Brad Paisley, October 21, 2009, MSG, New York, NY

Tonight is a night I've been looking forward to for over a year. Four words: Brad Paisley in concert. Let me tell you this guy has got it all. Great songs, outstanding guitar work, and hilarious videos playing in back of him the entire time. On top of that he always brings talented opening acts that people recognize. Tonight it's Dierks Bently which I'm certain you haven't heard of unless you listen to country radio but trust me, he's big. Four out of the eleven songs he sings tonight are legitimate singles played on country radio on heavy rotation. Other acts that I've seen open for Brad include Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift, and Jewel. C'mon that's some legit star power thus making Brad one of the few acts that doesn't waste my time before he takes the stage.

I've brought three friends with me tonight who simply do not want to be here. I think they feel sorry for me as every year I send out an email asking someone to go with me to see Brad Paisley and every year the responses range from ridicule to pity. These guys are sophisticated Manhattanites so I'm very interested in their reactions. It's kind of like I've got a sociology experiment going on here with these middle aged test subjects... I can't imagine they'll like Dierks Bentley because that's pretty hardcore country. Songs about Jesus, tractors and guns don't resonate all that well in New York. I'm interested in how they like Brad Paisley and his brand of country which closely borders rock.

Before the concert we went to Brother Jimmy's bar next to MSG and from the look of the crowd you would never would believe we were still in Manhattan. It looked like a flannel convention sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon. It was an unbelievable sight and I learned an important lesson. It seems expensive hunting gear is acceptable concert attire. I never knew that! It raises a long time question for me. Are these people real red necks or are they professionals like me who burst out of their rural closet whenever they get the chance?

As I mentioned earlier the video screens in back of the band are a HUGE part of the show. The band interacts with the screens throughout the show. Andy Griffin (yes indeed, Matlock does have lines in one particular song) and Taylor Swift appear on screens to sing parts of songs, or in Taylor's case, play guitar hero on screen while Brad rips through solos on another song. My favorite use of the video screens is during his instrumental songs. While he's ripping through these solos a cartoon he drew plays in the background and the cartoon is choreographed to fit the song. It's remarkably well done.

I have to admit to being a bit conflicted about the video screens. Here is my favorite guy and I should be the old guy screaming, "In my day it was all about the music, man!" Instead I'm captivated like the member of the MTV generation that I must acknowledge being part of. I wish I could totally focus on watching the band because that's what I paid for but I can't help but watching the screens. Sometimes there is just too much comedy going onscreen (William Shatner pretending to be Brad's father) to focus on the live performance.

Now the one thing that we all loved were our seats as we were in the ninth row on the floor. The picture next to this paragraph was taken with an iphone from our seats and it isn't a close up. We were that close. The crazy thing is I didn't know where the seats were until I picked up the tickets at will call two hours before the show. I joined the Brad Paisley fan club so I would have access to advance ticket sales and what the club does to discourage scalpers is not disclose the location of your seats until you pick up your tickets. I expected relatively good seats but because the stage has a ramp up the middle often times we were less than six feet away from the band. I've been to a ton of shows in my life but here I was, my favorite performer and I'm sitting in the best seats I've ever had. Very, very cool!

So in the end my contemporaries admitted to enjoying themselves though that might have been the beer talking. The video screens kept their interest and helped covey the themes of each particular song as these guys never heard the lyrics before. One friend commented he couldn't believe how he could look around the crowd and see all of us who knew ever word to every song. He might have mentioned something about these people being as dumb as sheep but I'll choose to ignore that.

Nevertheless, to a man they all said they'd be willing to come again next year.

But only if I bought the beer...

South Beach, FL, October 10, 2009

I don't get away much and it had been a long time since I went anywhere without my kids but if I had to pick a place it would still be South Beach. So many benefits and so few negatives (cost being one). The Miami airport is nearby and probably a direct flight from everywhere in the US. No passports, no vaccinations and no inhibitions. It's South Beach!



A friend from my Miami office picked us up at the airport and the first thing I noticed was the case on her blackberry. It was covered in shiny glitter stones and it simply screamed, MIAMI!!!! I thought it was awesome and I wouldn't relax until I found one for my wife's phone (for a whopping $20). I'm certain this cover is now available everywhere on Greenwich Avenue but believe me as someone who is always behind a trend as opposed to out front, when we bought it my wife was the only 40 year old woman walking around Fairfield county with a bling cell phone cover.

We lucked into our hotel which turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip. My wife and I stayed at the Mondrian on the inter coastal and I swear I'm not lying when I say I was the oldest guy there. This place was awesome! Around the pool there cabanas for rent with crystal chandeliers hanging three stories high. There were couches and pillows spread across enormous oriental rugs by the pool as well. The entire scene looked like the set of Caligula or maybe what Studio 54 would have looked like had they set it up outside. Our other friends stayed at the Ritz-Carlton on the beach which was very nice but very different. If my mother were to go to South Beach she would demand to stay at the Ritz and that, in a nutshell was the difference between the two hotels.

That isn't to say we didn't get a kick out of the crowd of at the Ritz. The one day we were there the pool was full of older guys from the Midwest who stayed in the pool drinking beers for 6 straight hours. I didn't keep track and I shudder at the thought but I could swear a few of them never left the pool despite downing beers for hours at a time. The Ritz's pool is a salt water pool and maybe salt water pools are just like the ocean but that's getting pretty comfortable. They were bombed and beyond sun burned but most of all they were high comedy.

Now the people at the Mondorian were everything I'm not. Think young, hip, and Latin. Around the pool everyone was sporting some ink and for the women there should have been a silicone contest. Hello doctor! The women at the pool wore high heels with their bikinis and so many of them smoked I thought I was in a Russ Meyer time warp. Ridiculously hot poolside waitresses would bring bottles of Krystal to people in the pool so half the people in the water were holding champagne glasses. Lots of bling and serious sunglasses. Some of the sunglasses were bedazzlers from Tiffany while others looked like they just came off the set of Logan's Run. Just wild.

On the elevator we met some of the guys from the band Better than Ezra who were staying at the hotel for 2 nights as they had an upcoming show in Miami. The hotel was rocking so hard in the evening it wasn't a surprise to see a young rock band deciding this was the place to be. Of course the irony of someone like me being anywhere close to this wasn't lost on me. We came home from dinner to find the place just jumping. Crowds behind velvet ropes waiting to get in, music pulsating loud enough to shake the walls, and we were dying to check out the scene. However, given our age, the time, the full day of sun and cocktails we never made it down from our room as we collapsed once we saw our bed. Some days this old dog just can't dance no matter how good the party sounded.

South Beach has high end hotels and restaurants to match we hit a few of them. I'm no foodie but I've always been open to trying new dishes and I'm very susceptible to the phrase, "specialty of the house." After ordering the lobster banana I think I'm going to be a little more discriminating. You might think lobster and bananas don't ever mix and you know something, you'd be right. Fortunately there was enough wine to cleanse my palette and the waiter made up for it by sending us to Mango's.

Mango's is a Crazy dance bar right along the Ocean. The line was huge, the people were a little seedy and the women were falling out of their dresses. I counted four separate areas to go wild in. Two dance clubs upstairs, a 15 piece salsa band in the back with 4 scantily clad women playing different instruments (I somehow doubt these instruments were plugged in). The locals were ready to pounce in the dance clubs and if you left your wife to get a drink it would take about twenty seconds for one of the local young studs to sidle up to your woman and start busting a move with her. But the real action was at the main bar where all kinds of dancers let it rip. We watched break dancers, roided up bodybuilders shimmying for the ladies, and a Michael Jackson impersonator. The MJ dancer was awesome and with the help of his backup dancers he reenacted the videos from Beat It and Thriller. After 3 days in South Beach I thought I was ready for anything but I certainly didn't expect the Thriller dance.

After three nights we were toast so it was time to go home but I left wondering what the local slogan should be. Expect the Unexpected or Just Let It All Hang Out? In terms of describing crazy I think either would be appropriate.

U2 and Springsteen, Sept 27th and Oct 3, 2009, GIants Stadium, NJ

So I'm combining U2 with Springsteen which I hope isn't too disrespectful to either band. Nevertheless going to Giants Stadium twice in 10 days and seeing two iconic bands who hit their respective peaks at different points in the past century was somewhat redundant.

I've been to a number of shows this year and I've often made fun of how the crowd is often middle aged and well dressed. Likewise I've lamented the fact that the boisterous rock crowd from the past doesn't seem to attend concerts anymore. So as we set up out tailgate before U2 one of the other guys showed us a special cooler he had made specifically to hold six bottles of wine, I suddenly realized it was all about money! Even if U2 or Bruce were popular with the younger set there is no way they could afford to go. U2 general admission tickets on the floor were $250 face and they went for a lot more on StubHub. So can a high school kid with a brand new drivers license afford this? No. Can the seemingly unemployed sons of anarchy types I remember at Who concerts in the 80s afford this? Of course not! Instead tailgating turns into the same catered affair you find at a steeplechase. The only difference between the parking lot at Giants Stadium and the Gold Cup in Virginia, the Radnor Cup off the Main Line, or The Hunt in Essex Fells was the lack of grass beneath our feet. Same clothes, same pinot noir, same bruschetta and even a little of the same lockjaw. As much as I would like to separate myself from this crowd as a "real fan" I have to admit the petite syrah was perfectly aged and the gruyere was exquisite with sliced prosciutto. Thank God they had real wine glasses as the plastic ones really take all the context away.

This was my first U2 concert so I was quite excited and for the most part it was great. I saw U2 play three songs at Giants Stadium back at an Amnesty concert in 1986 and I remember being stunned how Bono had complete control of the entire stadium. Twenty three years later he still does. The band really knows how to work a Stadium show and as much I dislike stadium shows, the energy in the place from that many people was really cool. I loved the music they played before the took the stage. Over the PA they blasted Bowie's Major Tom and the crowd was singing along with the music by song's end. Inspiring choice (the set is supposed to be a spaceship).

Another highlight was working classic songs in their own music. They plugged the Stones Only Rock N Roll into Vertigo and Stand By Me into Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. The Edge might be the coolest guy in the world and his skull cap look is still bad ass even at his age.

Too much (5 songs) off the new album but I've been saying that at every show. I know they can't hit all the classics but how do you skip Pride? That's like Buffett skipping Margaritaville. Interesting to compare to Springsteen that it seemed people were much more fired up for Sunday Bloody Sunday than Springsteen fans were for Born to Run...

Being U2 they had to do something political and this time the put the imagine of Aung San Suu Kyi on the video screen. Now even though this is quite a well heeled crowd I don't think the audience was so erudite that they read the Economist cover to cover on a weekly basis. Aung San Suu Kyi is the detained leader of the democratic movement in Myanmar. Could 70% of the people here find Myanmar on a map? Let's face it, more people remember Seinfeld's J. Peterman talking about Myanmar and saying, "You may know it as Myanmar but it will always be Burma to me." That's when Elaine went to Myanmar to get his signature on an expense report for George's fur hat. Speaking of which, thank you Larry David for bringing everyone back to Curb Your Enthusiasm this year, even if only briefly.

As for Springsteen his show was great. I loved how he wrote a new song about Giants Stadium to open the show and put the lyrics on the big screen for all the fans. Too often a performer breaks out a new song and because of either a poor sound system or the singer's crippling dependency to prescription drugs, no one understands a word sung. Wrecking Ball was a fun, nostalgic song for all us Jersey folk so by being able to read the words we could get all the subtle jokes in the lyrics.

Highlight of the show was easy. I bought GA tickets off craigslist two days before the show at a discount as five Giants Stadium shows is more supply than demand. I was with my 11 year old, my brother and his wife down on the floor in the back hanging out during the second song when one of Bruce's people came up and asked if that was my son rocking out and would we like to move to the front. He slapped wrist bracelets on us and up the side we went and we were funneled 15 yards from the stage. Unbelievable.

After a few songs up there a different Bruce person called my son over and gave him a photocopy of the setlist for that night. Amazing. Bruce did the entire Born in the USA album that night and while I would have preferred the Darkness album he played the night before you have to be impressed that the band can do so many different songs. Every night he covered one of three specific albums along with a host of other songs. That's just something other bands can't pull off.

Interesting thing I learned about Giants Stadium as this was my first time on the floor after 25 years of Jets games and concerts: there are no bathrooms on the floor level. Never thought about it before as I was never there but the stadium wasn't built for concert goers on the field so there were never any facilities installed down there. Likewise, people on the floor can't move up to the other levels. Instead GA patrons have to walk all the way out the stadium and use port-o-sans out by the parking lot. That wasn't great but it was a small price to pay for being that close to an all time great saying farewell.