Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
cross-posted to fbglr
Went to the Hollywood Bowl last night with an old friend - in fact, the person who took me to my very first rock concert. Nixon was in the White House when she said, "Hey, want to go see the Beach Boys?" Never occurred to me to say no, even though I wasn't that into the Beach Boys. That concert led, many chords, clubs and cut-ups later, to seeing "Sgt. Pepper's at 40" performed by Cheap Trick, the Hollywood Bowl orchestra, and many special guests, including Govt Mule's Danny Louis (long-time friend and former bandmate of gvdub) on keyboards.
Wasn't sure if it would be a Cheap Trick crowd or a Beatles crowd. Turned out to be a mix of both, with Beatles fans the majority. Most of the Cheap Trick fans appeared to have been born a good five to ten years after "Surrender" made the charts. Beatles fans can be any age. Observing females in the crowd we decide the rockin' old lady gig will not be bad at all.
The evenings highlights:
Joan Osborne singing "Lady Madonna" and "The Long and Winding Road". Her hit "One of Us" was not representative of her work. She has a classic R&B sound, powerful and controlled enough to more than match the orchestra. The combination of her voice nailing every pitch, and Danny's keyboards giving us chills, will stand as one of my most treasured Hollywood Bowl memories.
Ian Ball of Gomes, who is not only cute and from Liverpool, but also a fine singer, did a great job on "When I'm Sixty-Four". As you might expect, this was a real crowd pleaser, especially among the old hippie contingent. Nothing quite like seeing hundreds of "heads" bouncing and bobbing rhythmically in their seats.
Al Jourgensen and Sin Quirin of Ministry did "She's So Heavy" with a classic metal arrangement. Almost everybody hated this except us and some of the twenty-somethings. We and the couple sitting next to us were doing the headbang-and-devil-hand thing. This got laughs from some people, worried looks from a few others.
Also rocking: Aimee Mann on "Blackbird", Rob Laufer doing "Norwegian Wood", Cheap Trick playing their hearts out, Geoff Emerick (engineer of the original album) in the booth, a quartet playing traditional Indian instruments who had the whole place - orchestra, conductor, band, and the sold-out Bowl - absolutely still, breathing in synch, hypnotized. Amazing!
The show finished with "A Day in the Life" and the big encore was "All You Need is Love". We drifted off to the parking lot in perfect fangirl bliss.