Tea Party

We went to see the re-united Tea Party this weekend.  It was amazing to the original members together again.  We have seen Tea Party a great many times over the years, it is an experience.  Jeff Martin, Jeff Burrows and Stuart Chatwood disbanded in 2005.  We had also seen a Jeff Martin solo show and it was spectacular, he is the Canadian dark poet.  He is so multi-talented and plays so many instruments.

They played all of our favorite songs, ‘Walking Wounded’, ‘Temptation’, ‘The Messenger’, ‘Fire in the Head’ and of course, ‘Heaven Coming Down’.  They also did ‘Release’, the song they donated all the proceeds to the White Ribbon Campaign http://www.whiteribbon.ca/ against violence towards women.  Jeff Martin said “We’re back!” and that they are currently working on a new album and that he now lives in Australia. 

The Tea Party currently has their website domain http://www.teaparty.com/ for sale and it could go for millions in the political climate.  For now, it is still their website and it says “No politics…Just Rock and Roll”.

Night Seeker - Deaner from Fubar

We saw Deaner from Fubar’s band Night Seeker at the Starlite in Edmonton.  Deaner came out on stage wearing a Darth Vader mask and a cape.  Night Seeker has an old school AC/DC sound.  They played a combination of their songs and played a few cover's of Iron Maiden and AC/DC.  The crowd was crazy as Fubar 1 & 2 were filmed in Alberta, so it felt like a hometown show.   

It didn’t take long and Deaner was drinking Pilsner and saluting his partner in crime Terry.  At this point he only had his underwear and his guitar.  It is by far one of the most original shows we have ever been to.  After the show we asked for a sandwich picture and he was happy to oblige, in his British underwear.      

http://www.fubar-themovie.com/ 

Jane's Addiction

We went to Sonic Boom to see Jane’s Addiction.  It was incredible to see Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro share the stage together again.  It was also pretty cool to see Perry’s wife Etty dancing in the background after seeing her on ‘Married to Rock’.

They played a long set with all of our favorites ending the show with a great acoustic of ‘Jane Says’.  This was quite possibly a once in a lifetime experience to see them together and in Canada!

   

Gene Simmons

We went to see Gene Simmons talk about ‘Sex, Money, Kiss’.  He had fantastic clips on Kiss, their marketing, and ‘Family Jewels’.  He explained how to make money and how to market yourself to be successful in any sort of business.  He gave some good advice.

Because he was in a Canadian audience; he got a lot of flack that he has not married Shannon Tweed.  He said at that time that she has not said ‘yes’ yet to his proposal. 

It was exciting to see him as we had just seen Kiss a few weeks before.  Gene seems to love Edmonton, he has been in town a few times over the years.

Vince Neil

We went to see a couple of Vince Neil solo shows.  He was in great form.  He sounded and looked remarkable.  It is always good to see his solo shows.  You get to hear some Motley Crue and some of his solo songs.  You also get to experience Jeff Blando singing Led Zeppelin and playing his guitar like Jimmy Page.  And Slaughter’s Dana Strum is always amazing to watch, he is a very talented bass player.  Zoltan Chaney is one of the most entertaining drummer’s we have ever seen!

   

Rob Zombie with Slayer

Rob Zombie was as usual very entertaining singing his great songs from White Zombie and all of his solo material.  It was a visual overload with 3-D skulls, fire, and confetti.  There were clips on the big screen from his movies and old horror movies.  There were also half-naked women from the 60’s playing guitar and Charles Manson.  He played his “Werewolf Women of the SS” that he produced that starred Nicolas Cage.

Mr. Zombie dedicated ‘Pussy Liquor’ to the girl who couldn’t keep her shirt on and he said it was their most popular song and he ‘really wasn’t sure why’.  It was also John 5’s birthday and he had the audience sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him.  The band came out for the last few songs wearing red and white Canadian maple leaf outfits.

Slayer had a very basic stage, it had stacks of Marshall amps, and 2 large hanging Slayer eagles lit up.  The audience screaming for Slayer was almost as loud as the band themselves.  Any person could appreciate the musicianship of Kerry Kings’ guitar playing whether you are a thrash-metal fan or not.   He is unbelievable!  Tom Araya did not say too much in between songs, but he did dedicate ‘Mandatory Suicide’ to the freedom fighters.  He said ‘You don’t have to wear a uniform to fight for freedom’.  This was by far the loudest show we have ever been too!     

   

The Trews

We always love to see The Trews!  They are from Nova Scotia and they really exude that East Coast feeling while they are on stage.  They always have smiles on their faces and look like they are having so much fun.  They are so in-sync with eachother with the vocals and back-up vocals.  The sound carries through the air perfectly when it is an open air show. 

They played ‘Hold Me In Your Arms’, ‘Tired of Waiting’, Paranoid Freak’, ‘Not Ready To Go’ and ‘Hope and Ruin’.  Before they came up for the encore, they called up a guy from the audience.  The guy came up to the stage and asked his girlfriend to come up as well.  He explained that a Trews show was their first date and got down on his knee and proposed to her.  She said yes.  The Trews played ‘Stay With Me’ and dedicated the love song to them.  They finished with our favorite song 'Fleeting Trust'.  The Trews are on of our favorite bands to see live!

           

Kiss for Canada Day

Kiss played Fort McMurray, AB at Macdonald Island Park on July 2^nd for their Canada Rocks Festival!  It was the only Alberta date for this tour, and resulted from the thousands of fans requesting or "demanding" that Kiss play Fort McMurray.  The show started with an amazing introduction video of their infamous 7 inch boots coming towards the stage, as the Larger than Life characters prepared to rock the crowd.  We have seen Kiss several times.  Even though this was an outdoor show, Kiss seemed to go all out with more fire, pyro, lights, and fireworks than usual.  There were also jumbo screens to ensure the 10,000+  fans in attendance didn't miss a thing.  Even with an over-zealous general admission crowd, we lucked out and managed to secure spots in the front row.

Kiss Set List:

Modern Day Delilah

Cold Gin

Let Me Go Rock N Roll

Firehouse

Say Yeah

Deuce

Do You Love Me

Calling Dr. Love

Shock Me

Tommy Solo (where Tommy shot fireworks out of his guitar).

Eric shot out fireworks out of a cannon at the end of Tommy's solo.

The Demon spitting blood.

God of Thunder

Love Gun

I Love It Loud

100,000 Years

Black Diamond

Detroit Rock City

Encore:

Beth (performed by Eric with the band behind him on guitars)

Lick It Up

Shout It Out Loud

Rock And Roll All Night

Towards the end of the encore Gene and Tommy were escalated on risers approximately 30 feet in the air while playing.  As they came down; Paul shattered his guitar and gave it out to the audience. 

There were mass amounts of confetti shot out to the audience once 'Rock And Roll All Night' started, and the crowd went wild! We had confetti everywhere it seemed there was way more of the white shredded tissue-like paper than usual! We feel sorry for whoever is responsible for cleaning up that mess!!! As at most Kiss shows, many of those in attendance wore make-up like Paul and Gene.  What an incredible way to wrap-up a Canada Day weekend! 

   

New York Dolls, Poison, and Motley Crue in Las Vegas

We saw the legendary New York Dolls, Poison, and Motley Crue in Las Vegas on June 18 at the Red Rock Amphitheatre.

The New York Dolls came on at 7:00 just as people were just starting to enter the Amphitheatre.  David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain were as energetic as ever!  We have seen them before; but it was spectacular to see them in this sort of setting with a large crowd.  It seemed strange that they are the band that started glam, and they were opening up for bands that (influenced by the New York Dolls), continued and perfected it a decade later.

They performed all of our favorite songs, as well as some newer ones from 'Dancing Backwards in High Heels' and 'Cuz I Sez So'. 

New York Dolls set-list:

Personality Crisis
We're All In Love
'Cause I Sez So

Talk To Me, Baby
Fabulous Rant

I'm So Fabulous
Kids Like You

Dance Like a Monkey
Pills

Trash

Jet Boy

At first we were shocked to hear that Motley Crue and Poison would even be touring together given their tumultuous history, but we are elated they did!

The show started at 8:00 pm with Bret storming onto the 'Poison green' stage above the drum riser and in an instant, everyone was on their feet! The only difference was this time the stage was adorned with wording celebrating Poison's 25th Anniversary. Poison is always highly entertaining & energetic and love to dazzle the crowd with pyro and fireworks.

Poison set-list:

Look What The Cat Dragged In
Ride The Wind
We’re An American Band
Your Mama Don’t Dance

CC Guitar Solo

Fallen Angel
Unskinny Bop
Rikki Drum Solo

Every Rose Has Its Thorn
Talk Dirty To Me

Nothin’ But A Good Time

Motley Crue took the stage at 9:30, and the show started with a mass exposion of pyro!  It is always fun to see Vince Neil at a 'home show' playing to his friends in Vegas.  Crue entertained us with a set-list ranging from old to new hits and crowd favorites. We know we will never leave a Motley Crue show having heard all of the songs that we'd hoped to hear, only because there are far too many.

Vince's voice sounded awesome,  Mick was moving around the stage and (looked healthier than we'd seen him in years), Tommy played drums in 360 (rollercoaster-like loop) and played piano for 'Home Sweet Home', and Nikki, as always, was the spokesperson for the band - led the crowd in a prayer (praying that the band stays together many more years) and threw blood out on the crowd at the end of the show. 

Every year, every show, they never cease to amaze us by coming up with something new and totally different.  This is why they are one of our favorite bands of all time and we'll never get bored of seeing their shows! 

Motley Crue set-list:

Wildside
Saints Of Los Angeles
Live Wire
Shout At The Devil
Same Ol’ Situation
Primal Scream
Home Sweet Home
Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)
Drum Solo (where Tommy Lee drummed in his 360 degree roller-coaster).

Looks That Kill
Dr. Feelgood
Too Young To Fall In Love
Too Fast for Love
Girls Girls Girls
Smokin In The Boys Room
Kickstart My Heart

Motley Crue are the 4th Annual Sunset Strip Music Festival 2011 Honoree's August 18-20.
http://www.sunsetstripmusicfestival.com/

Vince Neil will also be honored August 21 at the Hilton for the Vegas Rocks! Magazine Lifetime Achievement in Rock 'N' Roll.

We also went to see our favorite Las Vegas based band the Sin City Sinners after the show at Chrome at Santa Fe Station.  Check them out if you are in Las Vegas!
http://www.thesincitysinners.com/index.html

   

U2 360 Tour

Top 5 moments at the show:

1. Bono singing “Walk On” and talking about Amnesty International and how there are 3000 people that are imprisoned in Burma.  http://3freedoms.amnesty.org/

2. Bono acknowledging his global awareness and asking everyone to light up their phones for the fire disasters in Slave Lake.

3. U2 performing “One” and Bono thanking the crowd for joining the One Campaign that he co-founded and ‘giving a shit’.  http://www.one.org/international/

4. Bono explaining the story of how he was hitchhiking in Vancouver the day before the Edmonton show; and how Gilbert Brule (Edmonton Oiler) rescued him. 

5. Seeing the largest stage ever built and old footage of U2 in 360 degrees.

New York City

We love New York City!  We didn't have alot of time in New York after the M3 festival; but we took in some important rock n' roll sites while we were there. 

We went to the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square.  They have one of the largest collections of music memorabilia we have ever seen.

We also went on a walking rock n' roll tour, that took us to sites in the East Village.  We were educated in the rock history of the neighbourhood and visited sites and venues.  Bobby Pinn took us to a great many sites including Joey Ramone's apartment, St. Mark's Hotel, and the Gem Spa that the New York Dolls made famous.  We highly suggest the tour, he has various walking rock n' roll tours around the New York City.  http://www.rockjunket.com/

After the tour we stopped off at our favorite place to shop, Trash and Vaudeville at 4 Saint Marks Place.  Jimmy is amazing!  Here is a picture of Marky Ramones Video Music Award in the store.  http://www.nycgoth.com/shops/trashnvaudeville/ 

We stopped by Manitoba's for some cocktails.  It is owned by Richard 'Handsome Dick' Manitoba from the Dictators.  http://manitobas.com/

We also went to our favorite New York City bar Motorcity.  The bar has an amazing atmosphere and has a lady dj that played our favorite songs all night!  They have great drink specials too!
http://motorcitybar.com/home.html

Visiting Joey Ramone's resting place was our final stop.  It is in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, approximately 15 minutes away from Newark airport.  The Hillside Cemetary has a Jewish section 'New York Social Club' and that is where he is laid to rest.  Gone too soon.

   

M3

In the past few years, we have been to Rocklahoma in Pryor, OK, and Rock N America in Oklahoma City, OK. This year we decided on M3 in Columbia, MD. The set up is perfect for the VIP section, the covered pavilion, and vendors.  They even had a National Pinball Museum with a Guns N Roses and a Kiss pinball machine.  There was also a book signing with Eddie Trunk for this new book 'Eddie Trunk's Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal'.  It was great that there was only one side stage, but some of the bands over-lapped.  But otherwise, we will definately go back next year!

Friday, May 13 was the kick off party. First up was L.A Guns with Phil Lewis. We love Tracii Guns, but it was nice to see this version as it is the one with the voice. Who else could sing 'Sex Action' and 'Never Enough' like Phil Lewis?

Warrant was up next. It was strange to see them play without Jani Lane. Robert Mason (ex Lynch-Mob) has an amazing voice, but nothing is like the original vocalist. They were promoting their new album 'Rockaholic', but nothing will compare to 'Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich'.

KIX was the final band for Friday night and they were amazing! It was a hometown show for them "Long legged Rosie from Baltimore Took me farther than I've been before" - Girl Money... The crowd went wild.  Steve Whiteman is hilarious, and quite the frontman.  He has an insane amount of energy!  We got to meet them after in the VIP section.

Saturday, May 14 started with Danger Danger at 12 pm.  We made it on time, and were so happy to catch them live!  They are one of the few bands we haven't seen in the past few years.  Ted Poley sounded great, they did all of our favorite songs.  We got to meet them after the show in VIP.  They said they love the shows and then they just go on with their regular lives for the rest of the year, so it is pretty exciting for them.

Pretty Boy Floyd was next.  We love them and have been fortunate to see them the past couple of years.  They for some reason can never make it over the border to Canada, so we have to go to the US to see them.  They were throwing their cd "Kiss of Death - A Tribute to Kiss" to the audience.  It is always great to see Steve Summers and Kristy Majors on stage together. 

 
Firehouse was next.  Unfortunately we didn't get to see the entire set with the overlapping of bands.  We still heard our favorites songs.  C.J. Snare can still hit those incredibly high notes in "Don't Treat Me Bad".

Slaughter was next.  We have seen them a few times over the years and they are always great.  As usual, Mark Slaughter went deep into the crowd for all the audience to see and they finished with 'Up All Night'.

Next was Great White.  The last time we saw Great White was in Rock N America.  Jack Russell was not well, he has just had back surgery.  They had Jani Lane from Warrant covering for a short time, but now they have Terry Ilous from XYZ is filling in until Jack's return after another major surgery.  He was excellent, but it will be great once Jack returns, no one can replace him.

 
We ran over to the second stage to catch some of Black N' Blue just in time to hear Jaime St. James sing 'Miss Mystery'. 

And to see our Edmonton/Calgary friends 'Killinger' on the jumbo-tron.  http://killingerrocks.com/

Next up was Mr. Big.  We were pretty excited, we had never seen them play!  We never thought we would see Eric Martin, Paul Gilbert, Billy Sheehan and Pat Torpey on stage together for a reunion!  They performed all of our favorites and looked and sounded spectacular!

Faster Pussycat was next.  The only original member is Taime Downe.  He sang the songs as they sounded originally which was nice, he doesn't always do that.  It is unsettling to see him in his goth wear singing glam songs.

   
Big Noize, the all-star band event was next.  What a treat to see Carlos Cavasso from Quiet Riot, Joe Lynn Turner from Rainbow and Deep Purple, Phil Soussan from Ozzy and Jimmy Page and Vinnie Appice from Black Sabbath and Dio on stage together!

Sebastian Bach was next!  We had seen him a couple nights earlier on the way to M3 at the famous Crocodile Rock in Allentown, PA.  He was very entertaining as usual, he has such an incredible voice.  He told the story of how he hit his bassist in the head with his microphone swinging and scarred him.  We met him at the after party at Clyde's.

Tesla was next!  They always put on such a good powerful show.  I remember when they used to open up for almost any show that came to Canada.  They still hold that energy and musicianship that they did 20 years ago.

The finale of the night was Whitesnake!  They were spectacular.  They played all of the old songs and also played alot off the new album 'Forevermore'.  The new songs sound alot like Coverdale/Page, sexy and bluesy.  David Coverdale is still an astounding frontman, one of the best!

Can't wait for next year!