Wilco is coming to Ruth Eckerd in Clearwater. Venue is probably 50 years old so pretty paid off.
Tickets are $73.25+fees  for upper left x 2 plus parking.   Seemed like a lot for a simple stage show with no lights, dancing girls or circus elephants.
So I checked Birmingham, AL - 66.50 + fees for similar seats. Orlando was $57.80+ fees.
So sad to get ripped off to see live shows in my own town.

forgot to mention that i saw maxi priest about a month ago
small venue with a great band
worthy

also this past sat we saw mostly a track show (opening acts)
112 and en vogue (talented vocalists but i'm not a fan of track shows, would rather see a live band)
the headliner was stephanie mills
super talented but past her prime (she did have a fantastic band and back up singers)

 ptooey wrote:

I saw him back in the day. New Orleans Riverboat. He was so disinterested that he literally did Cars holding a can of Coke and sipping from it between verses.

It's probably that standard arc: made famous by a song, 
hate that you're only famous for a single tune, 
go off on a tangent, 
realize that you made a damned good song and people enjoy it so you might as well live it up - you've had more hit songs than most people ever will, 
do victory lap.

Big Head Todd and the Monsters - March 18th.....My birthday pressie to myself.

 ptooey wrote:
A friend said he saw Gary Numan open for Huey Lewis (back in the day) 
Vince is 75 so yeah, hurry. Al is def. scruffy but just 64.  I'm amused by how chatty he is here 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:


The girls' taste is as wide-ranging as mine, so we try to just go to as many as we can.

I've never seen him/them, either and I've always wanted to. That's sort of what precipitated the whole thing - Vince ain't gettin' any younger and how the hell is Uncle Al still alive, anyway?

I don't think I would have been interested in seeing Gary Numan back in the day, but the touring outfit he's got now is incredible. That will be a good show.

 ptooey wrote:

I always keep an eye out for bands the whole family might like, which is a challenge, but never thought this would be the one they were stoked about. If it had been Mumford and Sons, Augusta would want to go. Charlie discovered Gorillaz at some point but they toured last year.  

I've never seen Alice Cooper. Some live videos are pretty small-clubby and that would be cool but I think a big stage production would be more fun. And yeah it'll be cool to not have to worry about people stepping on the little kids. 

I have to dig thru my 45s and see if I still have that Gary Numan picture sleeve. 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:


I cannot imagine how loud that is going to be, but I'm jealous. Our concert-viewing is going to be nutso this year, so I'm not going to beat myself up about it. Isbell, The National (twice),  the Filter/Ministry/Alice Cooper/Rob Zombie show (with Claire and Jensen) and today we learned we'll likely be seeing Depeche Mode in late fall. Plus, maybe Beartrap will follow through with something decent?

Claire was just gushing the other day over her first concert being Bob Dylan - she's still a big fan. We've taken them to A LOT of shows and it's pretty cool that we now all get to go as adults. We had a mild shock of realization a couple of weeks ago that for the first time in 13 years we don't have a teenager in the house.

 ptooey wrote:

Ministry/GaryNuman/FrontLineAssembly tix acquired, x4. The kids wanted to go! lol okay they wanted to go to Steve Earle too, I think. We've taken them to see a lot of bands. Dylan, Los Lobos, Hot Club of Cowtown too. Also ordered in 4 sets of Loop earplugs. NYT rated them most likely to be worn. 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
I saw that. That'd be a cool show.

 ptooey wrote:

I just noticed that that show is at ZooMontana. 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
He did tour with them back then. 

They played Billings and Spokane in September 2014; I was in Spokane for work later that fall but missed those dates.  I'm not finding any info on their Billings dates.

 Bill_Rockoff wrote:

I meant, did John Paul Jones tour with them (9 years ago would have been when they were in Billings, Montana too)?

The whole thing about Isbell making people cry: yeah, me too, and I am not a big fan of intentionally subjecting myself to anything that does that so I've never bought any of his records. But I am thinking his live show would be worth it. Will report back!

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
1. I think Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch did a whole tour like that. It was {yikes!} nine years ago. It took another couple of years before we got to see them perform as Gillian Welch. 

2. I was a Drive-By Truckers fan even before Isbell joined them, and after he did, I thought it was an even more amazing group. He got fired from the Truckers, went out and did solo stuff, got sober, and released the very acoustic and poignant "Southeastern." I heard the song "Traveling Alone" about the time I was getting tired of being on the road all the time for work, missing my girlfriend / wife. Also on that album is "Elephant," a beautiful song about spending time with a friend who has terminal cancer and trying to make it more about "the friend" and less about "the cancer." (Isbell said once before playing it, "when grownups hear this song, they cry; when kids hear this song, they learn the word 'fuck.'")  And at that particular time, my work travel was allowing me to spend a lot of time in the DC area where some of my college friends lived, including my freshman roommate Kevin; until recently, Kevin was "the person I have spent the most nights in the same room with." (Kevin and I roomed together throughout most of college, and college for me lasted longer than my first marriage did.) So, I first heard "Elephant" not long after we all learned that Kevin's pulmonary sarcoma had returned as a "secondary pulmonary sarcoma." Kevin joked that "apparently my oncologist is unfamiliar with the work of Doctor Seuss, who says it's GOOD when your heart grows two sizes larger!" but the median survival duration after diagnosis of a metastasized sarcoma is 11 months, and that's the only time in his life that Kevin was ever anything at all like "average." 

Isbell's music kind of speaks to me, and he always delivers live. 

Pick one from this list, you'd love to go to:
https://www.thecapitoltheatre....

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 
If I were in NY, I'd pick this show!
https://www.thecapitoltheatre....

...although Wilco and Phil Lesh & Friends w. John Medeski are also very tempting!

Haven't been to a good live show for a few years, last one was YES  and folks was that somewhat of a treat.
Now booked to see BJORK 'S  CORNUCOPIA  show  which has so far been getting good reviews, so looking fwd to it as I also get the chance to have my baby sis along too.

 Lazy8 wrote:

Oh-oh. Alberta Bair. Not sold out but get your wallet out. It's ptooey's birthday too! They're sitting a few rows in front of us.

EDIT: BUT they're at the Elm on March 10. It is sold out but you should get on the wait list AND go down there mid-afternoon and see what's up. When we were at the Wilco show a few months ago, about 4:30 or 5, before people were lined up, they put a note in the window that they had some cancellations or something and sold some tickets FCFS.

 Bill_Rockoff wrote:

1. What? Like just for that show, or did I miss it when Dave Rawlings Machine played around here?

2. I have never been able to listen to his music without going into a funk. It's powerful stuff to be able to do that though, and I agree he's a once-in-a-generation force. Even though I avoid his records, I want to see him in his element. Might change me. Also, Jason and the 400 Unit played in Jackson Hole several years ago and HobieJoe and I stared at that marquee for a long long time, trying to figure out how we could ditch our families and go. 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
Wait, wut? Where?

 Antigone wrote: 
Enjoy!

We went on a whim in September. They got rained out at an earlier date at Atlanta's Chastain Amphitheater (which frankly is sometimes a disappointment) and I was only halfway kicking myself for missing it, "it's not like I'll have a lot of chances to see Robert Plant live. Eh, I can skip it, I've had enough Chastain shows for one middle-age, and I did see Alison Krauss thirty years ago." I saw there were tickets available for the rescheduled date and asked, "we're seeing a lot of shows this month, want to see one more?"

It was far better than I expected - it was a REALLY good show. They were extemporaneous enough to make it feel special and to seem like they were enjoying it, but they're also polished enough that you can tell "wow, they are both REALLY good at performing live." The are both evidently pros. Plus, I think they sound just transcendent together, more than the sum of their parts. And at times I was reminded "oh, right, even without the singing, she was really known as a fiddle player as much as anything." 

(So now we've seen basically half of Led Zeppelin. We saw Dave Rawlings Machine a few years ago and John Paul Jones was their mandolin player. We are big Gillian Welch fans, and when they play as Dave Rawlings Machine it tends to be louder and livelier music with more string-bending guitar work, and I couldn't help but wonder the whole time if Rawlings was thinking to himself, ironically, "YEAH old man, bet you've never seen it done like THIS before!") 

I hope you enjoy your show as much as we enjoyed ours.

Scott, enjoy your Jason Isbell show. He's amazing, I think he's one of the best things we have these days.