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Apples in Stereo The
Holmes Brothers |
Drive-By Truckers,
Deep Purple
It was raining and our power was out as usual. Leaving the house at 7:25 for the 7:30 show we got downtown in no time and I could hear that the band wasn’t playing yet and we looked in the back seat and the damn baby fell asleep. Of course we forgot the stroller. Wifey said we had to go back. I was thinking just fuck the whole thing but was telling her it would be no big deal. Home in under 7 minutes we grabbed the stroller and it was raining even harder now. Any normal person would bail but Wifey and I figured we had no electric so it was either brave a little rain or stay home and walk up and down the street talking about the electric being out with all the elderly neighbors sitting on their porches. I’ve done that one before and it gets old. Despite all this we get downtown, find a choice parking spot close to Point State Park and the rain has slowed to a mere tinkle. Things were looking up. I notice right of away that this is probably the loudest Arts Fest band I can remember. Strains of “Tornados” were reverberating throughout the streets of Downtown Pittsburgh. Very cool. Even with the bullshit weather there was a good-sized crowd and we set up towards the back as Wifey got worried that the volume would damage the baby’s ears. They sounded great and after about five songs into the set with “Sink Hole,” Patterson Hood started to loosen up. Afterward he mentioned playing in Pittsburgh at the Post-Gazette Pavilion for Farm Aid and meeting Neil Young, saying that he was just happy enough to shake his hand, being at a loss for words. Funny because I remember making fun of the idiots in front of me waving their flag when Toby Keith was singing his horrendous Taliban song. [btw. Toby plays two sold-out shows at that same venue this year. It’s a cruel world.] The band was in good spirits and husband and wife team of Jason Isbell and Shonna Tucker occasionally met up mid-stage to rock out together. As arraigned earlier, Bob Smith arrived on his bike and proceeded to share my stash of cold Iron City followed by Cokes mixed with rum from my flask. The Truckers really picked it up in the end and although we didn’t get a “Devil Won’t Stay” or “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac” they did a good “Buford Stick” and played a rousing “Let There Be Rock.” Over at 9:00, I retrieved my bike from back of the Volvo wagon. Wifey headed home as Bob and I headed across the Monongahela River to Station Square. Bob had received two free tickets to the Rib Festival featuring Deep Purple although they were only $5. I can’t say I was terribly excited but as we smoked up along the river front trail Bob described how years ago, early one morning, he and friends were waiting outside Kaufmans for tickets to a Deep Purple show at the Civic Arena and a cop thought they were staking out the place for a robbery or something. Turns out that what I thought would be cheesy… well, it still was cheesy but it was a lot of fun too. The Chevy Amphitheatre was packed and there were all kinds of folks there from your wasted yinzers to families with kids in tow. Right off the bat I was a little disturbed by the sight of a younger heavy metal dad hoisting his one-year-old and shaking him above his head - rocking out. Sure it was cute that the baby was waving his arms with the music but the fact that they were standing 50 feet from the speakers was just wrong. Also wrong were the $7 dollar beers. We worked our way towards the middle and I ran into my neighbor George who was pretty wasted and playing air guitar. He went into some story about cleaning his gutters the other day and his ladder fell leaving him stuck on his roof for hours. I found the stage setup interesting because I can’t remember the last time I’d seen a keyboard player elevated higher than the rest of his band mates. The hits kept coming, “Hush,” “Highway Star,” “Space Truckin’,” “Woman From Tokyo,” and of course “Smoke On The Water.” A couple of momentum killers marred the performance though. First of all, I think people are over 9/11 songs and bands descriptions of how they came to writing them. Also, I know they’re a 70’s band but does anybody really enjoy extended keyboard solos punctuated with Simpsons and Star Wars jingles. After the show we hit Brewski’s, where we got whopped by professional foosball players, took a drunken ride through the Armstrong Tunnels and finished it off with an uncomfortable last beer stop in the trendy Firehouse Lounge in The Strip. If I can’t sit at the bar and stare at the wall then I don’t want to be there. Oh, some dudes were doing crazy motorcycle tricks in the empty parking lots below Wholey’s. Pretty amazing stuff and I could still hear them after safely reaching home and looking out over the city to see what I just conquered. |
