Entries Tagged 'Misc' ↓

Kansas City has two upcoming Christmas shows – the Rockettes show and Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  From what I’ve heard about last year’s and this year’s show, the Rockettes’ Christmas is supposed to be a great time.  The problem is the date, November 19th.  I might end up enjoying it but I’m ot really interested in dropping the cash for a Christmas show a week before Thanksgiving.  I’m barely in the mood for Christmas after then, but a week before?  Forget about it.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra has the opposite problem.  They’re coming to Kansas City December 29th.  By then I’m already sick of Christmas and I’m disgusted by the news stories showing people exchanging their gifts so it’s not something I’m up for.  In this case at least the whole show isn’t based on Christmas so I could see myself going to this before I would go to the Rockettes’ show too early.

I realize that these shows need to make money and that they wouldn’t be coming to Kansas City after Christmas unless there was a good chance they would turn a profit.  I would just be curious about how many people attend these two shows this year especially compared to last year.

Both of these are from their 2007 concert in Austin, Texas. I’ve got the concert on DVD but I ran across these yesterday and was reminded of how great they are. Both of these – especially Keith Richards covering Buddy Holly – come out of left field, something you wouldn’t expect from the Rolling Stones at this point in their career. As far as I’m concerned they knocked both of them out of the park and are the highlights of that concert.

Some interesting stuff out this week, you can tell Christmas is coming.

Dio at Donnington UK:  Live 1983 & 1987

I’ve been looking forward to this.  The 1983 set should be great and I consider the 1987 show to be a bonus.  Not much to say here, you know what you’re going to get, I guess the only question is the quality of the live shows.

Alter Bridge, AB III

I really liked the singer’s stuff on Slash’s recent solo album but I despise Creed with all my might so I’ll give this one a pass for now.  I may change my mind once I hear some songs off of it.

Bing Crosby, The Crosby Christmas Sessions

I have way too many Christmas albums as it is but this might be something to pick up.  You know the songs are going to be great but I could do without the David Bowie duet that I got sick of long ago.

Poison, Nothing But a Good Time

Since when do 2-disc releases count as box sets?  More stuff just rehased from Poison.  I love a lot of the stuff they’ve put out over the years but they’re getting as bad as Kiss with all the repackaging they do.

Queensryche, Empire (20th Anniversary Edition)

I’m on the fence on this.  I already have the album but this rerelease comes with a live bonus disk from the Empire tour and that just might be enough to get me to buy this for a third time.  The main drawback is that $27 (on Amazon) seems a little steep for just an extra disk and some other crap they throw in the packaging.

Helloween, 7 Sinners

I don’t own any Helloween albums and that’s not likely to change, but my hat’s off to them for their longetivity.

Kid Cudi, Man on the Moon II:  The Legend of Mr Rager

Kid Cudi is one of those artits who keeps popping up on Pandora and I like what I’ve heard so far.  I should probably pass on this one and pick up his first album (hopefully used).

Crossroads Guitar Festival 2010

Beat Buy has an exclusive version with 40 (I think) extra minutes.  This thing was a must buy just by the lineup (Jeff Beck, Ron Wood, Derek Trucks, etc), but all the others have been great and hopefully this won’t be an exception.

When I was eight years old my mother won two tickets to go see Elvis preform at the El Paso Civic Center and for whatever reason she decided to take me.  There are only two things I remember about the concert:  a comedian was the opening act, and the concert (to me anyway) was very very loud.  My life is no better or worse for going to that concert other than the program I still have which I have delusions of selling for a small fortune on eBay one day.

Keeping that in mind, I was a little saddened at the end of last week’s Roger Waters show when I saw a parent carrying a sleeping (what looked to be) four year old out of our section.  There was so much wrong with that, from the $99-plus-service-charge the parents spent to get her a ticket, to the thought that this kid just wanted to be at home playing with her toys instead of having to sit in one place for two hours listening to music that her burnout dad got high to back in the 80s.  I didn’t take my four year old to see Yo Gabba Gabba live this past weekend because I knew he would get bored before it was over and that thing is aimed for kids (and stoners too, but that’s beside the point).

Then there was the six year old I saw at Iron Maiden or the guy who brought his wife and three kids aged five to twelve to Anthrax at the filthy Granada in Lawrence.  I try to keep my television references limited to The Simpsons or Arrested Development, but this thing reminds me of the episode of Full House where Bob Saget tried to convince his kids how cool he was by being in a band but the whole thing came off horribly awkward.  That’s how I feel with these guys, they’re not satisfied with just being the kids’ father, but somehow they need them to thing he’s just as cool as their friends.  But the thing is, going to see an over the hill metal band doesn’t seem the right way to do it.

I guess I spoke too soon.  Based on an insert in my copy of Band on the Run, MPL is going to rerelease Venus and Mars, McCartney, McCartney II, Ram, Wings at the Speed of Sound, and Wings Over America sometime in the future.  Unfortunately, that’s about it for information so there’s nothing about release dates or bonus tracks on any of the disks.

I only have McCartney and Ram on CD, so I’ll definately pick up the rest of them, though McCartney is one of my favorite solo Beatle albums so I’ll probably end up with that one as well.  Other than a couple of his later solo albums like Tug of War I can’t see myself getting his whole solo catalog but who knows.