The capacity crowd was an entertainment spectacle themselves. A bunch of old rockers and yes, we're including ourselves in this mix. However, as scary as that may seem, what makes it even scarier is that we were definitely on the younger end of the demographic.
We came up with a series of questions, conditions and statements that we're pretty certain everybody in the crowd would answer "yes" to at least one. They were things like:
Are you taking blood pressure or cholesterol medication?
Do you have an artificial joint?
Did you see either of these bands more than 30 years ago?
Did you ever inhale?
Do you need reading glasses to read a book?
Do you have less hair than you used to have?
Does your hair color come from a bottle?
Was your ticket purchased with funds from your social security check?
I think you get the idea of who was in the crowd. I'd be a "yes" to a few of them but we're just going to leave it at that. Thank goodness I didn't see any attempts at crowd surfing. It would not have been pretty.
The Doobie Brothers opened the show and had the place rocking. What I really appreciated was they stuck mainly to the songs that most of the audience knew by heart. The music and the vocals were as good as ever which inspired me to turn to Beth and comment "they sound really good". She quickly replied "well they should, they've been practicing for a long time". Point well made!
When they ripped into Long Train Running near the end of their set it was time for me to tip my cap to my good buddy Mike Gardner who passed away a little over a year ago. Mike was as big of a Doobie Brothers fan as ever walked the earth. I can attest to this because for two years while we commuted together to Polk Community College if he was driving, we were listening to the Doobies. He was a great guy and I still miss our conversations about Gator football and other matters of great importance to the world.
One thing that has improved about concerts with more than one band from the old days is how quickly they are able to change out the stage. Within 20-25 minutes of the Doobie Brothers finishing up, Chicago was on and tearing it up as well. I still love the horn section of this band and although a number of the band members have turned over through the years the core remains and they are still as solid as ever. Like the Doobie Brothers, they stuck mainly to the songs that everyone knew the words to and it was a mass sing along throughout.
It was a great first of three shows. I'm already looking forward to joining my fellow Parrotheads Saturday night at Wrigley for the next one!
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| Show #1 |
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| Getting ready to rock! |
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| Chicago skyline at night |
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| Like my crown? |
