Midnight Madness - New TV Season Edition

It's that special time of year when new tv series make their over publicized debuts and returning favorites make another run for ratings gold. Actors and actresses pushing their mugs onto the screen screaming "watch me!". Like how many times do I have to see Maria Bello's pretty face all bruised up as she rattles off tough cop nonsense? She's a good actress but this ad campaign doesn't ring true for me, seems forced. Her show could be great for all I know yet I don't have an interest in her program now.

Haven't posted in a little while so there's a bit of old news that doesn't really need addressing...but I'm goin' for it anyway!

Slippin The Secret Salahi - Wow, it's a real worlds collide moment when the guitar player of my favorite band gets involved in a real Real Housewives Of... moment by stealing a former RHWO D.C. cast member for himself. One of the crazy ones no less. On the upside, it's the most press Journey's gotten in a year or two. Downside? At best Schon comes off as an insensitive horndog. And then there were rumors Salahi was riding Steven Tyler's elevator too.

New Adventures In Hi Fi -is when R.E.M. should have stopped in my opinion, even though I enjoyed Accelerate and Collapse Into Now. I was offended that they kept going after Bill Berry split because they made a big deal beforehand about how if one of the four left the band would end and then it didn't. Not so offended I wouldn't listen to them, just thought R.E.M. was one of those "men of their word" kind of bands. Anyway, they've called it a day now. When they return hope Bill Berry is back. Didn't Berry go into farming or something?

X Factor - is booorrriiing

New Girl Now - watched the Zooey Deschanel tv show, she was as offbeat as ever too bad they made the supporting cast like male versions of her. Show has potential if it makes the guys more normal to make it less of a tightly focused personality fest (one guy is macho aggressive, another douchey and a third hyper sensitive). Oh wow, 2nd episode in and the aggro guy has been replaced with a more grounded character (was that Damon Wayans?). New Girl don't waste no time!

Rock Em Sock Em Robots - is what I think when I see commercials for Real Steel.
50/50 shot - my wife told me what she thinks this movie is about, still I gotta say this is the suckiest ad campaign for a film I've seen in awhile. All I get out of the tv adverts is a bunch of testimonials about how funny this film supposdedly is while all the scenes shown have a drab dour tone. The 3rd rock / Inception kid shaves his head and I don't get what's funny about that. Either this movie is so incredible that an advertisement can't convey what it's really about or it's about nothing of merit. A real 50/50.

Harvester Of Sorrow - the first sounds of the Metallica and Lou Reed team up have hit the net. And in honor of Spinal Tap all I can say is "Shit Sandwich".

Dreamin' - lovin the new Dream Theater video. truly awesome stuff.

Wake Up Sunshine

Last night at what the tour shirt calls "Napa Valley" I saw the long running horn rock band Chicago. As I've written before, I was a big fan of Chicago in the 80s. Those Peter Cetera / David Foster ballads were works of art to me. During that decade I saw Chicago a total of 5 times (well, one was in 1990 so technically 4 times) and they often delivered a polished set of slow songs and mildly energetic rock. Not having seen them in twenty years I went into the show with modest expectations. These guys have been on the road just about every year for almost as long as I've been alive, figured they must be tired by now. I had a slight fear they might do what I saw on the Chicago 19 tour and lazily phone in their performance (they covered some horn parts with synthesizer that night!). But it was a show at a local intimate venue called the Uptown so it sounded like it might be an enjoyable night.

We had great seats in the third row. One thing about the Uptown, when it gets crowded it gets warm in there and I was pretty exhausted from the week to start with so I got a bit drowsy. Opening act Dave Sheil hit it off with the audience delivering a warm set of friendly James Taylor styled soft rock. I personally can't give an objective opinion of Sheil's talents since I cannot stand James Taylor's music. But I will say what he does, he seems to do well and won the crowd over with his earnest personality.

About a half hour later Chicago took the stage with a noticeable change in positioning the players from any other time I had seen the Chi-town pop rockers. Their normal set up throughout the 80s was bassist/vocalist center stage, horn section kinda off to the side, drums rear center flanked by keyboards on both sides. Here the horn section stood front and center at the opening and the bassist/vocalist was moved to the right. The audience was more excited than I had seen for any other Chicago concert I'd been to. I didn't pay close attention to the set list so the order of these songs were probably a little different than what I'm writing past the first few tunes. So what I remember went:

Ballet For A Girl From Buchanon (includes Make Me Smile and Colour My World) / Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? / Dialogue Pts 1 & 2 / Alive Again / Call On Me / Old Days / Along Comes A Woman / Wake Up Sunshine / If You Leave Me Now / I've Been Searchin So Long / Christmas Tree Song / Baby What A Big Surprise / Hard Habit To Break / You're The Inspiration / Beginning / I'm A Man / drum solo / Street Player / Just You N Me / Saturday In The Park / Hard To Say I'm Sorry - Get Away / last part of Feelin Stronger Every Day

encore: Free / 25 or 6 to 4

I've only heard the full "Ballet" live once, on the Chicago 17 tour, and I loved it. So I really liked that they played it with all the different sections. The switch to moving the horn section to the front instantly paid off as woodwind / sax man Walt Parazaider worked the crowd more than any of the band's front men ever had. Tag teaming with trumpeter Lee Loughnane (who took a surprisingly good lead vocal turn on "Colour My World") the horn section stepped ahead of the singers in firing up the audience with dynamic stage presence and constant directions to clap your hands.



I figured there would be more emphasis on 70s material than when I had seen them last, Chicago did not disappoint following up with "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?". Keyboardist / vocalist Robert Lamm has an unbelieveably healthy head of hair for his age, I was like "Damn!". His voice has held up surprisingly well too.

"Dialogue Pts 1 & 2" was next, there was one semester of college where I played this song a lot (around the time of the first Iraq War) so I dug it. Because he was included in the group photographs I thought trombonist James Pankow would be there but instead it was a guy I think he was named Antonio Velasco. Or maybe it was Alberto. Anyway, in addition to doing a fine job there was a noticeable change in the horn section dynamic. Velasco liked to clown around which fit in with Parazaider and Loughnane's get down and have fun approach.



Finally got to hear some late 70s Chicago live with "Alive Again", bassist/vocalist Jason Scheff finally getting a lead turn. During this and "Dialogue" his voice didn't come through that well and I thought maybe he had lost it (Scheff would sound better later in the show). Not that it mattered too much 'cause now the man has groupies, women bouncing and grinding begging for his attention. I had no idea Scheff had gained such a following. And I was surprised Scheff could see them, with a switch to a wireless headset his physical approach to singing seemed different. His eyes shut tight, Scheff would concentrate on his vocal while rocking back and forth like a man on a roller coaster.

Other songs I had not heard live before were the mid 70s hits "Call On Me" and "Old Days". Always liked "Call On Me" and the bongo attack gave more attention to the "pixie" like percussionist Drew Hester. Watching this guy in action was sort of like watching a mix of Glee and Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream. To say he was fired up is an understatement. The newest member Lou Pardini got the lead vox nod and I gotta say he is a real good singer. Nails that rough soul voice perfectly. "Old Days" gave guitarist Keith Howland a shot at lead singing (like Journey, Chicago has become a big pass the mic kinda band).

After stating to the audience that you would hear a lot of music, the 80s made their first appearance with "Along Comes A Woman". It was hard not to miss Peter Cetera as this is such a Cetera kind of jam and I was surprised that the set list had only one post Cetera song (and that was a Christmas song). In fact, every original song from the Jason Scheff era was ignored including Top 10 hits "Will You Still Love Me", "I Don't Wanna Live Without Your Love", "You're Not Alone", "What Kind Of Man Would I Be" and the #1 hit of 1989 "Look Away".

The band went deep for an album cut, the pleasant "Wake Up Sunshine". It's funny, with all these hits it's this song that is stuck in my head afterwards.



Robert Lamm gave an explanatory monologue for the next part, seems you can go to Chicago's web site and bid in an auction to sing with Chicago. A lady who I had heard won with a $1500 bid walked up to sing "If You Leave Me Now". No need to criticize the lady, she was just "living her dream" and for laying out that kind of cash why not?

The band went into "(I've Been) Searchin So Long" and Jason Scheff hit his vocal stride here. He dug in deep to hit the gospelish ending with some authority, inspiring the groupies to grind and bounce away. Lamm plugged the band's upcoming Christmas CD (I think their second one) as Howland took lead vocal again on a rockabily tinged "Rockin Round The Christmas Tree".

It was a Cetera era big ballad trifecta starting with "Baby What A Big Surprise" next. Watching trumpeter Lee Loughnane blare his instrument around Scheff while he sang was pretty funny. Scheff and Pardini made a good combo on the power ballad classic "Hard Habit To Break" and guiarist Howland got to shine on an extended solo at the end of "You're The Inspiration".

Robert Lamm seemed to spend a lot of time in the background so it was noticeable when he took center stage for his warm fuzzy classic "Beginnings". Then the band got into serious jam mode as they motored through their cover of "I'm A Man" culminating in an awesome drum / percussion solo with Tris Imboden and Hester. The audience started to go nuts at this point...until Chicago pulled out their forgotten disco miss "Street Player". As a fan I got a kick out of hearing live the song that was said to cause the band such embarassment back in da day. But it stopped the audience dead in their tracks.

The sunny 70's continued with "Just You N Me" and "Saturday In The Park". In a long standing set list tradition (at least what I recall in the 80s) "Hard To Say I'm Sorry" closed the main concert part out with a lead in to the ramped up "Get Away". "Get Away" shifted into the last part of "Feelin Stronger Every Day" with Howland again getting lead singer nod on that part. The audience was psyched now leading to a brief break before encore time.



One of my favorite Chicago songs is "Free" so it was a pleasure to see the encore lead off with this jam, even if it was played a little slower. Then it was time to close the show down with "25 or 6 to 4" burning away.



The other five times I saw Chicago the closest they had to this type of intensity was on the Chicago 17 tour just as "Hard Habit To Break" was climbing the charts. But I had never seen them like this, the old guys threw down. As Parazaider did his one handed sax solo while high fiving the front row it was clear that Chicago tours like a never ending retirement party. If it wasn't for the absence of Cetera, it was the best Chicago concert I had ever seen. One last note, thank you for the pictures to my wonderful wife.

Rating:

Star Warts

The latest news is that George Lucas is doing a remix job on the original Star Wars trilogy...again...including adding a "Noooo!" when Vader tosses the Emperor off the platform during Return Of The Jedi. As outrageous as this is in the face of, I guess good taste, Lucas is determined to redo these movies over and over again so we may as well accept it. That's part of the healing process right? Denial then acceptance? With this in mind, I would like to add my own wish list of original trilogy revisions. Not because the changes I propose would improve the films, but to make them worse. If you can't beat 'em, then join 'em!

1. Replace Sir Alec Guinness with Dos Equis Man
2. Make Han Solo the son of Chewbacca, making it a father and son team. And make Greedo his half brother. Because everyone in Star Wars has to be related to each other.
3. Whenever the Emperor or Obi Wan Kenobi calls Vader by name, replace "Vader" with "Annie". For example, "Only a master of e-vil Annie!"
4. Give C-3P0 a sex scene so people can stop questioning what his sexuality is.
5. Change the cantina band song to 2Pac's "California Love"
6. Add five extra minutes to the launching into hyperspace effect sorta like the 2001 A Space Odyssey scene
7. This isn't a suggestion but just wondering, why does it take so many people to run a moisture farm? Aren't you just driving up to a machine and taking a tub of water out of it? Do you really need Luke and extra hands to drive a car sorry land speeder and lift tubs? Don't those machines make the already dry air dryer?
8. Have the snow creature that captures Luke on Hoth voiced by Gilbert Godfried. (in Godfried voice) "Oh my God you were just hanging off the ceiling-ouch you cut off my arm that's so painful"
9. Completely replace the astroid chase between tie fighters and the millenium falcon with all new digital effects and add an mascot astroid alien somewhere.
10. Have Leia kiss first
11. Amidala's force ghost should appear somewhere, maybe she talks Vader into saving Luke at the end of Jedi.
12. Change R2-D2's speech to english so C-3PO just repeats whatever R2 says like he's translating.
13. Replace Yoda with Qui Gon Gin and shoot all new footage. Let's see Mark Hamill run through the trees of Dagobah with Liam Neeson on his back.
14. Give Vader's mechanized voice auto tune
15. Add scenes of Boba Fett without his helmet talking to the decapitated skull of his dead father in his Hawaiian accent. "This one's for you pop!"
16. Have the millenium falcon blow up with the Death Star 2.0 at the end of Jedi so it makes sense when Han Solo says "I don't think I'll see her again".
17. Bring back the original Jabba The Hutt, that guy that looks like a left over from Conan The Barbarian.
18. After the end credits of Jedi, have one armed / one eyed Samuel Jackson show up to say "Luke, I'm forming a team..."

In the end, we're going to have almost as many different versions of Star Wars as we do Blade Runner. With that in mind, I say "Stay thirsty, my friend".