see their facial expressions as they put emotion into lyrics I’ve never heard.
Besides, those benches were probably uncomfortable as hell.
Hey, speaking of singers and songs and shit, how was the band?
The second band that played on the evening was Drive By Truckers. With the Tedeschi Trucks Band, I’m noticing a trend.
But let me tell you, the Drive By Truckers kicked ass. I didn’t know what to expect, but they were tight. With their name, I expected something in the country-western vein. Maybe one of the hard-edge country bands, like… actually, I’m not really up on my country bands these days. Is Alabama still a thing? Were they ever edgy? How about Skynyrd?
Yeah, let’s go with Skynyrd. The Drive By Truckers were reminiscent of Skynyrd. They even reference Skynyrd in one of their songs, so they must approve of the comparison. But I’d also add in some Allmann Brothers. Or Jeff Healey. Part southern rock, part jam band. Laid back, conversational style but some great drive in their play.
I’ve become a bit of a fan since then. I mean, once I figured out which band we were actually listening to, because I don’t think it was ever announced which order the bands were going, and we couldn’t see the stage for any telltale indications of band name. For all I knew, this could be the actual Tedeschi Trucks Band, and they just weren’t letting the lady sing tonight.
But I remembered a lyric that went “I never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd” and was able to track down to the song “Let There Be Rock,” by the Drive-By Truckers, so then I knew who I had seen. Thanks, Google!
So now I’ve found myself listening to them a few times since. More often than Tedeschi Trucks. Even a few times on my Alexa. I wonder if think she knows that it stemmed from her initial recommendation? Thanks, Amazon!
Boy howdy, am I ready for our new AI overlords or what?
Speaking of Alexa’s original suggestion, how was the Tedeschi Trucks Band? Pretty good. Most of their recordings, and most of their YouTube videos, are from their concerts, so they sounded pretty much like I had heard and expected. Which is great. I mean, that’s what we were there for, right? Aside from seeing the amphitheater which, let’s be honest, was the real reason we were there.
But regardless of that, the Tedschi Trucks Band was solid. Very enjoyable. But they broke the number one rule of showmanship, which is to not be upstaged by the opening band. Or in this case, the second band.
In the end, we were tired of standing by a tree and not being able to see the actual band, and were mindful of getting to and out of the parking lot before the next presidential election, so we left before their set was over. Which doesn’t seem fair. You’ve got to wait until the finale and the encore to really judge a concert, right? Heck, “Let There Be Rock” was Drive-By Truckers’ last song, and it’s the one that finally pushed me over from enjoyable to kick-ass.
But meh, wife was over it, and I needed another beer, so we might as well get one on the way out. And I might or might not have still been able to hear the finale from the parking lot seventy-two miles away. Those red rocks can really reverberate, baby.
Come by later this week to hear about my second three-band show. I’ll give you a hint: One of the bands had a Filipino lead singer and the other has a one-armed drummer.
The Writing Wombat 