John Easdale, Jeffrey Gaines, Highway 9, Matt Witte's New Blood Revival, Everlounge, Red Engine 9, Blow Up

Tradewinds, Sea Bright, NJ.....

This show was a benefit for "Dollar" Bill Benfer, a salesguy at WHTG who was dealing with some serious health issues.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rancid

Club Zoo, Pittsburgh, PA I hadn't seen Rancid since a late '90s Warped Tour or at least since the 1997 Tibetan Freedom Concert , and I'd never seen a full, headlining show by the band. Plus, I'd never been to the venue formerly known as Metropol, although I'd heard much about it (mostly negative), so it was going to be doubtless interesting. post continues.... Betsy, Ned, Steve, and I arrived to see the first (local) opener. Betsy and I were also interested in seeing if we'd get in with our "tickets"--Betsy came to the club to buy tickets and they gave her a copy of the club owner's business card, hand scrawled with "Rancid - admit one." This seemed a bit dodgy, so I emailed the guy who actually books the shows (an acquaintance) and he said it was okay. And, indeed, we got in with no problem. The bouncers didn't even bat an eye when they took our "tickets." We saw the first band, Weekend Warriors (enjoyable but forgettable),...
Read more

Green Day, The Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid, The Linda Lindas

Image
PNC Park, Pittsburgh, PA....   Green Day's The Saviors Tour, in which they played all of Dookie and the American Idiot albums in sequence. (Probably not the best choice, as it severely constrained the setlist order and was not ideal for a stadium concert.) Rancid was probably my pick for the best all-around performance of the day, although the Linda Lindas were a lot of fun. Green Day had some great song performances but their set was a little bloated and lacking the loopy spontaneity I remember from seeing them in 1998 . Smashing Pumpkins was OK, but just like when I saw them in 2000 , I was left with a "good, but" vibe. I liked some of it. But when Corgan inexplicably brought out professional wrestlers from his wrestling promotion company-- well, big sigh. One of the most remarkable moments of the concert didn't involve a live performance. Immediately prior to Green Day taking the stage, they play Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" over the sound system and...
Read more

INXS/Soup Dragons

Continental Airlines Arena/Meadowlands Arena/Brendan Byrne Arena, E. Rutherford, NJ I had just reported for work at WHTG as the Production Director two days before this show, and was suddenly handed tickets to both this show and for Neil Young , both taking place the same weekend at the same arena. On top of it, the previous morning show host (Bart Cross-Tierney, who I later got along quite well with when he returned to FM 106.3 with his own specialty show) had departed on my first day on the job and I was asked to fill in on the morning show during the following week (and a week turned into eight years). post continues.... So I decided that I really liked this job. INXS was at the very peak of their success during this tour (The "X Factor World Tour"). The X album's second single, "Disappear," was a top ten hit just then. No small amount of the crowd was teenage girls, swoony at the drop of a beat for Michael Hutchence and his Jim Morrisonesque looks . So I fo...
Read more