Meeting Foreigner backstage before their concert.
Foreigner, Styx and Don Felder have been traveling across the country on the Soundtrack of Summer tour and I was in attendance for their July 3rd concert in Camden, NJ. The evening consisted of four hours of 31 classic songs, and the crowd loved every minute of it. People were swaying, singing and dancing in the aisles. It was a fitting way to kick off the celebratory July 4th weekend.
This past Wednesday, June 11, my cousin and I went to go see one of our favorite bands: Journey. The concert took place at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ, and the jam-packed crowd loved every minute of it. After the Tower of Power and the Steve Miller Band warmed up the audience, Journey stormed the stage and kicked off its 16-song set with “Be Good To Yourself,” a fun, upbeat song from their 1986 album Raised on Radio.
In December 2013 I interviewed Melissa for my blog and she was as nice as could be and full of great stories. For those that haven’t read it yet, you can check it out here. One of the topics covered in the interview was yesterday’s concert in NYC. Melissa said, “you never know what I might sing” and boy was she right. The set list included a variety of her biggest hits, including “Midnight Blue,” “Come in From the Rain” and my favorite, “Don’t Cry Out Loud.” She also sang “Something Wonderful” from The King and I and new material from her upcoming album, You Gotta Love the Life. There were countless other songs during the hour-and-a-half concert, including a blistering performance of “I Know Who I Am,” a song that was featured in a trailer for the Tyler Perry movie For Colored Girls. And after the concert came to a close with Cole Porter’s “I Happen to Like New York,” Melissa and her talented musicians were met with a well-deserved standing ovation.
As you can see from the photo above, I had the chance to meet Melissa in person after the show and she was as lovely in person as she was on the phone. She took the time to meet and take photos with fans, as well as autograph items. The line to meet her went to the back of the room but she stuck around until every fan was satisfied. I was very impressed.
If you ever have the opportunity to see Melissa Manchester, go for it. In addition to having a spectacular voice, she’s got great stage presence and an appreciative personality. It was a terrific evening of music and I wouldn’t hesitate to see her again.
Below is a live performance of the aforementioned song, “I Know Who I Am,” from a 2010 concert. Enjoy!
Steve Winwood opened the show with an unremarkable set list that included only two hit songs: “Gimme Some Lovin'” and “Higher Love.” He didn’t perform “Valerie,” “Back in the High Life Again,” “While You See a Chance,” “Roll With It,” or “The Finer Things.” When you’re an opening act, you have to knock people’s socks off and give them what they want. Winwood did neither. Yes, he’s a great musician and performed well, but there was much left to be desired.
Thankfully, Rod knows how to work a crowd and please his fans. He kicked off the show with two upbeat hits and rolled into classic material, including deep cuts like “Sweet Little Rock & Roller” and “I’d Rather Go Blind.” Rod also highlighted his new album, Time, with two great tracks: “Can’t Stop Me Now” and “Brighton Beach.” He also brought out his daughter, Ruby, to sing a song on her own, “Just One More Day,” and one with him, “Forever Young.” However, the highlight of the show was Rod singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” while backed by an orchestral ensemble, with snow falling down from the ceiling.
If you have a chance to see Rod Stewart live, go. He’s an iconic singer that still puts on an excellent show that won’t leave you disappointed. He had the crowd on its feet and kept everyone dancing and singing along from start to finish. He wasn’t inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice (once as a solo artist and the second time as lead singer of the Faces) by accident; Rod was honored two times because of his spectacular body of work and legendary live performances. Do yourself a favor and buy a ticket next time he’s in town. You’ll have a blast.
Below is the set list from the show and four videos I shot. Enjoy!
Set List
For your enjoyment, here’s the song that made me fall in love with Hall & Oates’ music ten years ago:
Michael Des Barres and I hanging out before his concert in NYC.
Below is the conclusion to my three-part interview with Michael Des Barres. Make sure to read part one and part two.
There are two videos at the end of this post: One is a live clip from Michael Des Barres’ concert in New York City on March 7, 2013 at the Bowery Electric, and the other is Michael’s music video for his terrific new single, “Life Is Always Right.”
When it comes to how to distribute your music, how do you decide what works best for you?
Well, what works best for me is ownership. Autonomy is everything. As you can imagine, I’ve been owned for 40 years as a recording artist. And I don’t like that. I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now…so I don’t do it. I’m in the position where I can sit down and figure out how I want to get my music out to people and bandcamp is fantastic. iTunes and Amazon clearly have an infrastructure that works, and I have my own infrastructure. We do our own artwork. Photographers, for some reason, like to take my picture, so I have an enormous amount of content to turn into the graphics required.
People enjoy working with me because I’m enthusiastic and it’s fun for them. It brings the best out in them. Half of this endeavor is being able to inspire others to do great stuff. And I don’t mean great in the sense of being better than anybody else. I mean just great, fun work that they enjoy doing.
And in terms of distribution, there are a particular ways to go. You have iTunes and Amazon, and then it becomes about building a fan base. I fully accept the notion that music is free. And I have no problem with that; I think it should be free. Then it becomes about selling other things, t-shirts and merchandising or licensing songs for TV shows or movies – whatever it is to make a living out of it. But let’s not forget, I am 65 years old, I’ve got 45 movies, 100 hours of American television and I’ve sold a lot of songs to people. I am not struggling in the back of a van. I have autonomy, in that I can do whatever I want. What a great place to be.
With your rich body of work in acting and music, I think of you as a Renaissance Man. You’re just an artist at heart, right?
Yeah, I just want to express myself. The trick about self-expression is knowing who the self is that’s doing the expressing. So, you have to work on who you are to be an authentic artist. You can be anything. You can be a sculptor, a painter, a photographer, a choreographer, a rock and roll star, whatever. What do you want to express, and who is doing the expressing? If I’m coming from an inauthentic place and I’m trying to be somebody else and I’m writing songs for an audience, or through a persona I’ve invented, it’s inauthentic. The audience doesn’t know why it’s inauthentic, but they know that there’s something wrong. So, half of the work as an artist is figuring out who the fuck you are – who’s doing the expressing. That’s why they say a writer “has a voice.” A writer has a voice because it’s true; it’s a true voice. Whether it be Hemingway or Voltaire, they had their own form of expression. They knew what they wanted to say – a point of view, about art and life and the human condition. And if you feel that way, you’ve got a shot at other people feeling the same way. If’ it’s authentic then it will reach the authentic part of the audience and you’ll have a career.
That’s why Hollywood is such a tainted place. The houses and cars are leased. It’s a land of fantasy, smoke and mirrors and illusion. And that’s why the movies suck and the majority of the music sucks – because they’re trying to figure out what the people want, rather than creating what they love. And I’m not interested in mainstream success. I was never interested in the mainstream. I drown in the mainstream. I have no desire to be there, none whatsoever. And yet I continue to do the TV shows, and I’ve got a couple movies in the can coming out. Of course I do…because I’ve got to fund the work that I love.
If you could collaborate with any musician, living or dead, who would it be?
It would be Booker T & the M.G.’s. I would sit with them and write songs. These were the guys who were responsible for Wilson Pickett records and Otis Redding records. I would love to play with them: “Duck” Dunn, Steve Jordan and Al Jackson. And the other band I would have loved to play with is Muddy Waters and Little Walter Jacobs’ band. I would have loved to have played with them.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, but I love Vintage Trouble. They’ll drive you crazy, they’re so good. They’re a young black singer and three white rockers, and they’re fantastic. Their influences are clearly the blues, and it’s exactly what I’m talking about on my radio show. And when they really get it right, it’s beautiful.
Poison, god bless them, was a parody of the New York Dolls, as were most 80s’ hairnet, Aquanet hairspray bands. They had catchy little songs with the same riffs since time began. My favorite band of them all was Motley Crue – I thought they were fantastic. I’m very generous with this stuff. I can honestly say that I admire anybody that plugs in because it’s so dreadful. You’re putting yourself, literally, in an execution firing line – they can shoot you. It’s very brave to get up and play, so I never put anybody down. God bless anybody giving it a go. Having the balls to to stand up and say, “Look, this is what I do!” That’s great. Do I have preferences? Yes. And I’ll get on the bike in the gym and listen to Motley Crue. Sure, why not?
You mentioned the two movies “in the can.” Can you reveal any details about these projects?
One has just come out. It’s called California Solo with Robert Carlyle, which is just fantastic. He’s the actor in Trainspotting and he’s on ABC’s Once Upon a Time. Wiry Scottish actor, you’d recognize him. Fantastic movie – very fun to make. Grab a DVD and watch it with your girlfriend. It’s really one of the good movies about rock and roll. I play his manager and it’s all very sinister. And there’s this movie I just finished that’s being edited. It stars Gina Gershon, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Molly Ringwald, and myself, and it’s called Me. And it’s improvised. It was incredible to work with those 80s’ ladies. It’s going to be a hell of a movie. Very sexy, very troubling – very much about what’s going on today. It’s about a guy who thinks he’s in a reality show. I can’t tell you anymore about the story, but it’s going to blow your mind and it’s called Me.
How do your various acting opportunities come about?
I have to audition like every other actor, and if you get it, you get it. For NCIS, I believe they called me in, but they want to see you. They don’t know if you’re 300 pounds or if you’re a junkie. They want to speak to you, and that’s fine; I’ll go in. If there’s something really cool and it has the potential to reach a lot of people, I’ll stand in a parking lot naked to get it. If it’s something I don’t want to do, I simply don’t go in on it. That’s the bureaucratic side of it. Then, there are friends that I’ve worked with and if they think there’s something right for me, they’ll get in touch. That’s usually followed by the sentence, “There’s no money in it.” (laughs) But you do it anyway because it’s challenging and a labor of love and lust.
I’m so glad you said that, and I’m so happy when someone says, “Hey, Murdoc!” It happens every day. I’m in Trader Joe’s with my girlfriend and there’s a guy shaking with item in his hand and I said, “What’s going on? Are you OK?” And he said, “You’re Murdoc!” I said to myself, oh god, that’s so great, and I gave him a hug and an autograph – signed the Trader Joe’s bag and moved on. I loved that character, it was great. And people still dig it to this day. How fabulous is that?
Were you able to make it your own, or was the role of Murdoc already defined for you?
Oh, fuck no! What happened was I just came off The Power Station tour, and I remember I had this big vintage white Rolls Royce and drove onto the set at Paramount for the audition to play Murdoc, a killer in one episode. And the producers were all smoking outside the MacGyver offices and I pull up in my Rolls Royce. I, to this day, know that I got that job because of that entrance. (laughs) They saw me getting out of a white Rolls, all dressed in black and said, “There’s our guy!” And I did it for the next few years, as you know.
Did you have a good working relationship with Richard Dean Anderson?
Oh, I loved him! Sweet, soulful, generous dude. And it was a hard job – being in a TV series. Wow! Hard work. 16 or 17-hour days, especially if you’re the star. You have to know about pacing, and he did. He paced himself well for such a physical role, and he did a fantastic job. And it was a huge show for many years. It wasn’t an under-the-radar show. It wasn’t a pop culture Twin Peaks, water cooler show. But it had a steadfast audience and I was very grateful for the opportunity.
I decided to arrive at the TLA an hour early because tickets were general admission and if you were on the floor, which I was, it was standing room only. I got to the front of the theater and only saw a handful of people, so I thought I’d be right up against the stage. Then, a security guard walked up to me and said, “Are you here for Tom Jones?” I nodded and he told me to follow him down the street. We walked for what felt like 10 minutes. Pretty soon I thought we were going to grab cheesesteaks at Jim’s. But just before we reached the corner, he directed me to an alley where there were two lines of people waiting to get into the show. I couldn’t believe it; these people must have gotten to the TLA at least two hours ahead of time. Talk about dedication.
After getting in my line, the two women in front of me turned around and one of them said:
“How old are you?”
“28,” I replied.
“Name me a song by Tom Jones.”
I thought about this for a minute and said, “Well, the most obvious answer is ‘It’s Not Unusual.'”
This women, Mabel we’ll call her, was extremely pleasant and a hardcore fan. She and her friend affectionately referred to me as “28,” instead of asking my name. Both of them had seen Tom Jones many times before. I told the women I heard about the show on his Facebook page and that I wondered how many people attending were expecting him to sing his hits. We all nodded because we read ahead of time that the concert was meant to be a showcase for Jones’ newest album, Spirit In The Room, and its predecessor, Praise & Blame – both R&B albums with stripped-down arrangements that are permeated with gospel and bluesy-rock influences.
I walked to the right of the stage and claimed my space, approximately three “rows” from the stage. Behind me, on the far end of the room, there was a balcony with seating for people who paid for VIP tickets. To me, paying more and sitting farther away didn’t make sense, so I was glad to stand, even though my legs were killing me later that night.
Security taking care of a little situation before the concert.
Before Jones came out, a woman and her 20-year-old daughters rudely tried to push their way to the front of the stage. But like most Philadelphia crowds at a public event, we weren’t having it. I told them, “You’re not getting in front of me.” And an older woman to my left pushed them out of the way with my assistance. A few moments later they incurred the wrath of a group of fans towards the center of the stage. It got so bad that a tall man waved over security to remove the three women. When security came, we all started chanting, “Throw them out! Throw them out!” After trying to explain to the security guard why it was OK for them to shove people out of the way who were there long before them, he led the trio away from the stage and the crowd erupted in cheers. It was an amazingly gratifying moment of communal solidarity.
With the fight behind us, the crowd started to chant, “We want Tom! We want Tom!” And at approximately 8:30 p.m. he arrived. When Jones stepped onto the stage, the people went crazy. It was a diverse audience of senior citizens, baby boomers and millennials. It seems that his music transcends generations and all of them were giving him a warm welcome. So warm, in fact, that I saw a pair of granny panties hit the stage, quickly followed by an enormous red bra and yellow scarf. I was tempted to twirl my underwear over my head and fling them at Jones, purely for a reaction, but I refrained from doing so.
As Dina’s set came to a close, she introduced Janis Ian and provided backup vocals on her opening song. After striking the final chord, Janis welcomed the crowd and launched into “From Me to You,” a track off her best-known album, Between the Lines. This fiery number was deftly sung by Janis, who brought the song’s complex vocal arrangement to life with her still-magnificent voice.
As expected, Janis performed her biggest hits, including “At Seventeen” and “Society’s Child.” She also brought Diana Jones back onstage to perform a wonderful, new song, “I’m Still Standing Here.” For your enjoyment, I’ve included a video of this performance. Janis ended the show by sitting on a stool with her guitar and singing, without a microphone, “Jesse.” Her voice was in rare form as it effortlessly bent notes and conveyed the raw emotion contained within the song’s poignant lyrics. As her final guitar chords reverberated throughout the silent theater, the crowd rose to its feet and met her with a well-deserved standing ovation.
I woke up this morning and read that Hal David died from complications related to a stroke. Working with Burt Bacharach, he wrote innumerable songs for a variety of recording artists, but their most memorable material was sung by the incomparable Dionne Warwick. Bacharach, David and Warwick defined the 1960s with hits such as “I Say A Little Pray,” “Don’t Make Me Over” and “Walk On By.”
To celebrate 50 years in show business, Dionne Warwick’s upcoming album, Now, produced by Phil Ramone, will feature four new songs written by Hal David and Burt Bacharach. While I look forward to hearing the rest of the album, these four songs will serve as a reminder of the magic these three musical giants created when working together.
Below is a 14-minute medley by Dionne Warwick, in 2000, during a tribute to Burt Bacharach and Hal David, as well as a lesser-known, but beautiful Bacharach-David song, “Sunny Weather Lover.” Enjoy!
