One Headlight

I saw The Wallflowers perform at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races last month. It was an odd concert and an odd venue. Let's back up a little. For those of you under 35 (and I completely understand that no one under 35 reads this blog unless one of my kids stumbles on to a post), The Wallflowers are a band that had several massive hits in the mid-90s, and their lead singer is Jakob Dylan, son of Bob Dylan. 

The Wallflowers are touring to celebrate the 30th (30th!!!!) anniversary of the release of their album Bringing Down The Horse ("BDTH"). Although I never actually bought the album, over 4 million people did, and of course I knew all of the band's big hits from that album. For this tour, The Wallflowers performed all of the songs from BDTH in order. Unfortunately, the album is extremely frontloaded. One Headlight and 6th Avenue Heartache are the band's biggest hits, and the first two songs they played. After Bleeders, the band performed Three Marlenas and probably my favorite song, The Difference. 

Those were the first five songs. I honestly could have gone home at that point. The band played the remaining songs from BDTH, and I barely knew many of them. 

Before the show, I listened to some of the more recent Wallflowers songs to try to familiarize myself with their later work. I didn't need to. I completely missed the fact that The Wallflowers were going to perform the entire Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' album, Long After Dark. I like Tom Petty. I mean, everyone likes Tom Petty. However, except for You Got Lucky, I didn't know any of the other songs from that album. No I Won't Back Down, no Runnin' Down a Dream, no American Girl, no Don't Come Around Here No More. The Wallflowers closed with I've Been Delivered (a song of theirs that I didn't recognize) but never played Heroes and finished with two Tom Petty songs that I knew, Refugee and The Waiting. 

Overall, such an odd venue. I mean look at it.

This looks more like a large hotel ballroom than a concert venue. On the positive side, if you can make it through the smoky casino floor, they have free soft drinks. And horse racing is always fun. And there was a Waffle House just down the street. You can go there with Cinderella and put it all together. And after that, you can drive it home.

Mudcrutch Concert Review

Tom Petty was on my list of musicians that I wanted to see live but never have. So when a friend asked me if I wanted to see Petty's new old band Mudcrutch perform, I reluctantly said yes. Mudcrutch was Petty's original band formed in 1970. The group released one song in 1975, but it never charted, and the band broke up soon after. Several years ago, Mudcrutch reunited and recorded an album. Now they were going on tour to support their second album.

When I reluctantly said yes, I figured that Mudcrutch was Petty wanting to get together with old friends, reminisce about their younger days, and have some fun. I truly thought that the concert would be Petty and his JV team. A few weeks ago, I received the Mudcrutch 2 CD in the mail, a "gift" with the purchase of the concert ticket. I listened to it multiple times over the past week and found it very good. Petty wasn't the lead singer on all of the tracks, but again, I thought he was just being nice and letting his friends have a chance at the spotlight.

Then, Monday night at DC's 9:30 Club arrived. Seeing Petty come out on stage in a 1,300 capacity venue was surreal. Even Petty admitted that he wasn't used to played small venues. He said, "We used to play places this size. They weren't quite as nice as this, but they had topless dancers." I only knew the songs from the second CD and a cover of Bob Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door," but I quickly stopped thinking of Mudcrutch as Tom Petty and his side gig. I was blown away by Benmont Tench on the keyboards and learned that both he and guitarist Mike Campbell are also members of The Heartbreakers. The entire band was comprised of professional musicians that have honed their craft over decades. They clearly were not guys who picked up their instruments for the first time since their 20s. Naturally, I focused on Petty as he was the lead singer of most songs, but this was clearly a band that sounded like they played together forever. Even after the concert, the songs that stayed in my head were those where Petty wasn't the lead singer. Sure, I would have loved to have heard Mudcrutch perform some of Petty's biggest hits, but it turned out to be okay that they didn't.

A few other notes from the concert:

- The Denver Broncos visited the White House on Monday. My guess is that current Buffalo Bills defensive coordinator Rob Ryan tried to sneak in and was denied entry. He then must have come to the 9:30 Club to see Mudcrutch. (Or it was just some other guy that looked like Rob Ryan.)

- As we left the venue, we were stopped as the Mudcrutch tour buses exited. They weren't messing around. There were no meet and greets or talking with the 9:30 Club staff. They left the stage and immediately went on the tour buses to go to their next destination (probably a hotel).

- The opening act was a band called The Shelters who are releasing their debut album on Friday. I had no expectation for them, but they were also very good. They don't have many more Twitter followers than me, so I recommend that you support them.

- Free parking is always a plus for any concert or any venture into DC.

You can read more professional reviews of the concert from USA Today (with set list), The Washington Post, and Writers on the Storm.


Mudcrutch photo by Mike Snider/USA Today. Rob Ryan photo by Mike Rodak/ESPN.

Maroon 5's Sugar Sounds Like Michael Jackson's Beat It

I don't understand Maroon 5. I mean, I understand that they have a string of catchy pop hits, but they're as big as they are solely because of Adam Levine. Having a charismatic lead singer appear weekly on The Voice and get People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive does good things for a musical career. In my mind, Maroon 5 is Lifehouse without Adam Levine being Adam Levine. That's not a knock against Lifehouse either since I think their best songs are better than Maroon 5's best songs.

Anyway, I heard Maroon 5's latest song Sugar on the radio recently (yes, I still listen to the radio) and thought one part sounded a lot like Michael Jackson's Beat It. Apparently, Ben Schuller, as seen in this video below, agrees with me. Specifically, check out the part around the :23 second mark.



This isn't quite a Sam Smith-Tom Petty situation, and I'm not a lawyer or play one on the internet, but I think the Jackson family has a case to get some royalties here.

Tom Petty Tickets Wanted (Ain't Too Proud to Beg)

So Tom Petty is coming to The Lube (also called Jiffy Lube Live and formerly Nissan Pavillon) in Northern Virginia this weekend. I would like to go, but I am cheap. Let me rephrase that. I am cheap when it comes to buying concert tickets. I have no problem paying $40 for a ticket, but I have a big problem paying an additional $12.50 per ticket for the Ticketmaster convenience fee. How is this convenient for anyone other than Ticketmaster?* Anyway, I've had no success finding tickets on Craigslist yet and besides my previous experience getting tickets from there was quite odd.

Therefore, I thought I would try out the power of the blog. Does anyone living in the DC area have tickets they would like to sell for a reasonable (unlike Ticketmaster) price? I'm looking for two seats in the 300 level or two lawn seats. If so, please leave a comment or contact me at seanramblings at yahoo[dot]com.


* I know that I've written about this before, but I don't feel like looking in the archives for this information since I'm pretty sure it involved a post about Spice Girls tickets.