Going to start off 2024 with a couple of 2023 reviews. Not a stupid ranking of my best or anything, just my usual concert review and, later this week, the results of the twelfth annual Camptathalon.

Unfortunately, I only attended two concerts this year, so my concert review might be a bit sparse. Fortunately, one of those concerts had three bands.

Stevie Nicks

I didn’t see Stevie Nicks this year. 

I intended to. Unfortunately, we had a couple of last minute cancellations. First on her part, then on mine.

The first aborted attempt came in March, when Stevie Nicks canceled a week or two in advance for health reasons. Wife and I had babysitting all lined up for the makeup date in December until Daughter did her best impression of the Exorcist the night before. Figured it probably wasn’t a good idea to sick (literally) the projectile vomiter on grandma, so we sold the tickets the morning of the show.

Meh. We’ll see her next time. Even if I’ve had fifty years worth of chances to see her and she already had to reschedule the majority of this tour for health reasons. Old musicians tour till the end of time.

Speaking of which, we contemplated seeing Jimmy Buffett in May, but skipped it. I’m sure we’ll catch him next time he comes through… what was that? He won’t be touring anymore?

Hmmm….

Concert #1: 990s Redux

One of my local Indian Casinos (How are we not calling them Native Casinos or Indigenous Casinos yet? Indian Casino is still the preferred nomenclature? If you say so) opened a fancy new concert venue. See if you can spot the trend in the acts they’re booking: Air Supply, Kenny Loggins, Gladys Knight, Rod Stewart. 

That’s right: Fans with Disposable Income! 

My concert lineup? The Spin Doctors, Big Head Todd & the Monsters, and Blues Traveler.

When I invited my friend, he asked if there might be better uses for the time machine I’d obviously found. An asinine statement, because if it was 1994, these guys would all be headlining, not opening for each other.

Gin Blossoms were also in town the same night, playing the state fair. Some bookie is doing a terrible job, because every single person in attendance at one of those concerts would absolutely attend the other if they weren’t on the same night. 

Before the concert started, one of the background songs was “No Rain,” by Blind Melon and I thought, “Wait, are they one of the bands we’re seeing tonight?” Turns out they weren’t making a surprise appearance. They were probably at Gin Blossoms.

Spin Doctors

Weirdly enough, this was the draw of the concert. I’ve seen Blues Traveler and Big Head Todd countless times, often performing with each other. Never seen Spin Doctors. Hell, I didn’t even know they still existed as a band or as living humans.

Turns out they are, in fact, alive. But the first thought I had when they came out on stage was, “Damn, how’d that guy get so old?”

I was kinda expecting the same shaggy hippie dude with the oragnish-brownish beard from 1992. Dude had, Gasp!, white hair. 

No, I’m not looking in the mirror, why do you ask?

They started their concert with “What Time is It?” The song answers the title question with the time 4:30 and the rejoinder, “It’s not late, nah, it’s early.” When written, that was presumed to by 4:30 in the morning after a night of partying. Now that we’re all north of 45, the lyrics seem to refer to the early bird special at Denny’s. 

They were promoting a new album, because of course they were. Doubt I’ll run out and buy it.

I learned that “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” was not about a jilted love interest, but a step-mom that his dad had finally dumped when he was a teenager. Go listen to the lyrics again. Totally makes sense.

Other than that, they were pretty standard opening band fare. Other than the fact that I knew all the songs. Minus the new songs. 

Now that I think of it, they played no songs from in between their popular album and their new album. Kinda think they might’ve taken most of the last thirty years off.

Big Head Todd and the Monsters

I’ve seen Big Head Todd many times. In fact, they might actually be the band I’ve seen the second most. At worst, they’re in third place.

I’ve never really set out to see Big Head Todd. I don’t own any of their albums. I don’t check their tour dates.

That being said, I’ve always enjoyed them. If I see they’re on to a tour, my response is usually, “Oh, hey, Big Head Todd. I like those guys.”

So as long as fandom doesn’t require something like knowing a band’s songs, I’d say I’m a Big Head Todd fan. Let’s see, there’s “Bittersweet.” Oh yeah, and “Broken Hearted Savior” (although if you were to have told me that song was the Goo Goo Dolls, I wouldn’t have argued the point). And then there’s… um, well… Did I mention “Bittersweet?”

Well no more, dammit. Since this concert, I’ve asked Alexa to play songs by Big Head Todd and the Monsters (the last word of which she says with a Boston accent) at least… seven or eight times.

Damn, they’re good. They play a variety of different styles, mostly rooted in blues but with heavy influences from other genres. And Big Head Todd himself abso-fucking-lutely shreds on guitar. His solos were not too short, not too long, and energetic to the extreme. 

By the second song of the night, I was in full, “Yeah, this is what I feel like every time I see them!” It was a cover of John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom.” Not much to that song, really. It’s a whole bunch of “Boom, boom, boom, boom”s and “Bang, bang, bang, bang”s in front of that one riff from every George Thorogood song. 

You wouldn’t think a guy other than John Lee Hooker, or maybe George Thorogood, could own that song, but holy crap, Big Head Todd made it his bitch. There’s something about finding fifty different ways to sing the same four words over and over. I think my favorite was when he just said “Ooooo” while rolling his finger over his adam’s apple. Right before shredding out a couple of solos. 

It probably doesn’t hurt my enjoyment that these dudes dressed exactly like me. Todd wore a Hawaiian shirt while his bass player wore a Baseballism t-shirt. It’s like they’re parallel universe versions of me, where I focused my formative years developing musical talent instead of the propensity to snark on an anonymous blog. 

I wasn’t connecting with the keyboardist, though. He never smiled. It’s not like he was frowning, not upset or concentrating. He just stared off into space a lot as if  unaware that he was showing up in the background of most of the camera shots on a huge Jumbotron. Since the concert, I’ve found other videos online where he’s got the same disinterested look. Somebody must’ve told him by now, right?

Aside from the keyboardist, however, the rest of the band seemed to be having a blast. Todd is grinning from ear to ear during most of his songs. The only time his demeanor changed was when he was singing the soulful songs, because you can’t be someone’s broken-hearted savior if you look like you just hit a walk-off grand slam.

Seriously, these guys are having way too much fun for having been at this for thirty years. I certainly don’t approach my classroom with the googly eyes of a twenty-something anymore. Meanwhile, Big Head Todd kinda stole the show. 

One minor quibble: They played a fun song about Annie Oakley’s husband called “Don’t Kill Me Tonight (over something I might’ve said this morning).” Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be recorded anywhere. Their last album came out in 2017 and their website says nothing about anything forthcoming. Meaning for the foreseeable future, the only place I can hear that song are crappy audience videos from other concerts, none of which seem to capture the fun energy I associated with it. I know bands make zilch on albums these days, but come on, people. I want high quality stuff that I will listen to for free.

Other than that, I loved these guys. 

Just like all the other times. 

Hopefully I’ll remember that this time. 

Blues Traveler

It might take some mental gymnastics through compartmentalized memories to figure out if Big Head Todd are the band I’ve seen the second most. There’s no question whatsoever about which band I’ve seen the most. I can’t say precisely how many times, but it’s for sure double digits. 

Pretty sure I’ve even written about previous concerts once or twice on this blog, so instead I’ll focus on what made this concert different than some of the others. 

Last time I saw Blues Traveler was at the state fair. At the time, I mentioned that John Popper’s harmonica, while as fast as it’s ever been, didn’t have the force and drive that it had in his (and my) youth. I opined that his losing the weight, while doing a bang-up job of keeping him alive, might have hurt his harmonica-blowing ability. 

Glad to say I stand corrected. The acoustics at the Indian Casino are substantially better than at the state fair. Who woulda guessed? The mouth harp was powerful and piercing. 

Then again, he seemed to be growing a bit of a gut back. Not an unhealthy Jabba girth like he was known for in the 1990s, but a “Dude, I’m in my sixties, what the fuck do you expect” gut. And I’ve seen him at plenty of outdoor festivals and been fine with his harmonica before. So who knows why his harmonica was a little lackluster a decade ago. But I’m happy to report it was kick-ass this past summer. 

The other thing that sounded much closer to the Blues Traveler concerts of my youth was the open-ended jams. Vegas casinos aren’t known for letting their concerts drag on. The concerts are only booked to get you on the premises. Once you’re there, they don’t want you wasting time listening to music. I guess the state fair runs a tight schedule, too. The fireworks have to go off at a certain time and that funnel cake ain’t gonna eat itself, so the bands get eighty-five minutes and not a second more. 

The Indian Casinos don’t seem to mind, though, so Blues Traveler returned to their roots as a jam band. There were two or three times throughout the concert when John Popper completely left the stage. And not just to grab a quick swig of water or anything. I mean, he left for a good five minutes while either the guitar player or keyboardist or drummer, or some amalgamation thereof, jammed by themselves. 

As such, Blues Traveler was on the stage for close to two hours but only played about ten songs. Big Head Todd, meanwhile, was on for half the time but managed to fit in 15 songs.

I kinda forgot this was even their thing in the first place. Considering how music is consumed these days, it’s not like I’m throwing a live albums into the cd player anymore. I ask Alexa or Pandora or Spotify to shuffle songs by them and similar artists. 

The crowd reactions to these extended solos has changed since all of us were twenty-five. One of my favorite concert statements ever was when some random dude walked up to me at a festival and said, “I hope these ‘shrooms last as long as that last solo.”

Now most of the attendees were fifty-somethings who finished their second beer sometime during Spin Doctors and, dammit, have to get up in the morning.  A few people left the first time Popper left the stage and a fair number more the second time. When they finished their set at damn near 11:15 pm, the exodus was on long before the encore. 

Then they started said encore with a ZZ Top cover instead of one of their own damn songs. 

Learn from Big Head Todd and play those covers early. 

Concert #2: Ed Sheeran

My second concert of the year was a little-known redhead crooner from East Anglia. 

What? The guy who sings “Thinking of You” is multi-platinum? Was Rick Astley unavailable?

Wife, back when she was still Fiancée or maybe even just Girlfriend, gave me one set of instructions: If Ed Sheeran ever toured the United States again, I must take her. It took a decade or more, but he totally made up for it by scheduling his Northern California show near our anniversary. I referred to this year as the “Ginger Anniversary.” 

As a bonus, the tickets went on sale right before Christmas last year, so I got credit for both Christmas and anniversary in one gift. 

Notice I didn’t say “for the price of one.” If you add in parking, this concert should get credit for the next five birthdays, too.

We saw him at Levi Stadium, home of the 49ers, which is next to an amusement park. Evidently they close said amusement park on the days of 49er games, but not for concerts, so we paid $70 to park at a nearby college and walk about a half-mile. You’d think the powers-that-be would know that concerts sell more tickets than football games, because you can’t sell field seats to a football game. 

It’s why I found it odd when Ed Sheeran announced that he’d set the record for most tickets ever sold to a Levi Stadium event. “Even the Super Bowl,” he said.

We all know he really meant Taylor Swift. 

Not saying Ed Sheeran’s more popular than Taylor Swift, just that he has a smaller stage. Because, much like the Super Bowl, a sell-out is a sell-out is a sell-out. It’s all just a matter of how many seats there are to sell.

Speaking of Taylor Swift, while I didn’t endure that particular grandiosity this year (fortunate for my sanity, perhaps unfortunate for my blog traffic), when I heard about the songs she sang, it was mostly songs I had heard of. Some Taylor Swift songs I might not know the name of, but when someone says “You know that song, it’s the one that goes…” I realize that yeah, I guess I do recognize them as playing in the background somewhere.

I kind of assumed Ed Sheeran would be the same. Even if I could only positively identify three or four of his songs (and only half of those by name), I assumed I’d at least be able to recognize half the concert by osmosis. 

Not so much. I knew more songs at Big Head Todd.

At least I was decked out like a true fan. Ed Sheeran sponsors one of my favorite (minor league) soccer teams. Whereas the fancy Premiere League teams have sponsors like Samsung and Adidas and various airlines, in the minor leagues, they just emblazon somebody’s tour plans on the front of their jersey. I know you’re not supposed to wear shirts from the band’s previous tour at a concert. But what are the rules regarding sports jerseys featuring the current tour? Answer: I’m still not sure, because nobody seemed to notice that I was repping Ed Sheeran’s favorite soccer team. They probably just wondered where I got the concert tee that was slightly different than all the other concert tees.

I must not’ve been the only Sheeran noob at the concert. He started the concert saying he was going to play songs off all his albums. Some for the casual fans, but a lot for the big fans. “And if you just got dragged here, you’re in for a long two and a half hours.”

At one point, he introduced a song that he wrote for another artist while he was “taking time off” between albums. Finally, I figured I wouldn’t be the only one who didn’t know the song. Nope. Everyone else was singing along. I found out later it was a Justin Bieber song, so I’m not too disappointed that I didn’t know it.

About ninety minutes into the concert, he finally played “Photograph,” the first song I could positively identify. He introduced that song with “If you don’t know this next song, you’re definitely at the wrong concert. Even your grandma knows this one.” That tells you how among my peeps I was. 

One doesn’t hear comments like that at a Blues Traveler concert, although I’ve gotta think more people get dragged to obscure bands because it’s harder to find another fan. Like last year when I accompanied my friend to Airborne Toxic Event. 

It seems to have the opposite effect, though. Paradoxically, the more obscure a band is, the greater percentage of the audience knows the ins and outs of their entire catalog. Now I wonder how many of those record Taylor Swift crowds spent the entire concert watching a ballgame on their phones.

Which is not to say that’s what I was doing. On the contrary, the music geek in me was astounded. 

One-man bands should be at a circus, not filling football stadiums. And make no mistake, Ed Sheeran is a one man band.

I didn’t realize that at first, primarily because he had a band out on stage with him. Instead, I thought him the most arrogant musician of all time. Check out the set-up of the stage. 

You’ll see he’s on the rotating stage in the middle. All of his backing musicians are on islands far removed from people’s attention. Sheesh, dude. I’ve seen Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, you name it. They all put the band on stage with them. Seemed kind of a dick move to keep the stage all to yourself. I bet even Taylor Swift acknowledges that her songs have bass lines.

After the first song, the band left their individual stages and Ed Sheeran was all by himself. But in song two, background music was still coming through. Wow, now he isn’t even letting them be seen. If I wanted to listen to some pre-recorded shit, I could’ve taken Daughter to the Kidz Bop concert. 

(Bonus points to Wife for taking Daughter to the Kidz Bop concert)

After that second song (first without the band), Ed Sheeran stopped to explain what he was doing. Everything was live. He had a series of pedals on the floor that basically worked as an 8-track machine. So he’d depress a pedal on the floor and beat his hand on his acoustic guitar for an eight-count. When he took his foot off the pedal, that recording would repeat over and over, thus becoming the drum beat for the upcoming song.

Then he’d lay down a bass riff. Not on a bass, just using the bottom two strings on his guitar. Then maybe a chord progression to fill in the rhythm guitar, although sometimes he played the rhythm guitar live. 

The most amazing tracks he laid down were the backing vocals. While I didn’t know the song at the time, I’ve since learned the name is “Don’t.” That four-part “ah, ah-ah, ah-ah-ah, ah” going through the song is all him. He’d keep playing the track over and over, adding a higher harmonic each time, until it sounded like a full choir behind him.

Look, I’m not saying I’m shocked at this technological innovation. Billy Joel sang all the parts in “For the Longest Time,” even though it sounds like he’s got a full a capella troop behind him. Bobby McFerrin recorded an entire album with no instruments other than his own body. And yes, I’m fully aware the Beatles were never in the same room at the same time while recording one of the most cohesive albums of all time. 

But here’s the difference. Bobby McFerrin wasn’t mixing that fucker on a stage in front of 70,000 fans who paid top dollar. When Billy Joel performs his song in concert, he’s got back-up singers. The Beatles stopped touring halfway into their career because they wouldn’t be able to play their new songs live. Ed Sheeran’s doing it all live.

And the mixing didn’t stop once he started playing the song. Because nobody wants to listen to a song that has the same four-note bass riff for five minutes straight. If you’re at a regular concert, some musicians drop out for part of each song, either because it’s written that way or they need to drag on a cigarette. You know that part in every concert when all the instruments except one suddenly cut out and then the tambourine player starts clapping their hands above their head to encourage the audience to try to keep the beat, even though the audience is  notoriously bad at keeping said rhythm once the band players stop their direct instruction?

Well, Ed Sheeran kept all those facets by stepping on and off the various pedals while running around the stage at full speed. He steps on two pedals and the bass and drums cut out. By the time he’s done with his guitar solo or eight bars of crooning, he’s moved to the next set of pedals and the bass comes back in. He does the “Clap along” instructions to the crowd while he’s walking to the next set of pedals and, magically, the drums come back in. Since he’s got the pedals at five different spots on the stage, he’s continually mixing in and out sounds behind his live music and singing. But, again, it’s all him.

So yeah, consider me a convert. Not that I’ve listened to a ton of his music since the concert, although there has been a time or two I’ve heard a song (like “Don’t”) and thought, “Wait, where have I heard that before?” Oh right, I saw it mixed live.

At a football stadium.

Ed Sheeran Addendum

Ed Sheeran’s opening act was a guy named Russ. He was… interesting. Couldn’t really decide if he was rap or r&b. But considering the number of f-bombs he dropped, probably the former. 

He started his act by flipping off the entire audience. Like for the whole damn song. I think he was trying to flip off “the haters” or whatever, because the name of the song was either “Fuck That” or “Fuck Them,” but the effect was that those birds were flying straight at the stands. And he left that middle finger up the whole song as he walked all the way around the circular stage. 

Ironically, after that song, he broke into a whole “So happy to be here.” At multiple times, he talked about following your dreams and believing in yourself because nobody ever believed in him and he used to play little shithole locations. “But now I’m playing at a fucking football stadium in front of 70,000 people!”

Um, dude, we’re not here to see you. Maybe you should go back to flipping people off.

My students, by the way, knew who Russ was. They were appalled that I a) had never heard of him, b) had gone to one of his concerts to see someone other than him, and c) was less than enamored with his performance.

Ed Sheeran Addendum #2

Both Ed Sheeran and Russ (and a third opening act I forgot the name of) kept referring to the stadium location as Santa Clara. Technically, this is true. 

But Santa Clara is a suburb. None of us are from Santa Clara. And nobody has ever been “so happy to be here in Santa Clara.”

Just say San Francisco. Or maybe San Jose. Hell, you could say Bay Area or Northern California and get a more accurate reflection of the attendees. None of us are going to cheer for Santa Clara. Even people not from the city proper usually consider themselves from the metro area associated with it. 

The first opening act was actually wearing a 49ers jersey. 

Guess what: They ain’t the Santa Clara 49ers.