TOMMY STINSON Woodstock Music Shop, February 11, 2017 - Video and Review

What a cool surprise this week when I was at the airport in Tampa coming back from vacation to check Facebook and see Tommy Stinson was going to be doing an in-store performance about 10 minutes from my place at Woodstock Music Shop in Kingston, NY on Saturday, February 11, 2017. Some of the performance was to be broadcast live on local radio station WDST and hosted by DJ Greg Gattine.



(By the way - since you're reading this, you're obviously a fan of Tommy, so be sure to check out my post about Tommy and the L.A.M.F. super group show in NYC a couple of months back by clicking here. Lots of Great Video!)



We got there about 15 minutes before the 1:00 pm start time to about 30 people milling about (about 50 would be in attendance by the time the show started) and flipping through the record bins and checking out the instruments. We went up  by the small stage in the back and Tommy came out a few minutes later letting us know he would need volunteers to help out on kazoo for "On The Rocks", the fist single from the latest Bash & Pop album "Anything Could Happen."  He handed out about 20 and asked we all gather round the mic and did a quick run through of the riff and telling us to go wild when he called for the solo when we were live on air.  It was decided we (I say we, as the kazoo choir was the backing band for this appearance of just Tommy and his guitar) would open with this song.



Greg Gattine introduced Tommy to the radio audience and he started off with a great rendition of "On the Rocks" and we on kazoo killed it!  There was a young kid right up front and center in a Star Wars shirt that Tommy was talking to before the show and he dedicated the next song, "Anybody Else," to him.  After the set, Tommy commented how glad he was to see parents bring their kids out to see and experience new live music.



At this point, before the next song, Gattine asked Tommy when he was a child who he wanted to be when he grew up.  The crowd threw out suggestions of Keith Richards and Johnny Thunders, but Tommy assured us it was Brian May of Queen and talked about meeting Brian during Tommy's stint as bassist in Guns n Roses for "Chinese Democracy" and how he stumped Brian with a jazz chord in a song he wrote for the album that Brian played on.



Tommy then played "Bad News" - the sound and performances of all the songs were excellent and here's video I shot of this one:

Before playing the last song of the portion of the show to be aired live, Gattine asked Tommy to talk about the recording of the new Bash & Pop album here in the Hudson Valley where Tommy now lives.  Tommy talked about how it was great to get together with his musician friends and basically record the album live in the studio how he used to do it and how he prefers to record.  He then said he is trying to work out an idea to curate a "Friday Night Is Killing Me" party at Mountain Jam this year...as of now Bash & Pop is not on the bill, but hopefully this will happen!  Tommy then played "First Steps."

Gattine bid adieu to the radio audience and Tommy said he'd play a few more for us starting with the title track of the new album "Anything Could Happen" and then ending with "Not This Time".  Here's the video I filmed of those two tunes:

Afterward Tommy stuck around and met with everyone, signing and taking pictures as requested.  



I got him to sign my poster for the one Replacements show I ever go to see on this past reunion tour.  One of my all time favorite shows.  It's always looked cool framed on my wall and looks cooler now with Tommy's signature.  



I had him sign my kazoo as well!



What a great Saturday afternoon!

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MORC Day 2 part 1: Miami FL February 21, 2016 - Paradise Kitty, D-A-D and Iron Maiden - Photos and Video

If you would like to read about MORC Day 1 (with Killer Dwarfs and Lynch Mob) click here.

We all slept well after getting back to the hotel and the last of us was up and ready to go by around the crack of noon on Sunday.  Two things were on our mind before we started thinking about that night's Monster of Rock Cruise party at the Magic City Casino - food and Iron Maiden.

Iron Maiden's airplane, "Ed Force One", was all over the local news as it had landed at the Fort Lauderdale airport a day or two before as Maiden arrived to kick off their World Tour in Florida.  Would it be cool to see the plane in person?  Hell yeah..but where to go to eat first?

Well Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain happens to have a restaurant about 40 minutes away in Coconut Creek called Rock n Roll Ribs.  We piled in the car and got on our way.

We arrived to find we had just missed Nicko by about 10 minutes, he headed off to play some golf.  We also found out that the previous day the whole band stopped in (with the exception of Bruce Dickinson).  Man it would have been cool to meet Nicko, but what can you do. Let's head inside.

Rock n Roll Ribs is a small restaurant but jam packed with an amazing array of Iron Maiden memorabilia including one of Nicko's drum kits.

The staff was super friendly and the food...wow!  This is a place that could draw every metal head around no matter what the food tastes like, but man...I've had some delicious barbeque around the country and I'm going to say it.  These were the best BBQ ribs I've ever had.  Just thinking about it now has my mouth watering and the sides were fantastic too.  I can't recommend it enough.

Here's some photos of the memorabilia:

Filled up and feeling like continuing the adventure, we headed to the Fort Lauderdale airport.  As we approached we wondered how in the hell we were going to put eyes on the plane, but as we approached the exit we saw it far in the distance in a private parking area.

There was no where to stop on the highway and it was all the way on the other side of the airport, so we got off the exit and just started heading around the side of the airport.  We suddenly caught another glimpse of it through some trees and we were about as close as we could get without being on the grounds and luckily, the airport has a long narrow park / running path along that side with a small parking lot.

We parked, got out, walked about a half mile down the path back the way we came to our best vantage point and with the help of my zoom lens I got these shots.  Pretty damn cool!

Who knew this would probably end up being a relatively rare site on this tour as it was just announced how the plane was badly damaged in South America a couple of days ago.  Luckily Maiden said they worked out a contingency plan and the tour will continue with no cancelled shows.  I'll be seeing them at Madison Square Garden in about two weeks and yes, I'll have photos and a review of the show.

We had a couple of hours to kill before that night's party was to begin with doors opening at 4:30pm, so we used the Vinyl District app and found a good local used record store.  I didn't find anything, but my buddies each got a few things.  It was a great day checking out Florida and now it was time to head back to Magic City Casino in time to catch opening act Paradise Kitty.

Paradise Kitty, a Guns n Roses tribute band, was a great way to start the night and they put on a fantastic show.  They are made up of vocalist Jenna Syde, guitarist Priscila Barr, guest guitarist Courtney Cox, bassist Nichole McCumsey and drummer Rachael Rine.

They played a kick ass set of GnR (and one Aerosmith) tunes:

• Night Train
• It's So Easy
• Outta Get Me
• Mr. Brownstone
• Welcome to the Jungle
• Mama Kin (although Think About You was on the setlist)
• Rocket Queen
• Paradise City (video below)

Awesome band doing great renditions of these tunes that had everyone singing along throughout the whole set.  As you can see in the video, they invited all the female rockers in the audience that wanted to join them up on stage for the finale.

Their humorous setlist:

After a short break where once again beer runs went on, the amazing D-A-D took the stage.  You can find that full review, photos and video by clicking here.  Part 2 of Day 2 continues by clicking here.

If you dug this go to the MostPeopleAreBlank Facebook page by following this link and click the "Follow" button to join to be kept up to date on future posts, to comment, share and take part in our giveaways and contests! Click any photos to enlarge them to full screen.  Also follow on twitter @MostPeopleBlank   Then, of course, as always - Rock on and Enjoy - Paul

Kings of Chaos - Foxwoods Grand Theater, CT - May 16, 2015 Concert Review and Photos

"Super Group" is thrown around so often these days, it's a hard term to trust, but when you have a group made up of three current inductees in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame and four members who long ago should have been inducted...well dammit, that friends is a super group called Kings of Chaos.

Kings of Chaos was brought together by Matt Sorum (of Guns n Roses - Rock Hall inductee) and includes his GnR bandmates Duff McKagan (also Rock Hall inductee) and Gilby Clarke (okay...why wasn't Gilby inducted into the Rock Hall with the rest of the band?!  Everyone else was including Dizzy Reed!  I call some serious bullshit here but I digress) to form the core rhythm section of the group.  He then brought on Steve Stevens (Billy Idol's guitarist and collaborator - who should be in the Rock Hall) for lead guitar.  He just needed to fill out the band with some killer vocalists.

Kings of Chaos has a triple threat in that department.  ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons (yep, already in the Rock Hall) plus Robin Zander of Cheap Trick and Glenn Hughes, most notably of Deep Purple.  Don't even get me started on the fact that Trick and Purple are not in the Rock Hall!

So shit.  That's a group kids.

These true rock super groups tend to tour every continent outside of North America pretty regularly during the last few years, but it's rare they make an appearance on these shores.  This was no different.  Kings of Chaos only did two North American shows.  One in Florida the night before this and this one.

This was another of those shows I didn't expect to go to.  I was selling incredibly cool stuff at the Rock n Roll Flea Market in Kingston that Saturday and thought I would be tied up until at least 5pm and even with a heavy foot on the gas pedal and no traffic, Foxwoods is still about a three hour drive, so I was going to pass.

Then about 2 days before the show, out of the blue Foxwoods emails me and says I can RSVP for a comp ticket.  So I did that, but knew I would still have to play it by ear.

The concert gods once again looked over me on Saturday and I was able to hit the road right at five and hauled ass to Foxwoods.  Got super lucky traffic wise and pulled into the parking garage at 7:55 (ticket said show was to start at 8).

I'm pretty sure Foxwoods is the largest casino in the United States (maybe the world) and it always seems the only parking I can find is in the lot lot where I have to literally walk through the whole casino to get to the newer section where the Grand Theater is located.  I honestly think it was about a mile walk through the busy Saturday night crowd.  I get there and have to get a new copy of my rewards card as I had lost my old one and you need it to pick up the ticket. Then I go to the box office and they said I never RSVP'd (I did) and eventually they print me out what ended up being an awesome seat - front row in the mezzanine.  It's probably about 8:20 at this point.

As I had my ticket scanned and was walking in I could hear they were in the middle of Cheap Trick's standard concert opener "Hello There"

Not bad, I only missed half a song (although one I love).

It became immediately apparent this was going to be a hits filled night when they went right into "Surrender" followed by "I Want You to Want Me".  Damn...the boys weren't playing around!

As I stated above, for most of the night, the core group on stage was Steve Stevens on lead guitar and Duff McKagan on bass.

Gilby Clarke on rhythm guitar and Matt Sorum on drums.

Overall the band was great but not really tight. It was obvious at times they did not have much rehearsal.  So sure, there were some missed lyrics here, some wrong notes there, but overall it was fantastic.  I think these two small shows in the US (I think the Grand Theater only holds about 2500 - and it was very close to full with a very energetic totally into it crowd) were basically their rehearsals before they head out on the real tour where they will be playing to very large audiences.  I'll take the warts and all show to get to see this lineup!

After the opening salvo of Cheap Trick songs, Robin introduced the mighty Glenn Hughes before leaving the stage.  It was time for a double shot of Deep Purple starting with "Highway Star" and then going into a massive crowd singalong for "Smoke on The Water."

Leaving the stage with the crowd on their feet, Glenn introduced Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top.  Now ZZ Top easily have at least 10 HUGE radio hits and it seems like that was what this show was all about, so it cooled the crowd down quite a bit when the first two songs Billy played were the two slow blues openers of ZZ Top's third album "Tres Hombres" - first "Waitin' for the Bus" and then "Jesus Just Left Chicago"

The general consensus was Cheap Sunglasses, Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers, Sleeping Bag, Gimme All Your Lovin or any of the other hit songs would have been perhaps been a better choice, but hell, I'm no Billy Gibbons and it's a minor observation not even complaint. 

I will say Billy never lost the crowd though, I think one more deep cut might have done it, but instead Billy said they were going to go back, way back for the next one and he started playing the instantly recognizable opening riff to Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady"

The Hendrix cover went right into ZZ Top's "La Grange."  Yep, now Billy had the crowd in the palm of his hand!

When the crowd calmed down after "La Grange" Billy said he was going to bring out Glenn to help with a tribute to B.B. King who had passed away the previous day.  Glenn's vocals on King's "The Thrill Is Gone" were outstanding.

Glenn and Billy then left the stage and Gilby took on lead vocals.  He said this song was also for B.B. and asked the crowd to sing along which they did quite loudly on the Guns n Roses version of Bob Dylan's "Knockin on Heaven's Door"

 

Robin Zander then came back out to join the band for GnR's "Mr. Brownstone"

Robin stayed on stage to do vocals on the Billy Idol classic "Rebel Yell"

 

and then another Cheap Trick classic "Dream Police"

Robin then left bringing Glenn back out for an amazing take on Deep Purple's "Burn"

Glenn then tagged Billy back in to end the main set with ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man" followed by "Tush" (with Robin on lead vocals on the latter)

After a very short encore break, everyone came back out on stage and Matt Sorum introduced the band members

They then did a killer version of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" and ended the night with Guns n Roses' "Paradise City."

  

  

It was a solid two hour rock fest and I hope the crowd reaction to this show lets them know there is an audience for this in America.

Click on any of the photos to super size view them. If you dug this please go click like on the Most People Are Blank Facebook page to follow, comment and be kept up to date on any contests.  As always Rock on and Enjoy! - Paul