Out & about – Page 6 – The Boring Old Man

Concert Review: Red Hot Chili Peppers at Levi Stadium, Santa Clara.

FINALLY!! I have been a fan of RHCP since the first time I heard “True Men Don’t…” on KSJS (San Jose State College radio) back in the early-1980’s.

Fast forward 40 years, and I’m still a fan but for whatever reason I’ve never had the opportunity to catch their live show. (I did get to see their drummer Chad Smith at a drum clinic a number of years ago and he was amazing!)

When I got a notice for a pre-sale on tickets back in October of LAST YEAR, I jumped at it. You never know when their last go-round might be… So yeah, been sitting on these tickets for nearly 10 months and could barely contain my excitement!

In all honesty, I’m not a fan of stadium shows. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been to several dozen of them, but my expectations are pretty low nowadays for them. Nevertheless, I’ll take what I can get when it comes to the Chili Peppers!

The venue, Levi’s Stadium, is realitively new and this was my first event there. It’s generally home to the 49ers, and I loathe football so they were never a draw for me to check out the stadium even though it’s practically in our “backyard”. And truthfully, I have yet to hear anything good about the place so I was a little disappointed when I learned that is where the show was being held.

The opening act was Thundercat, whom I first learned of several years ago but wasn’t terribly familiar with. I did know he’s a phenomenal bassist, so I was excited to see him live. Sadly, the traffic situation surrounding the venue was so bad we missed his set completely. Strike One for the venue.

Next up was Beck. We’ve seen Beck twice before and he was actually better than expected. We never went to see him specifically, and I wouldn’t say we’re big fans of his, but he was on a couple other bills in the past and we were pleasantly surprised by how good his show was. This time however, he really knocked it out of the park! Really great energy, the band was tight and you could tell they were having a really great time with it. Another pleasant surprise!

Finally after months of anticipation the Chili Peppers hit the stage, opening with a kinda wild improv of guitar, bass and drums before launching into their set with “Can’t Stop”. The guys were on fire!

Anthony – who will be 60 this year! – looked fit as ever, full of energy and his singing voice has improved quite a lot over the years. Clearly the hard work has paid off.

Guitarist John Frusciante (who I was thrilled to learn was back with the band) was great, though live it’s impossible to play his parts like the recordings – they’d need another 2 or 3 guitarists backing him up to recreate his studio wizardry.

Chad Smith was solid as a rock and just straight up bombastic. A joy to watch.

Flea as you might expect, was the life of the party and put it all out there, every minute of the set. He’s in a class by himself as a bassist and his performance was top notch. Unfortunately the sound in the venue was less than stellar and a few times when he really went off the sound turned to mush, but overall he put on a great show.

Overall, I’d say the night was a mixed bag. On the venue itself, a solid thumbs down. I won’t go into my gripes, but it would take a MASSIVE draw (like Stevie Ray Vaughn or Prince coming back from the dead!) to get me back to that place. The band played great, and they played a couple of my favorites, but their set list was a bit of a disappointment if I’m being honest. And they only played for an hour… which for a band with a 40 year history and a deep catalog of material, seemed a bit of let down.

Nevertheless, it was fun to see them finally and I’m not sorry I went. I wish I’d had a chance to see them in a smaller venue back before megastardom put them in arenas, but I am grateful I got to see them at all, especially with this lineup, which in my opinion is the magic RHCP combination.

And when all is said and done, I got to spend a lovely summer night outside with my family, listening to some great music. Those are the kind of things that make life worth living!

Thanks for stopping by!

LMAO: Chris Porter at the Punch Line, SF.

Saturday night the Mrs. and I, along with our daughter and her BF hit the road up to San Francisco to catch some laughs at the Punch Line.

Chris Porter is a comic we just recently learned of, literally a couple weeks ago. It just so happened he was going to be “in town” right after we found out about him so we jumped at the chance to see him in person.

Boy, am I glad we did! His set was hilarious and every bit as good as his recorded specials.

His opener, Pat House, we’d never heard of either, but he was pretty good as well. He did a bit in Wendy’s (the fast food joint) thst had me in stitches!

All in all it was a great night out, and a LOT of laughs!

Thanks for stopping by!

Concert Review: Des Rocs at the Independent, SF

Another trip to one of our favorite venues, the Independent in San Francisco.

Tickets for this show were a birthday gift from my daughter, so that made this show just that much more special!

This was our 4th time seeing Des Rocs live and it certainly won’t be the last!

The first time we saw Des (Daniel Rocco, by birth), he was the opening act, and we were floored. He’s an incredibly talented vocalist AND guitarist, but what really seals the deal is his charisma. He’s one of the most engaging front men I’ve ever witnessed, and he’s been better every subsequent time we’ve seen him.

Needless to say, both our excitement and anticipation levels were very high for this show.

The opening act was First in Flight, whom we’d never heard. Talk about an unexpected surprise! The band was fired up from the start, and the whole set was a high energy affair. Their music is a little tough to describe…the best I can do is “modern/alternative rock, with a very slight nod to hair metal”. And I mean that in a good way…strip away all the hairspray, eye liner and spandex from “hair metal”, and you will often find talented musicians and catchy tunes. Overall, they put on a great show and are now on my watch list for future gigs. Well done gentlemen!!

Next up was The Blue Stones, also new to us. This is yet another 2-piece guitar/vocals and drummer/vocals group, and they weren’t messing around! Their set was powerful, and both these guys obviously knew their way around their instruments.

My only “gripe” with their set (if you can call it that) was that the guitar got a little lost in the mix. He had a really tasty, overdriven, fuzzed out tone, which I love, but it got a bit swamped in a live setting. I suspect – though have no proof yet – that their recorded material is stellar. Some really fine musicianship was on display and I look forward to digging deeper into their catalog.

When Des hit the stage it was electric, right outta the gate.

The band (drummer and bassist) are the same two guys that have been backing him since the first time we saw Des, and they were both on their game and obviously still having a lot of fun with it, which is infectious!

Des himself…what can I even say? If you’ve never seen him, you are missing out. A musician like this comes along so very rarely, it’s difficult to describe what he does to a crowd. Aside from his singing and guitar work (which are exceptional, without question) he just comes across as so genuine and personable, he just draws you in immediately and you get totally enveloped in what’s happening on stage.

I’ve been going to rock shows for 40 years now, and have seen literally hundreds of bands. From the biggest bands the world has ever heard to the flash-in-the-pan, never heard of ’em groups and I can tell you with 100% conviction that Des Rocs is SPECIAL.

If you ever get the opportunity, go check him out, you will not be disappointed!

Thanks to all the musicians (and crew that makes all the magic on stage possible!) for a hell of a night. This was a fantastic night of music, with unexpected treats, and I couldn’t be happier about it!

Thanks for stopping by!

Road Trip: Manresa State Beach

The Mrs. and I woke up and realized we didn’t have anything pressing, so we threw some cold drinks, some mixed nuts and beef jerky in a cooler and hit the road to the coast.

We didn’t have a specific destination in mind, we kinda let traffic lead our decision making, and we ended up at Manresa State Beach in La Selva Beach, CA – about 20 minutes south of Santa Cruz.

Manresa was one of my haunts as a teen, first learning to surf. Later it was a family favorite where we often took our daughter. But today was the first time back there in a dozen years at least.

It was a little overcast when we first got there, but it burned off by 11:30, and was just gorgeous after then, a perfect day at the beach!

I’m inclined to head back tomorrow with my board, for old time’s sake…

Thanks for stopping by!

A Penny Saved…

I freely admit that I’m one of those old fashioned folks that much prefers to use cash rather than debit or credit cards.

The positive aspects of this are that I have a better idea of how much I’m spending, when it is literally -not just figuratively – coming out of my pocket AND it leaves less of a “paper trail”. My fellow “tin foil hat” brigade will know what I mean…

The negative side of these transactions is that I always have coins in my pockets.

A few years back I decided to turn lemons into lemonade and started saving the coins in a couple jars at the end of each day. Since we’re apartment dwellers, we always need quarters for laundry, so they have their own separate tin. When the jars were full I’d take them to the coin kiosk at the local grocery store and trade them in. Usually I’d walk out with $40-50, nothing to sneeze at.

Well, yesterday was the first “cash out” since pre-Plague. My jar of nickels and dimes had filled up, so I tossed ’em in a little wood box I had and kept going. Then I had to dump into another tin I had, then the jar was nearly full again! Along the way I started a second jar for pennies too…

I dumped all the “silver” into one plastic bag, then all the “copper” into another bag. I weighed the two before heading out and to my surprise, the silver coins weighed in at 17.2 lbs. and the copper coins added another 2.3 lbs. Nearly 20 pounds of coins! Now you see why I don’t like to carry them around in my pockets!

The kiosk takes a cut off the top for the service, I don’t recall off hand what it is, I think is was 12% or something, whatever. I’d rather pay that than buy coin wraps and spend the time sorting, counting and rolling them up myself, THEN taking said rolls to the bank to deposit, but I digress…

Now, granted this was the longest stretch of collecting – by a long shot – due to the Plague, but I walked out the store with $190 in “folding money”, with a little collection of coins to throw back in the jars for the next run!

Of course, in reality I just lost a little money with this exchange. But psychologically it feels like I just got a bunch of money for doing nothing but feeding the coins into a machine. Bottom line, I never would have spent the coins as they were, but by flipping them into cash I got the Mrs. and I a nice pizza for dinner last night and threw the rest of it into the emergency “cash on hand” pile.

You DO have an emergency CASH ON HAND collection, don’t you? If not, why not?

If you don’t (and you really, really should!!!), this is a painless way to do it! And did I mention you REALLY should have emergency CASH on hand?

Just my 2 cents…

Thanks for stopping by!

Road Trip! Home Away from Home…

The Mrs. and I took off for a couple nights. We didn’t want to spend too much time traveling, so it was back to Half Moon Bay, our home away from home.

The weather was overcast, a little chilly and windy which is perfect as it keeps the crowds at bay.

Aside from soaking in the delightful crashing of the waves, we also took a spin down the coast to Pescadero to visit one of our favorite places; Harley Farms.

Peace and quiet, a deserted beach AND goats? What more could you ask for in a weekend getaway?

We came back Sunday, Mother’s Day, and spent the evening with our girl, and went to a really nice dinner in Saratoga. The perfect ending to a pretty much perfect weekend.

Just what the doctor ordered.

Now, back to the grind!

Thanks for stopping by!

A Day in the Park

After missing the festivities for the last few years, today the Mrs. and I ventured out to Kelly Park in San Jose for the 37th Annual VVCA (Vintage Volkswagen Club of America) Spring Meet, and what a great show!

I’ve been mad about VWs, since long before I could drive. My first car was a 1973 VW type III Squareback, later I had a Superbeetle and a ’71 type II bus. The first and only new car I ever purchased was a watercooled VW golf in 1990. So you could say my relationship with, and love for, VWs goes way, way back! I haven’t had one for a while now, but the craving never really leaves. After today the craving for a new aircooled plaything is especially strong!

Today we lucked out and had beautiful Spring weather and an awesome turnout of vintage German automobiles with some great restorations and even more custom, creative rides.

Here are a few highlights: