BILLY IDOL!!!

Holy shit! Went to The Pearl Theater at The Palms Casino last night to see Billy Idol in concert…

WOW!!!

First off, the last show I saw there was KISS with Buck Cherry opening. The theater was about 2/3’s full for that show and it wasn’t that great.
Last night it was SOLD OUT for Billy Idol. And his band kicked ass! He was just fantastic!

I didn’t really know what to expect, but he was a GREAT performer live. And sang and worked his ass off. His band was one of the tightest bands I’ve ever seen live. And the crowd was on their feet fist pumping all night long.

The sound man and lighting crew were spot on as well, as the production was awesome.

Of course he did ALL the hits and the crowd was singing along the entire time. He even came offstage into the crowd at one point which drove security nuts! lol

He performed a couple of brand new songs on the show that were fantastic and I believe could be huge when his new album comes out. "Kings And Queens Of The Underground"  and "Scarred For Life"  were fantastic new songs that have incredible lyrics.

His website is:  http://billyidol.net/     

Go check it out and if he is coming to your town…I highly recommend seeing him.

Now…Steve Stevens….the longtime guitar partner of Billy Idol.

GODDAMN! That guy can PLAY!  He put on a tour de force of guitar last night with Billy Idol. Several times he picked up the acoustic and proved that he has one of the fastest and most precise RIGHT hands in the world. This guy made ME feel like I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. And you all know that my ego doesn’t allow for that very often.

If you were wondering where Steve Stevens has been the last 20 years while Billy Idol has been invisible…well, he obviously was somewhere practicing guitar 12 hours a day. He was awesome back in 1983, and now he is just out of this world!

Go see Billy Idol. Go check out his website. And get ready for his new album!

NIght Ranger

Went and saw Night Ranger tonight at the Santa Fe Station here in Vegas. GREAT show!

I was especially excited to see Brad Gillis perform on guitar. He is one of the best guitar players I’d ever heard on record beginning with his early years with Ozzie Osbourne when he replace Randy Rhoades (no small feat there)

He didn’t disappoint as Night Ranger did ALL their hits. Including ones I had forgotten about. And they even goofed around playing some Ozzy with a little Crazy Train and Paranoid thrown in!

They also did "Coming Of Age" from Jack Blades time in the Damn Yankees. The encore was "Sister Christian" and "Rock In America"

Later that evening I went out to "FeelGoods" which is a bar here in Vegas that is owned by Vince Neil.

NightRanger showed up and I had the honor of shaking Brad’s hand twice and talking to him. I told him that he sounded great as ALWAYS. He was very gracious and a super nice guy in person.

HAIL HAIL ROCK N ROLL

I was just surfing the "Encore" channel on cable and hit a gold mine.

A movie that I first watched when it was originally released in 1987: "Hail, Hail Rock N Roll"

It’s the concert at the Fox Theater celebrating Chuck Berry’s 60th birthday.

Keith Richards put together a MONSTER band for it and they show the footage of them rehearsing at Chuck’s house. First thing they did was get Johnny Johnson who was the original piano player from the 1950’s Chuck Berry band, and you would be hard pressed to have found a better barrel house piano player than that guy was.

Playing behind Chuck were Keith Richards, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, Bobby Keys on sax, Chuck Leavell on organ…just incredible.  Linda Rondstadt comes out to sing "I’m So Glad I’m Living In The USA"  and the great Etta James sings "It’s Gotta Be Rock N Roll Music"

Chuck does all of his hits: "Johnny B. Goode" (of course), "Memphis", "Oh Carol", "Little Queenie", "Maybelline", "Too Much Monkey Business", "Nadine", "Brown Eyed Handsome Man", "Sweet Little 16", Hail Hail Rock N Roll" and many more.

Some great interviews with Chuck, Keith Richards, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, Little Richard, Roy Orbison, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, and many others.

In case you didn’t know…I AM one of Chuck’s "children" as are every guitarist playing rock or country music since the 1950’s. We are all disciples at the feet of the great Chuck Berry.  By the way , he still plays a steady gig at a nightclub in St. Louis to this very day.

I HIGHLY recommend this movie/rock documentary.

NEW LOOK FOR TPTRASH.COM

Hope you like the new look of our site. As you probably already know, we have completed the first music video. It’s for the now infamous song: "Get With Me"

It features Claudia-Marie on lead vocals, myself on guitar and backing vocals, and my old band mates Tony Gardo on sax and keyboards…and Kenny Swanger on bass guitar.

Claudia and I just finished a brand new version of my song "Sweet Mercy" a few months ago. It’s taken me some time to get that song the way I want it…I sang a few versions, then I had Claudia-Marie sing a version…but this new version is a duet. And it just fits the song perfectly. It’s exactly what the song needed.

Anyway, I’m beginning production of a video for Sweet Mercy over the next week. I have a pretty cool idea for it.

In other news: Claudia-Marie and I attended the UFC Brock Lesnar VS Shane Carwin fight on July 3rd, 2010

Wow! It was an amazing thing to watch live and as close as we were to the cage. Jim Ross, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Bill Goldberg, Paul Heyman, and Gene Simmons were just a few of the celebrities sitting up front. It was quite a night!

We are also going to be heading over to San Diego for a few days at the beach. I’ve never been to San Diego, but I hear it’s some of the nicest beaches on the West Coast.

Until next time…

MUSIC VIDEOS

Okay, get ready! I’m working on our very first music video. I hope to have it done before the summer is out. So start watching this space

STONES RE-RELEASE EXILE ON MAIN STREET

The Rolling Stones have been in the news lately. The week of May 10 through 14 was Rolling Stones week on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon celebrating the remastered Exile On Main Street which hit the shelves on Tuesday May 18th.

I hit Best Buy and picked it up myself. And here’s where I go "back to the future". I bought a turntable and I got the CD version AND the VINYL version! The record comes on 180 gram weighted vinyl and I have to say it’s incredible.

I had a turntable back in the 1970’s. But cassettes kinda replaced vinyl in the early to late 1980’s so I didn’t bother owning one. And then of course CD’s have ruled. And now .mp3 players.

So it’s been 30 years since I dropped a needle onto a record. And man…when I dropped that needle down on "Exile On Main Street" and that bad ass guitar riff that starts "Rocks Off" kicked up over my home theater system…HOLY SHIT IT SOUNDED GOOD!

I had a big stupid grin on my face for a solid hour just listening and WATCHING the record spin on the turntable. lol

Then I took the CD version and put it in my car. Well, the CD version has an extra disc of outtakes and alternate versions…including a half dozen songs that have never been released from those sessions. Wow. It’s very cool.

Listening to some of the alternate versions is like listening to The Rolling Stones writing the songs.

The alternate take of "Loving Cup" is a lot of beautiful sounding twang guitar as opposed to the finished version which is heavy piano and horns. And "Soul Survivor" alternate take is a completely different song with different lyrics and has Keith Richards singing it!

This is a pretty cool trip back in time to hear the Stones at the very peak of their songwriting and playing powers. Young, punk, aggressive, and chock full of the blues, soul, country and of course rock. This is the text book for being a rock star.

2010 SuperBowl: THE WHO

First off…it was a great game! Both teams played very well and congrats to The New Orleans Saints.

But what I was really waiting for was the halftime show with The Who.  I had some serious consternation about how they were going to pull off a live show without John Entwistle and Keith Moon (both are dead).

The Who were probably the best and most powerful live band in the world in the mid to late 1970’s. And of course a big part of that equation was the fact that they had a monster rhythm section in Keith Moon and John Entwistle. Even after Moon passed away, Entwistle was such a fucking heavy bassist that the band STILL kicked ass with Kenny Jones on drums.

Well, as I feared…Daltrey and Townsend could not come in packing that kind of power. BUT, I still thoroughly enjoyed them. Technically, Townsend sounded GREAT on guitar! Better than I’ve ever heard him. And those new Fender amps he used were astounding. I was a bit surprised as he used to use HiWatt amps.  But those Fender amps had a crunch tone that sounded like a wall of Marshalls on steroids. Not sure which model amp it was as I could only make out the Fender logo on them. 

He played some damn good lead licks and I guess he’s been practicing for this gig.

Both Daltrey and Townsend sounded pretty bad vocally right out of the gate with Pinball Wizard. It had me worried. Daltrey was weak and scared on Baba OReilly and didn’t go for any of the high notes. But he finally regained his confidence on Won’t Get Fooled Again and even nailed that massive high scream in it. (though that could have been done by someone else behind the scenes for all I know)

But what really saved the whole performance was the songs themselves. The music of The Who is just as relevant today as it was 35 years ago. Baba O’Reilly is just a masterpiece. The words are open enough to interpretation to allow the listener to feel the meaning of the writer while still being able to have enough space to add their own spin on the characters and the story. Just like a good song or book or poem or play should. 

And of course Won’t Get Fooled again…what can I say? That song fits PERFECTLY with what just happened in our elections. Our country felt that Bush had led us down the wrong path. So we elect Obama who is full of promise and hope.

And what happens? Well to quote the song: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"

Speaking of which…I was listening to The Who song "We’re Not Gonna Take It" yesterday. What a great song! "We’re not gonna take it, Never did and never will. Don’t want no religion. And as far as we can tell. We ain’t gonna take you. Never did and never will. We ain’t gonna take you. We forsake you. Gonna rape you. Let’s forget you better still"

It reminded me of what a tremendous piece of work the Rock Opera Tommy is. So I rented it from my online BlockBuster account and I’m going to sit down and watch that movie again for the first time in years this next week.

HEART IN CONCERT AT VEGAS HILTON 1-29-2010

Claudia and I went to see HEART at the Las Vegas Hilton. I didn’t even know that they were touring again until a couple of months ago when I saw a billboard on the strip advertising them. Last I had heard the Wilson sisters were doing an all acoustic show with just the two of them doing new music. So when I saw the tickets go on sale I jumped at the chance to see the sisters back with a full band doing their classics.

And they didn’t disappoint. They kicked off the show with "Barracuda" and you knew right then it was gonna kick ass. Ann Wilson was the size of a blimp…but she still has that voice. When she was talking to the crowd I could hear the she had a cold and was hoarse…but she is a SINGER and she still wailed.

Here is a little bit of footage of their encore for the evening: Doing Led Zep’s "Going To California" and then a snippet of "Magic Man"   I recorded it with my new Droid phone so it’s not great quality:

HEART CONCERT FOOTAGE CLICK HERE

ROCK-N-ROLL HALL OF FAME CONCERT PART 2

You can read the first part I wrote here: http://tptrash.com/blog/

Here are some highlights from the rest of the show:
Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel…Jesus they are so damn good. "Sounds Of Silence" scared the hell out of me when I was a little kid, and it still spooks me to this day. The talent of these two is just so awesome. They ended their set with "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and I have to tell you that Art Garfunkel’s incredible tenor voice has not lost ANYTHING.  After watching this I had to go to YouTube and look up some vids of them. Seeing them as two young kids playing The Monterey Pop Festival and sounding so damn good just reminds you how talentLESS some of the contemporary "musicians" are in comparison.

As a guitarist my favorite part of the show was Jeff Beck’s segment. He does things with his hands that are out of this world. He’s in his 60’s now, but he still looks exactly the same. Jet black dyed hair, same hair style. And when the man plays his strat…it isn’t even a guitar anymore. It’s an extension of his body. I’ve long thought he is the best electric guitarist in the world, and watching him play on this show just reinforced that thought. He doesn’t use a guitar pick just his fingers. And his use of the tremelo bar is like NOBODY else.  Then he brought out Buddy Guy and HOLY SHIT that guy can still tear it slap up!

Bruce Springsteen also had a segment. And of course it kicked ass. He brought out Tom Morello to play and sing "Ghost of Old Tom Joad"   Then he brought out John Fogerty. That guy has found the Fountain Of Youth. He looked 30 years old at the most. Sounded FANTASTIC!

Bruce brought out Sam of "Sam And Dave" and they kicked out several of his hits.

Fabien came out and did "The Wanderer" with them too.

He ended up with Billy Joel doing "New York State Of Mind" and Bruce’s "Born To Run"

THE ROCK-N-ROLL HALL OF FAME CONCERT ON HBO

Just watched it on TIVO. Wow!!!

First up was Jerry Lee Lewis doing “Great Balls Of Fire” by himself. He can’t sing worth a damn anymore, he couldn’t keep time and kept speeding up, he was missing half the notes on his piano playing, and he looked like he was already dead….And yet the man kicked ass! I don’t know how to explain it. The nostalgia factor perhaps? I don’t know. But I had NO problem with watching “The Killer”. During the performance they cut to some old footage of him from over 50 years ago…slinging his long hair, playing and singing like a madman. And then at the end of his performance, old Jerry Lee stood up slowly and then kicked the piano stool across the stage! LOL!  Awesome!

Next up was Crosby, Stills, and Nash. NOBODY can sing harmonies together better than these guys. Simply great. And Stephen Stills is a tremendous guitarist and made that stratocaster sound like it should…all the junk in the neck pickup just sounding so woody and great. They had Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Brown both play and sing with them on some songs as well.

Then it was the Stevie Wonder segment. Holy fuck.
The man is a genius. I saw him being walked through The Venetian Casino earlier this year and I could feel that I was in the presence of greatness. Songs In The Key Of Life baby! He brought out BB King and they did “The Thrill Is Gone” and I have to tell you that BB can STILL play the fucking guitar. 
After BB, they brought out Sting to play bass with the incredibly tight band Stevie has. Syncopated with plenty of breaks and stops that were executed just perfectly.
Stevie Wonder then welcomed out Jeff Beck to play with him on “Superstitious”
I can’t say enough about how damn good Jeff Beck is. He is one of the greatest guitarists in the world. Just his strat and a Marshall amp and his fingers. The guy is out of this world talented.

A Metallica segment was next. It wasn’t anywhere near as good as what I had just witnessed but how could it be?  They played a couple of their songs and then brought out Lou Reed and they played “Sweet Jane” with him.  Goddamn I love that song. But of course Lou couldn’t sing it worth a damn so it sounded like an abortion. But it was still cool to just SEE Lou Reed onstage.
Then they brought out Ozzy. He did Paranoid with them. It was okay. But Ozzy wasn’t exactly in fine singing voice either.
Finally they brought out Ray Davies of the Kinks and did “All Day And All Of The Night” with him. I LOVE The Kinks, but Ray was looking REAL old. And he sang horribly off key as well.
Metallica made the save by finishing their set with “Unforgiven”. EDIT: I don’t know why I said “unforgiven”  I meant they finished it with: “Enter Sandman”

Final segment of the night was U2
And as you would expect, it was EXCELLENT. Bono is just a monster singer and the band sounded really tight since they just came off tour. They did “Vertigo” and then “Magnificent”. Then they brought out “The Boss” Bruce Springsteen who did “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” with them. It sounded REAL good.
Then they did one of Bruce’s songs: “The Night Belongs To Lovers” and welcomed out Patty Smith (who had a hit with it)  It was okay, but Patty Smith is really talent-less and sounds like shit.
Then after Bruce and Patty left the stage, The Edge started playing what sounded to me like the guitar intro to “Gimme Shelter”. Bono welcomed Will I Am and Fergie from The Black Eyed Peas to the stage. But they took positions behind the band on back-up vocal mics. They started singing the eerie “woooo” part of the beginning of “Gimme Shelter” and then the band kicked in.
Suddenly the crowd starts going crazy (it was in Madison Square Garden) and with no introduction….Mick Jagger came dancing onstage and kicked in the song! He’s 66 years old and he hadn’t missed a step. Dancing and twirling and just FULL of energy and power. His voice sounded great as well. Fergie came out from behind at the end of the song to do the female part on Gimme Shelter and her and Jagger did some cool stage stuff.
After the song was over they said goodby to Fergie and Will I Am and Jagger and Bono dueted on a U2 song.

What a great show. And what tremendous personalities, musicianship, and talent were on display.