Prince and Lynard Skynard Concerts...

[Tom E]

I'm going to see Prince in concert this August, I was born in 1975. So I grew up when his music was really good. He's playing his old hits so it should be fun...

In July I'm seeing Lynard Sknyard at an upscale WINERY...I guess you can grow up and make a little money--Cheapest Tickets where 120 Bucks--even if you had a mullett at one time in your life... I'm going to enjoy the middle class white trash who throw up their lighters, during Free Bird..LOL

Anybody else going to a concert this Summer...

[j25352857]

I went to a Prince show on his current tour, it was great

[Desnudo]

That's probably the first time in history that Prince and Lynard Skynard have appeared in the same sentence.

[sabotai]

I just went to a concert last week. I saw Skinny Puppy at the Electric Factory in Philly. It was really good, except I didn't care for the opening band at all. It was a band called Tweeker that was fromed by a NiN member. They were bad. But Skinny Puppy was awesome.

[Cards4ever]

Prince show was awesome, saw it here in June, the only thing that dissapointed me was a acoustic version of Little Red Corvette, I love that song electrically and wanted him to play it like that.

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by Desnudo

That's probably the first time in history that Prince and Lynard Skynard have appeared in the same sentence.

and that's the 2nd time

[Draft Dodger]

I don't go to many concerts, but the Prince one sounds like a lot of fun. Really wanted to go see Van Halen this summer, but tickets were $100 each. No thanks.

[DeToxRox]

HELLFEST 2004 BABY!

Anyone around Elizabeth, NJ and can give some pointers on the dos/donts.. (yes i have heard its a majority of dont's, but i can use any help)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by DeToxRoxDVHStyle

HELLFEST 2004 BABY!

Anyone around Elizabeth, NJ and can give some pointers on the dos/donts.. (yes i have heard its a majority of dont's, but i can use any help)

DON'T pull your wee out and shout "Mr. Dinky wants to rock!!!" in front of the crowd.

[McSweeny]

i've already been to a few shows over the last few weeks, but on my schedule are:

Mark Lind solo acoustic
Billy Bragg!!!
The Skels
and various local shows

[DeToxRox]

haha, thanks for the heads up Hell.

[Ksyrup]

I haven't been to a concert in so long, it's killing me. And the only one in my near future is...Journey in August.

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

I haven't been to a concert in so long, it's killing me. And the only one in my near future is...Journey in August.

that's not a concert; that's torture.

[Router Help]

This will be a good weekend for concerts in Detroit:

Thursday: Cake
Saturday: Jet
Sunday: Buddy Guy

All FREE at the Comerica Tastefest: http://www.newcenter.com/tastefest/2004/music.htm

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

that's not a concert; that's torture.

The things we do for our wives.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I've got Metallica tickets for November. Nothing much on the concert front before then I'm afraid (at least not that I know of).

Unfortunately for me, you made me curious -- a check of pollstar.com gives me a club date for Dokken in Atlanta. Sounds like a killer chance to see my favorite of the light metal bands of the 80's. And seems damned near impossible to get to see without a first class case of the guilts from my 6 y/o.

Y'know, it seems really really cool (as a parent) to have your kid really like some of the things you like. Until situations like this come up

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

The things we do for our wives.

lol. my wife knows there's lots of things I will do for her.
Watching Musicals, going to Wal-Mart, and seeing Journey in concert would all be things on the "won't do" list.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Unfortunately for me, you made me curious -- a check of pollstar.com gives me a club date for Dokken in Atlanta. Sounds like a killer chance to see my favorite of the light metal bands of the 80's. And seems damned near impossible to get to see without a first class case of the guilts from my 6 y/o.

AFAIK, there's no George Lynch. I saw a review of their new album that was brutal.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

lol. my wife knows there's lots of things I will do for her.
Watching Musicals, going to Wal-Mart, and seeing Journey in concert would all be things on the "won't do" list.

Actually, I found a couple of bootlegs of recent-year concerts, and they don't sound too bad. The new singer is pretty damn close to Perry. I'll enjoy it for what it is (it could be much, much worse), but I wouldn't be going if the wife didn't want to go.

I just checked Pollstar, and Prong is coming to Tally. I might check them out - I haven't seen them since around '92, when they toured with Flotsam & Jetsam.

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

AFAIK, there's no George Lynch. I saw a review of their new album that was brutal.

my God - if there's no George Lynch, why would they even bother?
he was the only reason to see that band (and, even then, they weren't very good the time I saw them)

[Nwobhm]

Going to Ozzfest in late july with a killer lineup of slayer, judas priest, and the original black sabbath. A headbanger's dream pretty much.

[Ksyrup]

The only time I saw them, they opened for Judas Priest in the mid-80's. I'm looking forward to JP's 2005 tour. I'll be going to see that one if at all possible.

[Ksyrup]

It's Don Dokken, the original drummer, and 2 ringers.

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

It's Don Dokken, the original drummer, and 2 ringers.

no Jeff Pilsson either? that's just not right.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

no Jeff Pilsson either? that's just not right.

I'm not sure what the current situation is, but Pilson and Lynch put out an album together in 2003.

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

I'm not sure what the current situation is, but Pilson and Lynch put out an album together in 2003.

thanks for the info - I'll have to check that out.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

AFAIK, there's no George Lynch. I saw a review of their new album that was brutal.

Hmm.

I haven't seen or heard anything from/about the upcoming album
(Hell To Pay - July 14th). FTR, it's also without Jeff Pilson, who is a pretty significant loss to the group as well (okay, he's no Lynch, but still ...).

Long Way Home, from 2002, wasn't nearly as good IMO as Erase The Slate but I'd love to hear some of the latter's material in person -- Both Drown and Maddest Hatter are among my favorites from any incarnation of the band & that's a pretty long list for me. And Dokken-minus-Lynch has become kinda ... commonplace at this point.
Let's see, they've had Reb Beach, John Norum, and now Jon Levin since reforming the band. (Some critiques I've seen since you mentioned the new release seem to suggest that Levin might have tried too hard to replicate Lynch's sound, something that I thought Beach avoided doing surprisingly well.)

I saw them last, let's see, I guess it was 2 years ago, but as fate would have it, Don had been injured in a waverunner incident earlier in the day & was basically too f'ed up on painkillers to perform more than about 3 songs.
And even that was stretching it.

So even minus their biggest asset, I'd still figure on getting my money's worth (hey, it's hard to screw up a $15 club ticket just so long as the beer is cold )

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

thanks for the info - I'll have to check that out.

It's Lynch/Pilson Wicked Underground

Some say it strays into "nu-metal" a little too often, I'd say it's okay-to- decent, peaking at times around "pretty good". But Jeff's vocals can be ... let's say "an acquired taste", and they aren't something that suit everybody. Oddly enough, it's lying on the fax table, about 3 feet from me right now (not sure how/why it's in that spot, I haven't listened to it in at least a couple of months).

Meanwhile, since we got on this particular subject, I've discovered that Lynch has a new solo instrumental album & that Pilson's latest project is with the group War And Peace, album title Light At the End of the Tunnel.

Jeff has been busy, also just finishing up in the studio for Dio's new album (Rudy Sarzo is handling the Euro tour while Pilson took care of the new studio work, splitting the duties formerly handled by departed Jimmy Bain)

[TLK]

I'm going to the Warped Tour in Vegas on the 4th of July......

I'll also be hitting Boston on the 20th of July in Toledo....

how's that for confilicting shows?

[TLK]

dola....

Originally Posted by Tom E

I'm going to see Prince in concert this August........

For a good Prince story... watch "An Evening With Kevin Smith".... I laughed my ass off.....

[Ksyrup]

Here's the review of the new Dokken I saw. Admittedly, this guy is anything but objective, so take it for what it is...



Remember the hits like "Into The Fire" and "Burning Up The Night"? We certainly recall them clogging up the airwaves, and at the same time are still trying to work out just how and why DOKKEN ended up there so often. Sure, there were a few toe-tapping moments ("Unchain The Night" being one of those rare gems) — but on the whole DOKKEN were like a SCORPIONS without the sting, where shaky vocals, songwriting-by-numbers and a penchant for leaving you cold lifted them to a much higher position than their output necessarily deserved.

Coming several albums down the line since melodic rock took a mainstream nosedive, "Hell to Pay" sees them "going back to their roots" (they flirted with a semi-grunge sound a few years back to a singularly unmoved world), only nowadays it's without guitar wiz George Lynch — one of the rare plus points before he jumped ship in the mid-Nineties — and, unhappily, in possession of a sackful of soporific ballads.

One of these is called "Still I'm Sad", which isn't a cover of the gutsy RAINBOW song of the same name, although by mere association it heaps disgrace on the title by being an absolute wet weekend of a track. Same goes for "I Surrender" (spot the RAINBOW reference again), with the worst culprit of them all, "Care For You", being so dead on its feet that you wonder how a man like Don Dokken, with all his years of experience at the helm, could continue to let such pieces of surplus fluff slip through the net.

Production, certainly for the past few DOKKEN albums, has been a big part of their downfall. "Hell To Pay" has a "rock" production of clarity, you could say — but if it had an ounce of fire and bite to it on top of that perhaps you wouldn't notice so many of the below par moments so much. "Prozac Nation", for example, would have been so much more of a credible mid-paced rocker if it its edges weren't smoothed right off. And even the best of the three-or-four up-tempo songs on here, "Don't Bring Me Down", cries out to be overdriven as its spiraling riffs snake through the track.

Oddly, it's left to the moody, BEATLES-esque "Letter to Home" to stand head-and-shoulders above the rest, from which you can deduce that DOKKEN are most certainly not, in the words of one of their Eighties success stories, back for the attack.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Here's the review of the new Dokken I saw. Admittedly, this guy is anything but objective, so take it for what it is...

Almost against my better judgement, I picked up a copy of Hell To Pay last night. Having finished my first listen through, here's a thought or three (I'm quoting this particular post because I wanted to compare notes vs the review)

I agree that this is quite a different Dokken, and from the first track, I feared that it might bear more resemblence to Don's solo projects than to the band's accumulated work.

The new album is indeed ballad-heavy but admist the clutter, there's at least a halfway decent album in there somewhere.

Escape is my first round favorite, more Dokken-esque than most of the album, a song that the previous review doesn't mention at all (I almost suspect that's because it wasn't easy to slag them for). I thought Prozac Nation, the song that seems to have been the most commented about in notes I've seen around the web was more "much-ado-about-little" than anything else. It's getting a bit of "love it or hate it" response from some fan sites I've seen, but for me, I thought it was ... okay. The review refers to it as possible better "if it its edges weren't smoothed right off." That's true enough, but ... it seems to me that the smoothed edges are part of the whole point of the song. The vocals are arranged & delivered in a sort of "groovy 60's" style ... which is part of the point I believe the song was trying to make -- comparing today's prescription medicated society with the similarly drug-addled cultures of the 60's, 70's, and beyond. It's a gimmick, but it's a little harsh IMO to criticize the song for being "smoothed off" without acknowledging why it was done that why.

There's also some evidence of Jon Levin falling prey to doing his best George Lynch imitation, but not nearly as much as some of the fan sites led me to expect. Yeah, he does that on 2-3 songs pretty noticeably, but the majority of the time, I don't hear any trace of it. All things considered, he doesn't avoid it as well IMO as the previously mentioned Reb Beach, but he stays adequately of clear of trying to do the impossible (i.e. "be" George Lynch).

I don't think the earlier reviewer & I part company any more than we do regarding Letter to Home. It is indeed very Beatles-esque, but unlike the band's previous treatment of One which I thought was outstanding, this is just ... eh. If I wanted the f'n Beatles, I'd have bought a Beatles album.

The other thing that I haven't seen discussed anywhere much (and that surprises me) is the overwhelming impression I got from Hell To Pay -- that Don Dokken's voice isn't what it used to be. Time & again on the new album, I'm fully expecting to hear his near-trademark climb up the vocal register ... only to get a tripled or quadrapuled track of his voice being used to give the song as much power as they can manage. It's like an illusion, there's really not much hard work vocally going on here. There's very little soaring to be found on HTP and without it, the vocals overall come up
well short of the mark I expected.

Despite my criticism, this isn't a bad album per se. Instead, it's just ... okay. And while I still prefer "okay Dokken" to probably 98% of everything recorded by anybody in the past few years, this certainly doesn't rank among their best work. Sadly, I think it is probably better described as "the best work they can do anymore".

FWIW ...