Super Supertramp Stub Story

My first “real” concert. After talking Mom into taking me to see Elvis a few years earlier I was now 18 and ready to see my first real show for being a ‘teenager’. To me there were two albums that came out in high school that sum up ‘High School’. Meatloaf’s “Bat out of Hell” and Supertramp’s “Breakfast in America”. As my tastes in music were developing and I was getting past my younger phase of “The Night Chicago Died” and “Season’s in the Sun” I was too young for the Beatles but the Paul and his Wings? well, “Live and Let Die” baby! But as FM with it’s “…no static at all…” was coming into the forefront, I started to really enjoy art rock, or progressive rock. Electric Light Orchestra, Emerson Lake and Palmer, and Pink Floyd were showing how classical music and rock could merge. And whereas Supertramp might be seen a bit more “pop” than all those other art rockers, it was just this appeal to the “simple man” caught up in a world where the "questions run too deep", a world that was too "logical" and "cynical". This is what hit so hard and visceral for a kid about to head off to college. I saw a DVD from about 2 years ago, I think, of a Roger Hodgson concert and the introduction included the line something like, "... a master of song writing from the soundtrack of our lives... " Oh how true!

My best friend whom I turned onto their music, enjoyed singing falsetto with Roger and me, so we decided to get tickets. Probably the last time I saw a show that I was not totally aware of a band’s entire repertoire, so most of the show was ‘new’ to me, yet every song burned into my brain. When that almost eerie harmonica started from the beginning of the song “School” and the crowd roared in thunderous applause, the absolute, amazing rush of a shared experience had me hooked. When all the band members walked out in tails and top hats, I was ecstatic.

With songs like “Rudy” that had the speed up footage of the train behind the band while Rick and Roger traded lyrics back and forth,
Roger: “How can you live without love, it's not fair?” Rick: “Someone said give but I just didn't dare”  I was transported to another world showing what special effects and music could do for an audience while also enhancing the lyrics of a song. I mean a song where the “hero” was an outcast, an overweight loner? Pink Floyd was too cool for that stuff…

And even though almost all the pre-“Breakfast…” songs were new, when they started “Give a Little Bit” ... it was probably the first and last time I said these words: “I didn't know they did this song!”. Fast becoming a music connoisseur I soon lost my innocence for such pleasures…...

To this day, I still remember the radio commercial on Q95 in Indianapolis(waaay pre Bob and Tom if you know their syndicated show) Anyway, that little piano riff from “Crime of The Century” was hauntingly addictive, “Coming to Market Square Arena..” and then seeing it live as the hands grasping the square cell bars floating in a moving star field grew larger and larger on the screen behind them and the music built so dramatically… well... it just now sent a shiver as I typed this.

A short 4 years later I was living in California and saw the very last show Roger Hodgson did with Supertramp in America. I think I researched they did one last show in Europe after ending their American tour and never played together again. So, there were a few concerts in between then, but look for that story later!…

Well... that was it for the stubs I scanned in last week for my Facebook beginnings. From this point on... I’ll have to scan in any ticket specifically for a journal entry…



Click below if you want to see the set-list I started and added what songs I knew of... so there's only a handful of songs... OR click the other link to see what "should be" the entire show set-list from around a week earlier.

Song-Set: (Work in Progress) Set-list I created


Song-Set: Rochester, New York concert around same time 1979

 

Watta "Kick" of a Stub Story

On Facebook, a friend of mine, posted an INXS video of “Don’t Change” the other day and that was what started me pulling out the ol’ box o’ ticket stubs. As I commented how their concert was in my top ten all time favorites and then a mutual friend stated he was at the same show and mentioned how Michael Hutchinson was walking on the edge of the orchestra pit making the security guard freak out and that flooded me with a bunch of memories. 

“Kick” came out in 1987 up until then they were somewhat obscure “New Wave” band if you can include riding “New Wave”s coat tails with “Common Wealth” countries. Obscure especially in Farmville Fort Wayne… “Kick” had only been out a very short time so they hadn’t entered the stratosphere of M-TV exposure yet when they announced they were coming to Fort Wayne, IN. And when I heard they were coming to the beautiful and amazing Embassy Theater I found out when tickets went on sale and early that morning went straight to the theater’s box-office. I was about 15th in-line, which turned into about 50 people before they started selling. One good thing about being in Farmville and not many knowing of INXS meant that it not being huge crowd they didn’t try breaking us up with a dumb lottery system or anything, and let us buy tickets with our original place in line. So my seats were 4th row.. font and center as they say….

Back to the Facebook thread another friend of mine posted he was also there and reminded me that The Brandos opened up, and were also an amazing band.(Sadly I see they aren’t represented on RP ) But anyway when INXS started not only was Hutchinson “walking on the banister of the pit” like the other guy mentioned, I was reminded he was gyrating, faux humping and otherwise humiliating the center guard relentlessly.

But here’s the thing….there were like 15 guards down along the front, as if they were expecting a riot. It was pretty much the first and last “rock” concert they had there at the beautiful ornate and apparently delicate Embassy Theater. And to their credit… it is a beautiful venue…. to say the least. I have several very interesting stories that I will tell in the future about the amazing beauty, and incredible acoustics, that many famous artists have enjoyed over the years. But in this case, the radical rock band from Australia had the authorities very antsy and they were out in force. Any time someone would stand up, they were asked to sit down, any attempt to head to front of the theater was quickly squelched etc.. Now they WERE reserved seats and losing my excellent choice seats to a crazy mob would have sucked, but not to be able to stand?… I don’t know this crowd would have stood the whole show for sure… and I suppose standing would have easily lead to rush to the stage too. But it really started making the INXS members angry and thus started the antics behind the middle guards head… this eventually lead to them completely stopping the show at least twice, and threatening to leave if the audience wasn’t allowed to have fun. At one point the saxophone player Kirk Pengilly started insulting Fort Wayne in general: “hick town” type of stuff, which Micheal did his best to apologize for, but despite all of this, it was still an awesome show and they did their best to thoroughly entertain the "suppressed" crowd, and I do think the last song or encore, maybe, did finally have a rush to the stage that had everyone standing. Me and my two friends, both hot girls, I might add, stayed in our perfectly fine area of the floor, and when they left the stage Jon Farniss tossed his drums sticks out into the crowd.. one of which hit the palm of my outstretched hand but striking it just so, that it spun around and continued on behind me onto some other lucky fan. Oh well.. great show anyway! {Sidenote: I’m not sure exactly what date this was… if you’ll notice the actually date is torn off the ticket. I have MANY tickets that are like this, especially from the stupid design of Sunshine Promotions and The Embassy. When I first thought of doing this book I even tried calling The Embassy to see if they might be able to help me research specific dates and such, but no one ever got back to me }

Since I first wrote this up I was able to find the date as October 21st, 1987 but no song actual set-list keep checking here as I created an empty one:

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/inxs/1987/embassy-theatre-fort-wayne-in-bdb6136.html

Here's a setlist from 8 days later probably similar.
Setlist from October 29, 1987 Albany, NY 

Stub Stories with The Piano Man

In a recent Rolling Stone article it talks about Billy Joel and his “feisty show-stealing set” at the 12-12-12 Sandy benefit. And man o’ man I couldn't agree more. I remember as I was watching it live, and when he started with things like “Anthony works in the grocery store… Savin’ his pennies for some day” I was instantly transported back to my High School/first year of college days, and it was such a joyous fun uplifting feeling. I had just recently joined “Twitter” and I have to admit it was fun to watch the flurry of reaction to what had been his first live performance in a long time.

Of course, I had to dig up this ticket stub from the one and only time I've gotten to see him perform. It was my first year of college and one of my first “concert trips”.  Billy Joel had been something of a mutual infatuation between my longtime friend/more than friends/ back to friends round and round again relationship and actually still friends: Lisa. Ever since I put on all my clothes backwards and lip-synced “Just The Way You Are” to cheer her up one night.. I think there has always been a mutual history for the three of us so-to-speak.  She had a short lived stint attending Indiana University and so even though I had just started college at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana that September it was a no brainer to ask Lisa to go see Billy that next month.

Me visiting Lisa at I.U.

She was staying with a couple of cousins or a cousin and her friend etc.. so as is common place in college days of yore… I drove down to Bloomington, Indiana to pick her up and then couch surfed at their place in the evening… I recently found this picture of me checking out their album collection in what I realized was my black Billy Joel t-shirt from the previous night’s performance. I remember that shirt so well the Billy Afro in silhouette against a ‘New York state of Mind’ skyline… (I just found this T-shirt image on Google…how cool... this internet thing just may catch on;-)

So on November 19^th 1979 we drove up from Bloomington to Market Square Arena. They weren't exactly prime seats but I remember thinking even from that distance I could tell he was a very small man. There was a ramp system that went up each side to a platform behind the stage and watching his diminutive frame run like a mad man up and around those ramps time and time again was quite the sight to see. The energy and fun he was having on the stage was just incredible.

In my research I saw that “Glass Houses” wasn't released until about six months later… well into 1980… because I remember him saying they were on tour not to promote any particular album like “most do” he said kind of proudly. But then he also announced he had a few songs they were working on and would try them out here. I know “You May Be Right” was one of them; pretty sure there were at least two others. Just did a little research on the site I found called Setlist.fm and in a set-list from around the same time I found indeed three songs from "Glass House" were played in Houston I think I found.. in addition to the one I mentioned he played “Sometimes a Fantasy” and “All for Leyna” and that sounds about right. I know he was taking flack on soft middle of the road album “52^nd Street” and I can say he did really try extra hard to rock out on these new songs in concert for sure. 

Here is the setlist I started myself. If you know of, or hear of, the actual setlist be sure add it here, or just keep checkin' back here to see if it does get fixed: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/billy-joel/1979/market-square-arena-indianapolis-in-53df1fc9.html

Here's the setlist from 6 days later
Setlist Nov. 25th Houston Texas