Category: Concerts and Music

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Calendar Conflicts

This week was a busy one with concerts shows almost every night. Of course, I could not go to all of them. In fact, on Wednesday night there were three different shows at venues all across town that I wanted to attend.

My friend, Jenny, had told me about a benefit concert for the songwriter and musician, Kevin Sharpe. He has been battling cancer and is having trouble paying for all the treatments, which are incredibly expensive. The tickets to his show were only $20 at the door and there were 38 songwriters and performers featured in the lineup. Plans were for each performer to be able to play or sing two songs. With each song lasting about 3 minutes, that worked out to about 4 hours of music by a variety of top musicians and singers. Wish I could have gone to that one!

As it was, a different friend of mine was having a show at the local comedy club. Since I had committed to his show first, I went to that and had to forgo the benefit concert. Wish I could have done both!

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Songwriters versus Performance Artists

Now that I have been spending more time in the little clubs and going to songwriter conferences, my respect for the songwriters has increased immensely. The performing artists have so many people to help them and so many advantages, everything from a backup band, hair and makeup artists, and bodyguards. But the songwriters mostly work alone or in small groups, toiling over every word and every note, and then handing it off to an artist or a label and hoping that someone will do justice to their handiwork.

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Brit music from the 60’s

The emergence of rock and roll in the 1960’s and 1970’s was due in large part to the great bands from Great Britain. It was so pronounced that people called that period “The British Invasion” and the super groups were enormous hits. Some of the first big names were The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who and hundreds more over the years as band member came and went, tried solo careers and changed bands. Many of them are still performing today.

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Missing Keith Whitley

Keith Whitley was a country singer who had a knack for picking songs that everyone could relate to. He sang in an easy going style, and sang about love, the frustrations of life and the daily struggles of trying to be a good person.

Sadly, he also had a drinking problem and died from alcohol poisoning. At the time he was married to Lorrie Morgan and I know a lot of people say that she killed him, even though she was not home at the time of his death. I think that she was just such a demanding and difficult person to be around that Keith couldn’t handle it. She is a huge diva and spoiled rotten. So maybe she did.

Every song that Keith recorded was a good one and I miss his music making talents. RIP Keith. I still listen to your music often and we miss you.

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Music Downloads

If you’ve shopped for music CDs lately, you might have noticed that they are creeping up in price. I know about 15 years ago the new music CDs were selling for about $16 each in the big stores. If you wanted to listen to the latest songs at home, you had no choice but to buy the CDs and the music business had no incentive to lower the prices.

Now today I can go to Amazon and several other websites and get the one song that I like for just 99 cents. So if there is all this competition now and there are avenues for buying just one song for a buck, why hasn’t the price of CDs come down at all? In fact, just the opposite is true – they are now $18 and $19 dollars for the new releases. That is just crazy. Not only do I object to spending almost $20 on a CD, I object to having to buy 9 or 10 more songs that I don’t even want just to get to hear the one song on that CD that I do like.

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Top Hits

As I’ve been building my play lists on Spotify, I have been trying to think of all the great songs that I used to listen to on the radio as a teen. There is not much about music on most of the regular start pages like Yahoo.com with links to everything else under the sun. But I did find a list of Hot Hits on the Billboard.com web site and it did bring up a lot of memories.

I am not in agreement with their ranking of the top hits of all time, but I’m sure they had a particular method to determine them. Sadly, I don’t agree with any of their top 10 hits of all time list. Who in their right mind would pick Chubby checker’s “The Twist” as the number one top hit of all time? Seriously?

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Shows at the Ryman

The Ryman Auditorium is the best place in Nashville to hear a concert. It is not a big arena like the football stadium where you get seats so high up and away from the stage that the band looks like tiny ants. In the Ryman, even the seats in the last row are decent seats and the sound is fantastic wherever you sit.

They’ve been booking some big names at the Ryman. The only problem with that is the seats are limited and the good shows sell out within an hour or two of the tickets going on sale.

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Really Bad Traffic

Now that all the music festivals are over, the traffic around here is going to be extra bad tonight and tomorrow as tens of thousands of fans try to get home. I cannot believe how many cars are on I-24. It’s bumper to bumper gridlock and no alternate route. the dog tired, hot and hungry people leaving Bonnaroo have it the worst. I feel bad for you if you are stuck in this traffic nightmare.

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Music Festivals

This week is a big one for music festivals. The 10th Annual CMA Music Festival is going on in Nashville. They used to call the event, “Fan Fair,” but a few years ago the “suits” decided to try for a bigger money grab and expand the music genre beyond just Country Music. Most people don’t like that – but what can you do?

The other big event around here is the same week – how stupid was that scheduling? – about an hour south of town: Bonnaroo. This festival brings thousands of music fans of all genres and all ages to a big field with a dozen temporary stages for a week long music fest.

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Summer Concerts

Notices have been coming at me from all kinds of sources for summer concert lineups and dates. In Nashville, there is always the 10 day Fan Fair in early June, and then Bonnaroo is just down the road in early June, as well.

Some of the other places that are great for concerts are in the DC area and just outside of Baltimore. I like to go to Wolf Trap Park for concerts scheduled throughout the summer. These are always big headliner acts, but the venue is small and very casual. Then, there is the Merriwether Post Pavilion in Columbia, which is an outdoor amphitheater who books big name rock and country shows.

One place I’ve always wanted to go is the Red Rocks Canyon in Colorado for a concert. I have never been out there yet – it is on my bucket list.