(Moment of silence)

It was an excellent show.  Those guys are some pretty bad dudes and can still rock at 60+ years old (!).  Also, they are by far the best heavy metal band who regularly pronounces the word “way” as “wee” and gets away with it.  Examples:

• “I realize I missed a day, but I’m too wrecked to care anywee” (Blackout)
• “Where the children of tomorrow dream awee in the wind of change” (Wind of Change)
• “Love, our love just shouldn’t be thrown awee” (Still Loving You)
• “Baby our love will find a wee as long as we believe in love” (Believe In Love)

And of course, the prime example:

• “You better get out of their wee-eee-eee, wee-eee-eee, wee-eee-eee, get out of their wee!” (Bad Boys Running Wild)

Tesla 2010

Tesla opened for the Scorps.  Actually, Jackyl opened for both of them with a very forgettable performance.  All I remember from them is that the lead singer cut the seat of a stool in half with a chainsaw and it still took him four tries to break the stool.  Or was it five?  Who opened for Tesla and Scorpions again?  See, I said it was forgettable.

I guess that’s unfair. They did have some fans. See the big guy standing up on the right? The guy that was standing up the entire show? Who would basically just jump around and make those devil-horn signs with his hands all night? He seemed to like them. I also think he might have been on crystal meth, but that’s a different story.

Anyway, Tesla put on a great show and sounded really awesome.  I wish they would have played longer, but hey, they had to make time for, whatever that band was that came before.  Modern Day Cowboy was especially excellent.

But, of course, we were all there to see The Scorpions one last time.  They were outstanding.  Not the best concert I’ve been to, but top honors in my list are currently co-held by some pretty stiff competition.

Scorpions 2010

Here’s the setlist, borrowed from the review written by a friend of a friend at the local paper:

• Main Set:
  • Sting in the Tail
  • Make It Real
  • Bad Boys Running Wild
  • The Zoo
  • Coast to Coast
  • Loving You Sunday Morning
  • The Best is Yet to Come
  • Wind of Change
  • Raised on Rock
  • Tease Me Please Me
  • Another Piece of Meat
  • Dynamite
  • Kottak Attack (Drum Solo)
  • Blackout
  • Big City Nights
• Encore:
  • No One Like You
  • Rock You Like a Hurricane

So, it was a pretty good set, but they missed a lot of songs.  Here are some of the songs they forgot to play:

• Holiday
• Don’t Make No Promises
• Falling In Love
• Can’t Live Without You
• Arizona
• China White
• Coming Home
• Still Loving You
• Don’t Stop at the Top
• Passion Rules the Game
• Believe In Love
• Crazy World
• Send Me An Angel
• Alien Nation
• Wild Child
• Turn You On
• Lorelei

See, that’s only another 17 songs, which would have put the running time at about three hours, which seems about right.  My voice wouldn’t have lasted that long, or my hearing, but what the heck.  It’s their last tour, after all.

I guess the reason I get so melancholy and nostalgic about this stuff is that nobody is replacing them.  Van Halen, Def Leppard, Journey, and now the Scorps — all these bands are either mostly or completely gone now.  All that great music they wrote.  There are no good new bands filling in, nobody writing good new music to take up the mantle of these iconic hard rock bands from the 80′s.

Lucky for me, the good bands from days past wrote enough great music that it should get me through the rest of my life.  Hopefully.

Rudolf, Klaus, Mattias, and company:  Thanks for the memories.  We will miss you.

So obviously there will definitely be another band that is even more awesome than those three, as hard as that is to believe.

Derrick and I already have our weekend tickets, so now we are speculating who the fourth band will be.  The key traits for selection are:

• Awesomeness
• I like them
• I want them to come
• Pure awesomeness

Here are the top five obvious and likely candidates:

• Def Leppard — Def Leppard has toured with Styx and Foreigner within the past few years so they are a strong candidate to come again.  And they are awesome.
• Journey — Journey has also toured with Styx, in particular, in the past.  Plus they are awesome.
• Rush — Rush, pretty much the only good Canadian export, got snubbed by Canada when they didn’t get invited to perform at the Olympics.  Also, awesome.
• Van Halen — I haven’t seen Van Halen since 2007.  And even back then they didn’t come to Utah.  They probably feel bad about this and so are planning to come for World Superbike.  And awesome.
• Pink Floyd — The most likely candidate, both due to awesomeness and due to not having performed for like 15 years.  Also, they are from Europe which means that, unlike you, they’ve actually heard of World Superbike.

It’s unlikely that all five of these bands will come, but hey, you never know.

So, we went there to visit.  It was a good visit.  My brother has a pretty awesome home theater in his house, because he is coolness.  So I took my Queensrÿche Operation:Livecrime DVD with me on the trip, and we rocked that puppy.  Yeah, that was very much how I remember it, having experienced it myself during the Promised Land tour in 1995, I think, which was my first ever concert, and basically spoiled me for life.  It seems to me that they played Mindcrime all the way through start to finish and it was beyond incredible.

So now, I have the DVD, and I can experience a watered-down version of it myself, on my low-def TV at home with crappy speakers, or on my car’s awesome stereo with no video.  Or I can experience it again at my brother’s house, which was Awesome.

Going home to visit is often interesting.  My wife and I usually end up having some sort of conversation on the way back on the topic of Under What Conditions Might We Consider Moving To Roosevelt.  See, since she gets along well with my brother’s wife, and I get along well with my brother, it might be fun, right?  So, for example, maybe we would consider it!  If I was independently wealthy, because I wouldn’t be able to get a decent job there in my profession.  And if we could afford to come to the Wasatch Front every so often, because, you know, sushi.  No sushi in Roosevelt – they have not heard of this yet.  Oh, and the weather.  And nothing to do.

But seriously, I’ve never felt comfortable about this.  And I think I finally figured out why.  It has to do with the gifts of the Rooseveltians, or lack thereof.  They bestowed the gift of coolness upon my brother.  Now he can be whomever he likes.  As for me, contrariwise, well, they never bestowed this gift upon me.  There is a certain persona I’m required to fill by the Rooseveltians, which I really don’t like.  I realized after I left that place that I didn’t like that person, the person they convinced me I was when I lived there.

That’s why I don’t want to move back. I don’t tolerate other people telling me what or who I am anymore. I define myself.

Yes, of course, it was completely awesome. Stay tuned.

Well, I caught my first concert of 2008 just a couple of days ago when I had the great privilege of seeing Collective Soul live. I had heard really excellent things about these guys as a live act and was not disappointed in the slightest. Collective Soul dudes, you guys put on a very awesome show and so much props out to ya. Everyone else, take an opportunity to see these guys if you get a chance.

All in all it was a great trip. We left about 5:30 a.m. for Sacramento. This picture on the left shows us stopped at a freeway on-ramp about one hour into the trip. Luckily we had great weather all the way out and back. Weather in Sacramento and San Francisco was absolutely gorgeous – I don’t remember a more beautiful day in San Francisco than November 27, 2007, and I’ve been there a number of times. Even Donner Pass was snow-free and relatively warm; we were told while there that there is generally about 6 inches of snow on the ground by that time of year.

We visited Alcatraz on the morning of November 27, 2007. Our reservations for tickets were not honored, but fortunately for us we were able to get tickets to the 9:30 a.m. ferry anyway. This is probably due to the fact we were traveling there off-season. If you ever go to Alcatraz, you’ll probably still want to try to make reservations, but be sure the reservations are actually honored. Pier 33 is the pier we left from; maybe you can call them directly.

Anyway, Alcatraz is awesome as you might expect. Visiting Alcatraz in the winter is recommended as there are parts of the island that you are only allowed to tour during the winter months; they are closed during the other parts of the year due to the large numbers of birds there. And don’t miss the self-guided audio tour – when they say it is award-winning, they mean it. Amazing.

Van Halen performed at the Arco Arena in Sacramento that night, Tuesday November 27, 2007. This was nothing short of the absolute best concert I have ever been to. I was born a few years too late I believe, so I never really saw the big deal about David Lee Roth vs. Sammy Hagar as the Van Halen frontman. Well, everyone, now I get it. Not taking anything away from Alex or Eddie, who are fantastic musicians, but David Lee Roth is a performer. He made the difference between this show and my previous Van Halen concert encounter about ten years ago, which was simply great and not downright unreal like this year’s show.

We were talking on the way back, how fulfilling it must be for Eddie to be up there performing with his own son (who did just fine thank-you). More tour dates have been added, so if you have not seen the show yet, you still have a chance.

We came home on Nov. 28, stopping at Donner Memorial State Park. The sacrifices our ancestors made to populate and settle the United States were beyond comprehension, and it made me very grateful to take this time to think of these people and others who suffered so much, and how great my life is today as a result. All in all, it was an awesome trip.

Greg, myself, and the Dall*ns at Donner Memorial State Park.

Actually, it mostly means that we have to go to Van Halen. It isn’t like we really have a choice here. But since Van Halen isn’t actually scheduled to come anywhere even close to where I live, we decided to make a road trip of it and go to the show anyway. We wouldn’t do this for just any old band, but then again, Van Halen isn’t just any old band.

So, we will be renting a cool car and driving to Sacramento, California, which until just recently was the most local scheduled concert venue. Trip begins on November 26, a day before the concert. We hope to visit Alcatraz on the morning of November 27, then we’ll be at Arco Arena for the concert event of the decade. Can’t wait!

I’d love to go into a lot of detail about how awesome John Petrucci is. If I did that, then I would also have to talk about how awesome Mike Portnoy is, and Jordan Rudess, and John Myung. I don’t really have the time for that so you’ll just have to take my word for it that Mike Portnoy’s drum set was totally wicked and that this band is stacked with talent, probably more than any other band I can remember, with the possible exception of Rush.

But I can’t just not talk about Petrucci. Without question he is one of the very best guitarists alive today. Eddie Van Halen is still the best guitarist I’ve ever watched live, but Petrucci is a close second. Nobody else even comes close – we are talking orders of magnitude here. What an awesome talent.

I don’t know which was cooler – opening by playing a Dream Theater version of Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra op. 30 (also known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey) or closing with an amazing Dream Theater medley which terminated with Petrucci center-stage hitting and holding a perfectly clear high E on the 24th fret right before the closing chord.

Definitely skip Into Eternity and don’t worry about Redemption, but do not miss these guys. What an awesome experience.

Journey opened. I’d seen them before, a couple of years ago. Journey is a great live act. Don’t go expecting a bunch of touchy-feely heart-melting love songs, though. You’ll get a couple of them, but Journey live is a first-class arena rock concert. I have to say that Jeff Scott Soto, filling in for Steve Augeri at lead vocals, did an outstanding job. Journey was awesome, leaving some big shoes for Def Leppard to fill – which they almost did, but not quite.

Still, Def Leppard live is a fantastic experience. There is something really magical and polished about their delivery, with each song feeling like it’s own unique showpiece, produced to an exacting method. This does have the effect of causing it almost to feel NOT like a concert. I’d never seen Def Leppard before, and it was really awesome.

Best songs of the night:
Star-Spangled Banner (Neal Schon – Journey)
Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’ (Journey)
Lights (Journey)
Don’t Stop Believin’ (Journey)
Escape (Journey)
Chain Reaction (Journey)
Separate Ways (Journey)
Let It Go (Def Leppard)
Hysteria (Def Leppard)
Rocket (Def Leppard)
Photograph (Def Leppard)
Armageddon It (Def Leppard)
Rock Of Ages (Def Leppard)

Best song of the night – Rock Of Ages. Hands down. That song was MEANT to be played live.

And to think – I could have been at LinuxWorld, heading a Birds of a Feather session. Hmm. Sorry, but I’ll take the concert any day. Thanks, Journey and Def Leppard, for giving me a reason to not go. And to that poor sucker who had to go instead of me – well, thanks too.