Print this page

2014 SUMMER CONCERT ROUND-UP

As Martha and the Vandellas once put it, summer's here and the time is right for dancing in your seat.

All right, so the lyric doesn't go exactly that way, but with concerts so regimented these days, you don't get much opportunity to dance in the aisles, let alone dance in the street. But having recently seen three rock acts in concert, one already a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee while one of the two not in the Hall has a huge groundswell clamoring for its induction, You may be interested in how they perform onstage.

What's funny is that in the last few years I had been attending hardly any rock shows. Rather, my taste for live music had run toward jazz, folk, and international acts in smaller, more intimate settings. And as far as classic-rock acts go, I had been leery of the nostalgia circuit. I used to write for the concert guide of a local venue, and I fluffed up my share of articles touting the likes of Iron Butterfly and Robin Trower, acts trading on their glory days (and in the case of a band like Iron Butterfly, that may have been day, singular) while occasionally promoting their latest album, released on a small, independent label, and noticed by few outside the fanbase.

But as I get older and become nostalgic myself, my curiosity gets the better of me. After all, none of us are getting any younger, and didn't I want to see some of these acts before they head off to the great festival in the sky? Even if, at this stage, they are past their prime?

Laying the Groundwork: Rock and Blues Fest 2013

That started last year, and a one-night "Rock and Blues Fest" show that featured Canned Heat, Pat Travers, Rick Derringer, Edgar Winter, and Ten Years After all playing on the same bill at the City National Grove, an indoor, 1,700-seat venue in Anaheim, California. Now, I'll admit that I got tipped to this show when I saw an offer on a coupon-clearinghouse website that had tickets at half-price. And although I would not have paid to see any three of those acts together, seeing all five—and at half price—seemed to be worth the time and money.

Let's be honest: Of the five, only Edgar Winter (Number 437 on the Not in Hall of Fame's list of rock artists not already in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) rates a credible mention for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and even that is a polite acknowledgement before dismissing him. Furthermore, with memories of attending festivals in my youth, and the seemingly interminable waiting between acts, my hope was that logistics and facilitation had managed to improve since then, and with limited time for its set, each act would have time only to fire off its best-known songs before running off to make way for the next act.

By and large, that was the case, and the road crews and Grove staff executed the bill with admirable efficiency. Moreover, all five acts acquitted themselves quite impressively.

It may sound like a sneering, elitist dismissal to say that only Edgar Winter merits a mention for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and even that is a polite mention before rejecting him. But we are talking about a Hall of Fame, which I believe should contain only the very best. At this point, no one seems happy with the inductions made into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and for this site I've done a comprehensive audit of the performers inducted into the Hall to determine whether a performer's induction was justified. (The sixth and most recent installment contains links to the previous five installments.) My conclusions are that about one-quarter of the inducted acts do not belong in the Hall, and I suspect for a number of persons that the implied three-quarters of acts I think are justified is still too many for their liking. In other words, the Hall has no room for marginal acts.

And when I say "marginal," that is still not pejorative because it is relative to the acts already in the Hall that truly belong there. In baseball, it is not an insult to call a player "league-average" because it means that he is a player who plays at the level of the rest of the league. In other words, he belongs in the league—and thus he is better than all the players who did not qualify to play in the league. But Hall of Fame players are not league-average—they are well above that.

All five acts at the Grove that night were "league-average," with one or two a little above that. All were professional musicians with decades of experience, and that was evident from all of their performances. Their order of appearance indicated both their level of fame and, significantly, their level of excellence. The opening act, Canned Heat, may be ranked at Number 242 on this site's list of acts not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but it has never been more than a journeyman practitioner of blues-rock and boogie even when early leading lights Bob Hite and Al Wilson were guiding the band. However, thanks to three veterans from its historic appearance at the 1969 Woodstock festival—guitarist Harvey Mandel, bassist Larry Taylor, and drummer Fito de la Parra—the band fired off admirable renditions of concert warhorses "Let's Work Together," "On the Road Again," and the delightful "Goin' up the Country."

Canadian singer and guitarist Pat Travers (not ranked by this site) had a brush with Stateside success in the early 1980s but has always languished on the second tier at best, although he's still recording and gigging and was the only act to perform any recent songs. However, the biggest reaction came from Travers's tearing into "Life in London" and the crowd-pleaser "Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights)" as well as a decent rip at Jimi Hendrix's "Red House."

Rick Derringer (not ranked by this site) delivered a most pleasant surprise: The diminutive singer and guitarist is best-known for "Hang on Sloopy," a huge 1965 hit for Derringer's teenage band the McCoys, and for "Rock and Roll, Hootchie Koo," which Derringer had written for Johnny Winter in 1970 but with which Derringer scored his only Top 40 hit in 1973, and of course both songs formed the centerpiece of his set. But throughout his set, and especially during the extended vamp on "Hang on Sloopy," Derringer kept a running monologue going, recounting his bygone days with a tongue-in-cheek flair that not only established him as a witty, articulate raconteur but one who, despite a long and distinguished career as a collaborator and sideman for other acts, knows that to audiences at large he's known primarily for two old songs, and he's developed a self-deprecating yet serene acceptance of that status that endeared him to me, if no one else.

Edgar Winter was next on the bill, and I was a little surprised that he wasn't the headliner given that he'd had the most substantial career of the five acts, at least in the United States. Indeed, unlike his older brother, guitarist Johnny Winter, who concentrated on blues-rock before pursuing blues primarily (and who, sadly, passed away earlier this year), multi-instrumentalist Edgar had a broader palette, blending that blues-rock with R&B-flavored horns and even elements of jazz best expressed on the early-1970s albums Edgar Winter's White Trash and They Only Come out at Night, the latter spawning a pair of enduring hits, "Free Ride" and the instrumental "Frankenstein," that both figured prominently in his set.

Moreover, Winter too had an engaging stage persona, if you can excuse a few of this sexagenarian's questionable dance moves. (I suppose the good news about being an albino is that his hair was always that color.) He also had a rap that differed from Derringer's: Although Winter too was personable, he seemed a little self-promoting, reminding us, for example, that he purportedly invented the keyboard body strap that enables the player to move about the stage carrying the portable unit, while the veiled recitation of his résumé seemed more earnest—concerned about your legacy, Edgar? And although I thought that Winter blew the famous descending synthesizer line in "Frankenstein," he and his band were impressive, even delivering a slam-bang rendition of "Tobacco Road."

As mentioned previously, though, I was a little surprised that Ten Years After was considered to be the evening's "headliner"—until that band hit the stage and stormed out of the gate right from the very first note. The only non-North American band on the bill, Ten Years After was considered in the States to be a middleweight blues-rock band best-known for the vague social consciousness of "I'd Love to Change the World" and an incendiary performance of "I'm Going Home" that electrified the crowd at Woodstock. That latter song had spotlighted the machine-gun chatter of guitarist Alvin Lee, who had died earlier in 2013 and in fact had stopped performing with the band a decade previously.

But with the three original members of Ten Years After—keyboardist Chick Churchill, bassist Leo Lyons, and drummer Ric Lee—having regrouped with singer and guitarist Joe Gooch, this quartet unleashed an instrumental roar that never subsided, from the two previously mentioned songs to "Hear Me Calling" and "Love Like a Man." Churchill may look now like a music teacher emeritus, but Lyons lit a beacon for anyone worried about retirement, slamming out his bass lines to match the stinging guitar of a whirling Gooch, who is almost half Lyons's age.

Some bands present themselves better on stage rather than on record, and Ten Years After, rightly the headliner that night in the City National Grove, gave an indication of what the uproar must have been like nearly forty-five years previously at Woodstock. And—who knows—this may be part of the reason why Ten Years After is ranked significantly higher—Number 258—than Edgar Winter on this site's list of artists not already in the Hall of Fame.



August 6, 2014: Blue Oyster Cult and Deep Purple, Pacific Amphitheatre, Costa Mesa, California

For the past decade, concerts at the open-air, 8,500-seat Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, California, have been held only in conjunction with the Orange County Fair, which is held in the summer. I'll be honest: Whenever I think of a musical act playing a county fair, particularly a veteran act, my mind immediately visualizes the scene in the great mock-rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap and the once-mighty Tap, now a middling metal act clinging desperately to relevance, forced to play as a sideshow attraction at a local fair, sharing billing with a magic act.

And each year, I've perused the listings to see who would be playing at the Orange County Fair, smirking like a self-satisfied snob as, one after another, that Former Big-Name Act has now been reduced to performing before a crowd that, only a short time previously, had lost thirty dollars trying to win a stuffed panda, had scarfed down a bacon-wrapped Snickers bar deep-fried in buttermilk batter and drowning in maple syrup, and had just thrown up said delicacy after an expensive yet all-too-brief—although not brief enough—kamikaze fling through the air in a dubiously inspected and -approved Tilt-A-Whirl.

Oh, sure. Each year I see a name or two that makes me pause before I move on. And last year I would have seen Roger Daltrey perform had I not already had a previous engagement on the one night that he was playing. But this year, after my pleasant reaction to the "fogeyfest" I'd attended at the Grove last year, I saw a few names that piqued my interest.

Two of those names happened to be listed on the same double bill: Blue Oyster Cult and Deep Purple. In terms of musical approach and legacy, both bands are heavyweights, hard-rock mavens in the 1970s while serious contenders for a Snub Award with respect to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Blue Oyster Cult is listed at Number 73 on this site's ranking of artists not already in the Hall of Famewhile Deep Purple tops the list. In fact, before the concert started I saw a man wearing a T-shirt that read, "Fuck the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame." There was no other wording or symbolism to indicate if this was a general or a specific opinion—although the fact that the shirt was all-purple in color led me to suspect that he might have a particular act in mind. Unfortunately, he disappeared into the crowd before I thought to ask him about it.

Deep Purple has been on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ballot for the past two years, and in examining the ballot in both years, in 2013 and in 2014, I have stated each time that I do not think that Deep Purple deserves to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. I think the band's glory period of the early to mid-1970s was a short one, and with a couple of exceptions, even the band's albums from that period were hit-or-miss affairs. In other words, this is not a Hall of Fame act.

I say this as someone who as a teenager had been a Deep Purple fanatic: One summer job I had back then was working for the parks and recreation department of the City of Calgary, and every two weeks I would cash my check (although as these were Canadian dollars I should say cheque) and head to Sam the Record Man (remember them?) to buy records. In those days I bought a lot of Deep Purple LPs, and I've been hauling them around with me ever since. I still have them—well, most of them, but I do regret thinning a few—as I write this.

But as I've learned over the years, there is a big difference between liking an artist and thinking that the artist is worthy of the Hall of Fame. Apart from the nostalgia factor, part of the reason why I was curious to see both Deep Purple and Blue Oyster Cult was to help me come to a clearer understanding of each band's legacy—is each a Hall of Fame act? Now, I fully understand that the heyday of both bands was four decades ago, and I hardly expected either band to be at the form from their prime. What surprised me—pleasantly, as I soaked up the music of each band—was how impressive each sounded, although one certainly impressed me more so than the other.

Singers and guitarists Eric Bloom and Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser are the only survivors of the Blue Oyster Cult that released its eponymous debut album in 1972; filling out the band now are guitarist Ritchie Castellano, bassist Kasim Sulton, and drummer Jules Radino. But if this was a band that was merely trading on past glory, or cynically expecting the near-capacity crowd to respond only to the hits, you could not tell that from the tight, seamless 45-minute set that opened the concert.

Sure, BOC had to deliver its big early-1980s hit "Burnin' for You" and the obligatory one-two punch of "Godzilla" and "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." But BOC opened with "The Red and the Black," from its second album Tyranny and Mutation, possibly to test the crowd reaction, or simply because it is a terrific riff-happy rocker extolling, of all groups, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (even if it is essentially a re-write of the first album's "I'm on the Lamb, but I Ain't No Sheep"). Also delighting the hard-core was Buck Dharma's earnest drug-deal-gone-wrong ballad "Then Came the Last Days of May," while an extended instrumental provided him and Castellano the opportunity to trade nimble, fiery solos while Sulton rumbled behind them.

In fact, Sulton was something of the band's ringer. A talented bassist who first came to notice in Todd Rundgren's progressive-metal band Utopia in the 1970s, Sulton got the spotlight on the guaranteed crowd-pleaser "Godzilla." Not only did he get to deliver the iconic bass lick originally made famous by Joe Bouchard, he got to have Bloom recite his curriculum vitae during the extended vamp in the song's middle: You didn't know that Sulton had played with Joan Jett and the Blackhearts? BOC threw in a chorus of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" to remind you. Remember that he started with Rundgren? Start bopping your head to the idiotically delightful "Bang the Drum All Day." And just before the band slammed back into the heart of "Godzilla," it worked in a few bars of Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker" for good measure.

Blue Oyster Cult in Concert

Blue Oyster Cult knew not only how to command the stage, it knew how to work the crowd. Its sleek progressive metal was an influential sound of the 1970s, although it may have been too brainy—and at times too pretentious—to have been fully appreciated until later. It took post-punk (the Minutemen, for instance, were BOC devotees) and stoner metal to really perpetuate the legacy of Blue Oyster Cult, a talented band ahead of its time. My only regret about its performance was that it was much too short—I was just getting set for an extended rock-out when the band left the stage. And, yes, I was the dolt in Section Five screaming for "'7 Screaming Diz Busters'!"

By the way, there was some serious cowbell going on in "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." This band knows how to laugh at itself.

But Deep Purple was the headliner, and thus it got the lion's share of the time. Of the band that first formed in England in 1968, drummer Ian Paice is the only one remaining although the Purple that took the stage this night included singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover, both of whom were featured in the "Mark II" version of the early 1970s band that had the greatest success. Rounding out the quintet were American guitarist Steve Morse, who joined the band in 1994, and keyboardist Don Airey, a British music-industry veteran who has been filling the shoes of band co-founder Jon Lord since 2002, when Lord retired from the band. (Lord died a decade later.)

Even though Purple kicked off with the evergreen "Highway Star," the band sounded a little shaky; it was hard to hear Gillan, but the sound mixer managed to correct that problem. Or perhaps Gillan simply wasn't enthused to be trotting out an old chestnut despite the crowd's excited reaction, because he seemed to be only partially engaged throughout the first few songs. Those songs included ones from the band's most recent album, Now What?!, which it has been touring in support of since early 2013, as well as the classic Naughty Nancy tale "Strange Kind of Woman."

Then an interesting attitudinal shift occurred. After "Strange Kind of Woman," Gillan announced that that was the end of the "avant-garde segment," but in actuality it was just getting started. The keynote was a new song, "Vincent Price," which was an indeed a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the legendary horror-film star, and one that showed that the band was hardly recycling its old formula—in fact it had been paying attention to succeeding generations of hard rockers. While Airey supplied the haunted-house atmospherics reminiscent of early Ozzy Osbourne—no surprise as Airey had played on Ozzy's debut album Blizzard of Ozz (check "Mr. Crowley")—the rhythm team propelled those atmospherics with tight, staccato bursts while Morse pumped out distorted metal chords that reminded these ears of Alice in Chains circa Facelift or Dirt.

But the biggest change was in Gillan—starting with "Vincent Price," he became engaged and animated from playing the new material and not simply recycling decades-old songs. This was apparent in other newer material, such as "Hell to Pay," also from Now What?!, a game social-comment number, while the collateral effect was an energy boost for the entire band—with Gillan now roused, Deep Purple finished its second half in fine form.

1024px-Deep Purple at Wacken Open Air 2013 27

Of course, classic hard-rock convention was not completely abandoned. Although we didn't get a drum solo—had there been time, I'm sure "The Mule" would have raised its overblown head—we did get an extended guitar solo from Morse. Not that this is a bad thing—after all, this is the guy who made his bones fronting the 1970s fusion outfit the Dixie Dregs (later simply the Dregs), and Morse's seamless blend of power and agility was hardly gratuitous.

Nor was Airey's solo turn at the keyboards, where he provided a pastiche of his musical education including all those classical-piano lessons he took as a kid. Again, hardly out of character: Jon Lord, the band's original keyboardist, was also classically trained—he even penned an early Concerto for Group and Orchestra when Purple was closer to an art-rock band. And in fact, Deep Purple's "walk-up music" for this concert, the music played over the PA system before the band took the stage, was the "Mars" movement from Gustav Holst's The Planets suite, which was a little pretentious and a little hackneyed, although it could have been worse—it could have been Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," and how cliché would that have been?

However, it was with a trio of signature songs that Deep Purple finally won over the Pacific Amphitheatre audience. Don Airey's magisterial organ playing, channeling Jon Lord, prefaced the bluesy "Lazy," on which Ian Gillan's harmonica added a rustic flourish. Then came the two-fisted blow from a pair of Purple sledgehammer masterpieces: "Space Truckin'" and "Smoke on the Water." The former has cheerfully goofy lyrics that belie the brutal rhythmic punch that hits like a full-blast Saturn V rocket—although listeners expecting an extended progressive-rock excursion such as the one found on the classic live set Made in Japan would be disappointed—while the latter sports an archetypal guitar riff, its thunderous simplicity contrasted by a fairly vivid tale of their travails trying to record Machine Head, the album that first contained the song. And since everybody who hasn't been living under a rock for the last 40 years knows the chorus, Gillan encouraged the audience to sing it (he's probably sick of it by now, anyway), and thus the bond between band and listeners was finally forged.

Called back for the encore, the instrumentalists vamped with "Green Onions" before Gillan re-emerged, and if the thought of a hard-rock band playing that Booker T. and the MGs signature instrumental seems incongruous, consider that it was a warm-up for the first song of the band's encore: "Hush," the charmingly low-key Southern pop song written by Joe South that was Deep Purple's first hit back in 1968—and, significantly, it was a hit here in the United States while failing to chart in the United Kingdom. Then Roger Glover unspooled an extended bass solo as prologue to Deep Purple's final number, the hard-rocking "Black Night," appropriately enough the band's first hit in the U.K. (it peaked at Number Two) although it failed to crack the U.S. Top 40.

It may have taken a few songs for Deep Purple to be able to slam it into top gear, but this is certainly a band that not only has the experience and the firepower still at its command but, if its commitment to its new material is any indication, also the wherewithal to keep going—although whether that destination is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is not certain.



August 8, 2014: Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pacific Amphitheatre, Costa Mesa, California

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, a point that the announcer made sure to emphasize as he introduced the band, Lynyrd Skynyrd took the Pacific Amphitheatre stage as if it was oblivious to the honor. Not that the band doesn't deserve to be in the Hall, only that this is a band that still thinks it's "Workin' for MCA," the sardonic, riff-heavy commentary on the music industry with which Skynyrd opened the show to immediate audience approval.

Throughout a set that had the capacity crowd on its feet from start to finish, Lynyrd Skynyrd performed as if it was a working band whose daily labors are producing records and touring the country and not a nostalgia act trading on its legacy—although, significantly, almost every song the band performed was from its mid-1970s heyday, before the 1977 airplane crash that killed the pilots and several of the band and crew, including lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backing singer Cassie Gaines.

Indeed, in its more than 40-year career, death has been the band's companion. A decade after the plane crash, Skynyrd reunited with Van Zant's brother Johnny, and it has more or less remained together ever since, but in that quarter-century the band has endured tragic attrition. Bassist Leon Wilkeson died in 2001, while his replacement, Ean Evans, died in 2009, the same year that saw the death of keyboardist Billy Powell. Hughie Thomasson, the former Outlaws frontman who joined Skynyrd from 1996 to 2005 before leaving to revive the Outlaws, died in 2007. Backing singer JoJo Billingsley, part of the 1977 band, was the only band member not to have boarded the fateful flight, claiming to have dreamt about its crash two days' prior; subsequent to the crash, she made a couple of one-off appearances with the band before she died in 2010. And guitarist Allen Collins, who survived the plane crash only to become paralyzed in a 1986 automobile crash, never played with Skynyrd again; he died in 1990.

This roll-call of fallen bandmates formed a somber montage on the on-stage video-screen backdrop during the band's final number, "Free Bird." (And that's no spoiler—you would expect Skynyrd to end with any other number?). All of which must seem poignant to guitarist Gary Rossington, the sole pre-crash veteran still playing with the band. (Pre-crash veterans guitarist Ed King and drummer Artimus Pyle are still alive but no longer perform with Lynyrd Skynyrd.)

Lynyrd Skynyrd in Concert

But if Rossington, or anyone else in the band, or anyone in the audience felt melancholy, you could not tell from the hour-plus of top-grade Southern rock that preceded this celebrated encore—and in fact those miles of wailing guitars that end "Free Bird" were hardly elegiac. Singer Johnny Van Zant worked the crowd as if Skynyrd were an opening act needing to establish its right to be on the stage. (That was also the case for Jeramiah Red, the local roots-rock band—it even had a steel guitarist—that opened the evening with a brief, rough-hewn yet energetic set.)

As the band slammed out one riff-happy rocker after another—the freewheeling "Call Me the Breeze," the wry groupie-seduction tale "What's Your Name?," and the compulsive caution of the brilliant "That Smell"—with the joyful inhabitants of "Skynyrd Nation" singing every verse and chorus, Van Zant kept up a steady patter that established the band's connection with the audience and held it—strengthening it, in fact—even if he did lapse into solicitousness (asking "How y'all doin' out there, Costa Mesa?" too many times) and self-conscious boasting ("I'll say it again, California—Skynyrd is in the house!").

After the opening string of guitar-rock classics, Skynyrd slowed it down for a pair of signature ballads. Van Zant used "Simple Man" as a springboard to salute current and former members of the military, exhorting the audience to show their respect as well, although this crowd hardly needed to be prodded as a montage of vintage portraits of men in uniform, presumably relatives or others associated with the band members, streamed on the video screen behind the drum riser.

Lynyrd Skynyrd's politics have always been fascinating. Early on, the band touted its regional identity, which helped to epitomize it as an exemplar of Southern rock—we'll get to "Sweet Home Alabama" by and by—and while that has lent itself to stereotyped perceptions, the band has always traded on its Dixie identification without being trapped by it. (By the way, military enlistment in the last few decades has come disproportionately from the South.)

Yes, Johnny Van Zant engaged in some literal flag-waving during his jaunts across the stage, brandishing both the Stars and Stripes and the Confederate flag, with the latter having been a symbol of controversy in recent years as racists have expropriated it, resulting in the band's distancing itself from the secessionist imagery associated with the flag. But as the saying goes, "name it and you claim it"—the Dixie flag has been associated with the band since its early days, and the band made its stance clear: As a still photo of the flag was displayed on the video monitor, the words "Heritage Not Hate" were superimposed prominently over it.

Johnny Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd

Significantly, Skynyrd later fired off a rousing version of "Saturday Night Special"—the hippest, hardest-rocking gun-control song you are ever likely to hear—but left in the holster its more recent "God & Guns," the title song to its 2009 album, which has found favor on the American political right, notably with Fox News Channel commentator Sean Hannity. This may have been a nod to California's perceived liberal tendencies—although this concert was being held in Orange County, a conservative stronghold since before Richard Nixon was in diapers—but more likely it was because, no matter how rabid the fans may have been, the band knew that people had paid primarily to hear the classic songs. Which is a bit of a shame because "God & Guns" are two big themes in this county—I live down the road from Pastor Rick "The Purpose Driven Life" Warren and his mega-sized Saddleback Church—and this county-fair audience would have greeted the song with a hearty chorus of "Amen, brother!"

The crowd did greet "Tuesday's Gone" with another appreciative roar and singalong, at least on the chorus; the wistful ballad served as the precursor to the memories evoked by the encore number "Free Bird." Between "Tuesday's Gone" and "Simple Man" came a roots-inflected cover of the Al Jolson chestnut "Alabamy Bound," a reminder that "Sweet Home Alabama" lay ahead, although the route to that signature tune, the band's highest-charting single, ran through the hilarious shaggy-dog story of "Gimme Three Steps," another crowd-pleaser.

And with "Sweet Home Alabama," Lynyrd Skynyrd brought it all home to the crowd that wasn't here simply to check off an item on its bucket list, which seemed to be the case with the audience that came to see Deep Purple and Blue Oyster Cult two nights previously. No, the overwhelming majority of the audience was here because Lynyrd Skynyrd is still its band. This was rock and roll that still moved them, that wasn't just the music of their passionate youth but the soundtrack to their current lives, and the band knew it and responded as if it needed to reaffirm that relationship.

Moreover, as my friend Mitchell noted, the gender mix for Skynyrd was about even, a contrast to the crowd two nights before, which was largely men who had never got over the halcyon days of their youth or else approached the concert with the professorial curiosity of middle age. (I'm not sure into how much of each category I fall.) There were as many women getting off to Skynyrd as there were men.

Following the band's exit after "Sweet Home Alabama," the audience kept up its roar, knowing that there was still one song left to play. It's easy to make fun of "Free Bird," which has become part of pop-culture iconography including its status of one of the most requested rock songs ever, both on the airwaves and in concert—even if it's not a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. A couple of years ago, I attended a jazz concert that celebrated the music of Duke Ellington. Near the end of the show, the band asked the audience for requests. In addition to calling out "Concerto for Cootie" and "Rockin' in Rhythm," I shouted "Free Bird," and nearly everyone within earshot got the joke. I'm not sure if the band did or, if so, appreciated it.

But this was a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, and no way was the band going to exit for good without playing "Free Bird." Cradled in the roar of its audience, the band—Van Zant, Rossington, guitarists Mark Matejka and Rickey Medlocke (whose association with Skynyrd dates back to its earliest days, when he was the band's drummer before forming Blackfoot), keyboardist Peter "Keys" Pisarczyk, bassist Johnny Colt, and backing singers Carol Chase and Dale Krantz-Rossington—launched into this iconic anthem along with the visual tribute to deceased former bandmates before unfurling the soaring, extended guitar solos that not only epitomize Lynyrd Skynyrd—shaggy heads down, heated guitars thrusting and bobbing in unison—but exemplify classic rock.

The key difference between the Lynyrd Skynyrd concert and the Deep Purple-Blue Oyster Cult show from two days prior was that Skynyrd saw itself as a working band that just happens to have been working for 40 years while Deep Purple and Blue Oyster Cult saw themselves as bands whose working days were 40 years ago, and now they were trading on that glory.

That was my initial impression, and upon reflection that may not be entirely fair. After all, Blue Oyster Cult was not only never less than smooth and professional, the band members looked as if they were having fun tearing into their old repertoire. Deep Purple may have sounded uneven during the start of its set, but once it started digging into its new material, such as "Vincent Price," that fired up its enthusiasm for the older songs. And while Lynyrd Skynyrd played as if it were an upcoming act needing to win over the audience, its songs were overwhelmingly drawn from its early halcyon days and not from the albums it has released in the last twenty-five years.

And while I'd hardly cite the experiences as definitive, based on my impressions I'd say that Lynyrd Skynyrd performed like a Hall of Fame act while Deep Purple and Blue Oyster Cult were both on the borderline—and, based on what I saw and heard, I would have to give the nudge to BOC. Again, hardly conclusive, as these bands' legacies have by and large already been written, and I don't regret seeing any of them.

As I wrap up this article, the Orange County Fair is also wrapping up, and with it is its summer concert series. As I am in Southern California, I daresay there will be a rock concert or two occurring somewhere in the Southland before next year's fair. But I daresay also that come next year I'll be looking at who will be playing at the Fair—and which current or potential Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acts will catch my fancy and have me dancing in my seat.

Last modified on Monday, 23 March 2015 17:53

Comments powered by CComment