Monday, April 28, 2008

Retro Night at The Poor Farm

Yes, I know y'all are just dying to hear about how I spent this evening. While channel surfing, I found some concerts on HDNet. I also dug out a dusty copy of Casual Day Has Gone Too Far, a Dilbert book by Scott Adams.

So, the first concert was the Doobie Brothers Live at Wolf Trap, recorded in 2004. Egads, I hadn't seen any of this.



This song typifies the Doobie sound before Michael McDonald came into the picture, which was my favorite version of the band. Toulouse Street, The Captain and Me, What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits and Stampede were my favorites. Takin' It to the Streets was ok, but it featured Michael McDonald. As far as I'm concerned, it was all downhill from there. All the original members finally left the band, and the remaining members decided that is was largely useless to be calling themselves The Doobie Brothers. I remember hearing McDonald wasn't in favor of disbanding the group - but I see nothing online about that now.

Of course, China Grove was part of the concert, along with Long Train Runnin' and Rockin' Down The Highway. Made me wish I was there.



The next concert was The Moody Blues Live From The Greek Theater recorded in 2005. Check out Graeme Edge tossing an extra drumstick to the other drummer at about the 2:46 mark. They are still a tight performing bunch. I can tell you I found their album covers "endlessly fascinating" back in the day. Perhaps I was "influenced" in some manner or another. The quality of their offerings were constant from Days of Future Passed until the last album of theirs I purchased - The Other Side of Life.

Justin Hayward also was the lead singer for Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, a concept album putting H.G. Well's classic to music. Highly enjoyable.

So, along with laughing my butt off out loud at the older Dilbert cartoons, I was singing along (badly) with the concerts. My cat thought I'd lost my mind. He just doesn't know it had happened long before he came along.

4 comments:

Stacy said...

It doesn't sound any worse than some of my evenings, though the music would probably be different.

Jerry in Texas said...

I saw the Doobies when I was in college. A drunk girl threw up on my back. It was mostly booze. Don't remember much about the concert, except the puke...on me.

Jeffro said...

Ahh, the quality memories.....

Anonymous said...

The Doobies and The Moody Blues, two of my all time fav from back in the day that you never hear any more on the computer juke boxes they call radio stations these days. The one public radio station I listen to, WNTI (http://www.wnti.org/), plays them once in a while but they play a lot of good music both old and new. Two great clips here, I enjoyed them both. My grammer school buddy Morning Glory turned me on to you blog a while ago. I think I might have to go dig out a few old albums and see if my turntable still fire's up...Thanks for the memories...