Holding A Grudge or Just Paying Attention?

After the Snarky Puppy misadventure, my wife (Elvy) and I had a couple of long conversations about concerts we’ve seen and loved or hated and the end results. Turns out, my Geezer with A Grudge habits apply to music, too. I have never been punished by an artist twice and we have made a habit of seeing the people who exceed my expectations at every opportunity. The last bit has slowed up considerably now that I am no longer in the business and live some distance from where most of the action happens. Because of the expense and hassle, I probably won’t be seeing many artists twice from here out.

For example, I’ve seen Pat Metheny almost a dozen times at a dozen different venues and never once felt betrayed, abused, or let down by his band’s performances. After that many shows, I am still willing to go a long distance to see him again. A small part of my motivation for moving to L.A. in the 80’s was to see the Crusaders in their native element; especially since that was the only way to see them by that late period in their careers. I saw them as the headlines for the 1983 Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Forum, at our local club (The Golden Bear) in Huntington Beach, and at a couple of outdoor shows in the South Beach area. Every show was knocked out and amazingly close to their recordings, quality-wise. Same for Jeff Beck; who I have seen 3 times and 4 if you count a 1960’s Yardbirds concert in a Denver bar. Jeff is often loud, but always musical and the sound quality has been close to state-of-the-art every time I’ve seen him play. Elvy isn’t as much of a jazz fan as me, so many of the above shows were my experience alone. On the other hand, we’ve been to more than a few pop music concerts because of her interests; Queen, for example.

An example of the other spectrum would be Robert Randolph and the Family Band. I bought 2003's Unclassified and 2006's Colorblind the moment they arrived. I used to intro my auditorium lecture classes with Squeeze or Ain’t Nothing Wrong with That. Like Snarky Puppy, I missed my first opportunity bto see RR when the band was at First Ave because I was working a gig, out of town, that evening. Then I saw Robert and his band at the Minnesota State Fair. The sound was terrible and, being an outdoor concert in a facility where I’ve heard some terrific shows, all of the blame landed on the band (and the FOH nitwit). I tried that show twice and the 2nd time was worse than the 1st. I haven’t paid a moment of attention to Robert Randolph since; nor bought any of the band’s newer music. I still think they are a good recording act, but as a live band they suck and I wouldn’t cross the street to see them for free.

To be clear, what I’m expecting in a live concert is at least the sound quality of a decent car stereo (sans hip-hop sub-woofer mess); at the dead minimum. There is no point in spending tens of thousands of dollars on a sound system that is worse than a car stereo; and that is not a high bar. A better goal would be to match the fidelity of a good home entertainment system. Still not a stretch, but an improvement over a car stereo. Excuses from FOH goobers for room acoustics, audience behavior, and the band’s stage excesses don’t mean a thing to me. The band and the FOH engineer are totally responsible for and in control of the concert sound quality. If, as is the usual case, they don’t care one result is either do I.

Even 20-50 years later, I can remember many of the concert moments that blew me away; some as if it were a recent experience. What I remember about the lousy sounding concerts I’ve experienced is “I’ll never do that again.” That, literally, is all I remember of non-musical experiences. That would be my Geezer reflex: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” I had thought about doing a chart of a few of my concert experiences, but it would be a lot of one-time experiences and my HTML charting capabilities suck. Put it simply, there are far more “artists” who I have seen once and wouldn’t cross the street to see again. Too many musicians are more concerned with their egos than with their music. This is not a new thing, but a long-established tradition; especially with jazz and pop musicians.

The conversation Elvy and I had about our 50+ years of going to concerts together was a little surprising. She was even more adamant in her “I’ll never do that again” response. We did remember many of the same great shows close to exactly the same. For both of us, the memory of the sonically disappointing-to-awful shows was limited and a little irritating. We’re not rich and wasting money is something we’ve tried to avoid for all of our adult lives.

Life-Changing Music

Looking at the ticket prices for the upcoming James Taylor/Bonnie Raitt concert in St. Paul made me re-evaluate my own concert experiences over the years. At $350-600/per-ticket, I would expect a life-changing experience out of a concert: at least on the level of a week-long vacation trip costing about the same money for two people. Travel has always been life-changing for me; at least 90% of the time in a positive way. Even business travel has been far better than 50% positive, even if the business part sucked (which it often did). So, I started thinking about the life-changing concerts I’ve seen in my 50+ years of music experiences. No, all music performances don't have to be life-changing, but when they cost as much as a month's rent they damn well better be.

Unfortunately, I can’t think of many of my own performances that I’d consider to be positive life-experiences. One of my last gigs, before I quit calling myself a “musician” and quit bands for the rest of my life in 1982 was so disheartening it was another 30 years before I considered playing music even for friends. I’ll have to tell that story another time.

The first concert that I’d call life-changing was in the early 1960’s when I conned my want into being a stage hand for the original Ventures. I learned a lot from working and seeing that show, including the fact that it’s possible to make a living in music while possessing a wide variety of talent levels: from the simple pop capabilities the Ventures demonstrated to the incomprehensible talents of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. In my first major act show, I also learned that a lousy sound guy could sabotage a good bit of a show just by being lazy and tone deaf.

My next life-changing concert experience came after several years of Midwestern band touring and a few dozen big name concerts when I lucked into an Stax/Atlantic showcase in Dallas, Texas. The headline act was Sam and Dave, and the intro acts were Otis Redding and Wilson Picket. The PA system was a pair of Shure Vocal Master tower speakers and, probably, a 50 watt 4-channel Vocal Master powered mixer. I’d been in white-boy R&B bands for years before seeing these masters at work. Not only was this performance eye-opening for me because their showmanship and talent was octaves above anything I’d seen to that moment in my life. The sound quality was amazing, with only the vocals going through the “sound system” and the rest of the band balancing their output to stay under the vocals. My wife’s life was changed by experiencing an all-ages audience (close to all black) that was totally into the music, dancing their hearts out, and cooler than any group of people we’d ever experienced before or since.

Hundreds of shows in my groups and dozens of major name band concerts later, we saw the Allman Brothers (post-Dwayne and Berry Oakley, with members of Sea Level, a fusion band filling out the band) in a large venue. The intro band, Grinderswitch, was nothing short of awful and brought out the faux-cowboy assholiness of their audience to the point of scariness. When the opening notes of “High Falls” began, the IQ of the audience jumped a solid 50 points. This was the first time I’d heard a large scale sound system that sounded musical; and there haven’t been many such experiences since. I was just beginning to morph from music equipment repair guy to audio equipment engineer and my eyes were opened in multiple directions: mix fidelity and quality, speaker system directionality, musicianship, ensemble performance, showmanship, and song selection and audience mood control. The whole evening was hair-raisingly exciting and I can still hear some of that performance in my head 40 years later.

Another 5 years of music performances passed before the next life-altering concert experience: the original Pat Metheny Group in a disco-being-turned-into-an-Urban-Cowboy club in Omaha, Nebraska. The club held about 100 people, most of whom were sitting on the floor and my business partner and I and a couple of friends were right in front of the stage, close enough that we thought Dan Gottlieb’s drums were going to slide off of the stage into our laps. Pat came on stage, plugged in, said “We’ve never been here before, so we have a lot of catching up to do.” The band played practically everything from three PMG albums and several of Pat’s songs from albums before PMG: three solid, non-stop hours of amazing music. Pat is the only major performer I’ve seen more than twice and a half-dozen times isn’t even close to enough.

Two decades later, I took my wife, daughter, and future son-in-law to see Steely Dan at Fiddler’s Green in Denver. This was their first tour since they quit the road and got rid of “the band” back in the early 70’s. Roger Nichols was manning FOH and the sound and performance was what I expected; near perfect. It’s hard to call seeing a band I’d loved for most of my life “life changing,” but in some ways it oddly was. First, my daughter and boyfriend didn’t get any of it and left early (bailing out on the most expensive concert tickets I’ve ever bought). That was a wake-up call. Second, I found myself falling in love with those songs almost as if I’d never heard many of them before. Third, I really appreciated my wife’s effort to appreciate music that was not in her ballpark and that she could have been just as easily bored by. We saw SD again, at the Minnesota State Fair a few years ago. It was the same amazing experience, sans Roger Nichols.

Otherwise, it’s obvious from 50+ years of concert going that from here out, when the ticket prices are in the extravagantly idiotic territory I’m going to use the money for travel.

The Dukes

My wife and I saw this show on September 6th at the St. Paul Fairgrounds. I have been marinating on writing about the Dukes' performance for a long while. The Dukes of September is a road band highlighting the music of Donald Fagan (62), Boz Scaggs (66), and Michael McDonald (58). The rest of the band was made up of younger studio session players: Jon Herington (guitar), Freddie Washington (bass), Michael White (drums), Michael Leonhart, Walt Weiskopf and Jay Collins (horns), Jim Beard (keys), and background singers Carolyn Escoffery and Catherine Russel.

As a hint toward the oddness of this set, Fagan does a Dan-influenced version of the Dead's "Shakedown Street" that put most of the geriatric audience on its feet dancing. We were an old crowd, too. The (real) Donald hinted at that when he continually called the audience "you kids." The band did covers of the O'Jay's "Love Train," several Motown/Stax R&B favorites, Chuck Berry, Aretha Franklin, Muddy Waters, a few hits from all three of the stars, and what seemed to be a random assortment of fun tunes from the 50's & 60's. The trio shared songs from The Band and each picked a tune that closely fit their style and tastes; Fagan - King Harvest, Scaggs - Rag Mama Rag, and McDonald - The Shape I'm In. I had Richard Danko flashbacks, seeing him wrestling his bass into submission in the backline and hearing his strained voice in the harmonies.

Fagan, McDonald, and Scaggs go a long way back personally and professionally. Before his stint with the Doobies, McDonald was a Steely Dan "member," if such a thing exists other than Becker and Fagan. When Scaggs Lido Shuffle came out, I first thought it was a Steely Dan hit. The three headliners hit the stage together after a brief classic 60's R&B-style introduction by the backup band. They sing harmonies on each other's tunes and swapped leads on every song. It was obvious that they were having a great time, especially Donald who channels Ray Charles when he really gets into a show.

"This is so much fun that there's the danger that the music will be like what they say about sex: We may be the only ones enjoying it," says McDonald, 58. From reading some reviews, Michael was right. A lot of people expected a night of predictable hits reproduction. Instead, they got a loose R&B band that locked into a groove and pounded it into submission on every one of their unpredictable song selections.

I can't say enough about the sound company and FOH engineer for this show. It was as close to a perfect job as I've ever heard in my life. There is some evidence that Michigan's Thunder Audio did the sound for the tour and, if so, they absolutely deserve their nomination as "Sound Company of the Year" and a Parnelli award. There wasn't a moment in the show that got out of control and the mix was as close to record-perfect as possible.