SUPER BOWL XLI, FROST ON THE PALM TREES AND EUROPA HERE WE COME !
It is a beautiful North bay morning and I am just now remembering the super bowl. I guess I had never given it any thought but the parties before the super bowl are enormous and there are soooooo many. They list them all in the Miami Herald and ,I mean, every rapper has a party , every ex-NFL player has a party , John Travolta has a party,Playboy has a party,Dennis Rodman has a party, well. you get the idea. So we were there to play the tailgate party with Stevie Nicks and Inner Circle. Now if you are not familiar with Inner Circle ,they just happen to play one of my favorite songs . The theme song to the TV show "Cops" . "Bad Boys, Bad boys.....what you gonna do when they come for you " I met there drummer "Lancealot" and we had a nice chat . I told him we never play in Miami and that I wished we did . I also said that we get as far south as Boca Raton and he said that is all right because there isnt any place to play in Miami , it is all discos ....He lives there so maybe he knows. So we get down to the Super bowl like at noon . It is total "Spinal Tap" no guard anywhere knows where anything is or where we should go but we finally find our tent and there is Stevie Nicks and her whole band chilling out so we join them . It was great to see them . I hadnt seen Stevie or her keyboard player Brett Tuggle in a long time . Brett used to play with our band for a few years and he was always fun. I remember many a lazy afternnoon ,on tour, floating around in a hotel swimming pool discussing the world's problems . Be it in Fresno or Magnetic Island in Australia.
We played a 45 minute set and the crowd was great . They were definitely "READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL'......Then after the set Chris, Sheryl (our manager), and myself lept into a golf cart and headed out for the super bowl. the stadium was about a mile away and it was a labyrinth of wire fences and gates and security guards. We finally made it all the wasy to the gate and out we went and Sheryl and Isaak went down to do some interviews for EXTRA ,the tv show, and I went to my seat .On the way I thought I should grab a hot dog . I got into this enormous line but I had time. Then I notice this woman staring at me from another line and making a face . And I am like , whats up ,do I owe her money or something. I dont know anyone around here . Then it dawns on me that it is Kate who is a soldier who was with us when Isaak and I sang for the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed hospital in D.C. I also remembered that her father works in the Baltimore Ravens front office,so that is what she was doing at the super bowl. She joined me in my line and we had a nice visit because the lines were long. Kate was a medic in Iraq and I cant imagine the horrors that that young women has seen . We are lucky to have such great people as her around.
When I woke up on super Bowl sunday it was raining like crazy . A "Frog choker" as we say in Texas . And as I took my seat it was ciming down . luckily we were sitting under the over hang and were fairing better than Ashton Kutcher , Demi Moore,and Bruce Willis who were in front of us . All in chicago Bears gear. Every other play Kutcher ( he had Kutcher printed on the back of his Bears jersey just so there would be no mistake) would jump out of his seat and scream for the bears but around the top the fourth quarter when it was starting to look bad for the Bears he split !
But here is the coolest. Sheryl says hey why dont we sneak down on the field and watch Prince play. And I am like, we dont have the correct credentials . And she says ,"No....but you have a LOT of credentials just not the right ones . " So we put on every pass we have and put on our not so see thru ponchos and go all the way down to the field . Chris has a microphone from the Extra show and we all act like we know what we are doing . Next thing you know we are in the tunnel watching the game at field level . These people start to yell at us to get out of the war because Princes' staging is coming thru and might hit us . So Sherly says... "should we go stand over there "(which was right beside the freakin Chicago Bears) the guard says yes and so before the half is over I am standing next to the Bears watching the last of the first half . AWESOME......so now we are like 20 feet from the stage as Prince comes out of the stage and plays his show it was absolute magic . So I turn to Shreyl and go "Man that was one cheeky move but this rocks !'
So Peyton Mannings wins the game and gets the monkey off of his back ,but what do I care I am soaked and just had one fabulous time!
When I got back home we had had a freeze for a few days and that is very unusual here. We can go three years with out a freeze. My King palm looks good but my Pygmy date palm "got trode' a beatin' " as they say in Philly. We shall see in the springtime. I cant get over it in Florida I saw 7 story King Palms .They are rare in Northern California but at the Sportsman's Lodge ,where we stay in LA , they have some that are 2 stories tall.
Dig this and Dig it well.......We are going to do a concert tour of Europe in April . Which is a damned fine time to go there. We go there on the 10th of April and we are playing the Paradiso theater on the 11th. that is the first place we ever played in Eurpe back in 1985 ! I have so many great memories of Holland . I found an antique drum store there and have about 4 drums that I bought from them . And they sell raw herring on the streets . That absolutely rocks...We are also going to Brussels . Another underrated city . Brussels used to have the "Coffin bar' where all the tables were coffins and you drank out of skull mugs and it was very goth ....good stuff.
Lastly......I have a couple of suggestions. I know you all ready know about Youtube.com .But it is much more than some jackass jumping up and down on a bed singing 50 cent. They have on there, performances by bands that you dont see performances of very often ...I have been looking at Humble Pie, Buck Owens, the Byrds,Buffalo Springfield, Frank Zappa. These are old videos ,a lot of them come from a German TV show called the Beat Club . Fantastic.
Also check out Wolfgangsvault.com there are some amazing recordings of concerts of all these bands from the 60s and 70s .Anyone from Miles Davis to Skeeter Davis !
I was listening to a concert from 1970 of Frank Zappa and the drums were monsterous. I look to see who it was and it was Aynsley Dunbar. Now Aynsley comes to see us play sometimes when we are in Santa Barbara. So I call him and tell him he should go and listen to how great he played on "Call any Vegetable" back in the day . He said he would . Speaking of Aynsley....onetime I was at the MPE museum in Seattle ( you know the music museum that Paul Allen of microsoft bankrolled, it is great by the way ,chick out the garage band section when you go ) well I went to the Jimi Hendrix section and it said that it was between Mitch Mitchell and Aynsley Dunbar for the job with The Jimi Hendrix Experience .
So they flipped a coin and Aynsley lost .that sounded like a likely story so I asked him and he said "No ....Jimi was paying 25 quid a week and the going rate was 30 quid so I cut it loose "
It is ever thus.......
YOUR PAL
KENNEY DALE
We played a 45 minute set and the crowd was great . They were definitely "READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL'......Then after the set Chris, Sheryl (our manager), and myself lept into a golf cart and headed out for the super bowl. the stadium was about a mile away and it was a labyrinth of wire fences and gates and security guards. We finally made it all the wasy to the gate and out we went and Sheryl and Isaak went down to do some interviews for EXTRA ,the tv show, and I went to my seat .On the way I thought I should grab a hot dog . I got into this enormous line but I had time. Then I notice this woman staring at me from another line and making a face . And I am like , whats up ,do I owe her money or something. I dont know anyone around here . Then it dawns on me that it is Kate who is a soldier who was with us when Isaak and I sang for the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed hospital in D.C. I also remembered that her father works in the Baltimore Ravens front office,so that is what she was doing at the super bowl. She joined me in my line and we had a nice visit because the lines were long. Kate was a medic in Iraq and I cant imagine the horrors that that young women has seen . We are lucky to have such great people as her around.
When I woke up on super Bowl sunday it was raining like crazy . A "Frog choker" as we say in Texas . And as I took my seat it was ciming down . luckily we were sitting under the over hang and were fairing better than Ashton Kutcher , Demi Moore,and Bruce Willis who were in front of us . All in chicago Bears gear. Every other play Kutcher ( he had Kutcher printed on the back of his Bears jersey just so there would be no mistake) would jump out of his seat and scream for the bears but around the top the fourth quarter when it was starting to look bad for the Bears he split !
But here is the coolest. Sheryl says hey why dont we sneak down on the field and watch Prince play. And I am like, we dont have the correct credentials . And she says ,"No....but you have a LOT of credentials just not the right ones . " So we put on every pass we have and put on our not so see thru ponchos and go all the way down to the field . Chris has a microphone from the Extra show and we all act like we know what we are doing . Next thing you know we are in the tunnel watching the game at field level . These people start to yell at us to get out of the war because Princes' staging is coming thru and might hit us . So Sherly says... "should we go stand over there "(which was right beside the freakin Chicago Bears) the guard says yes and so before the half is over I am standing next to the Bears watching the last of the first half . AWESOME......so now we are like 20 feet from the stage as Prince comes out of the stage and plays his show it was absolute magic . So I turn to Shreyl and go "Man that was one cheeky move but this rocks !'
So Peyton Mannings wins the game and gets the monkey off of his back ,but what do I care I am soaked and just had one fabulous time!
When I got back home we had had a freeze for a few days and that is very unusual here. We can go three years with out a freeze. My King palm looks good but my Pygmy date palm "got trode' a beatin' " as they say in Philly. We shall see in the springtime. I cant get over it in Florida I saw 7 story King Palms .They are rare in Northern California but at the Sportsman's Lodge ,where we stay in LA , they have some that are 2 stories tall.
Dig this and Dig it well.......We are going to do a concert tour of Europe in April . Which is a damned fine time to go there. We go there on the 10th of April and we are playing the Paradiso theater on the 11th. that is the first place we ever played in Eurpe back in 1985 ! I have so many great memories of Holland . I found an antique drum store there and have about 4 drums that I bought from them . And they sell raw herring on the streets . That absolutely rocks...We are also going to Brussels . Another underrated city . Brussels used to have the "Coffin bar' where all the tables were coffins and you drank out of skull mugs and it was very goth ....good stuff.
Lastly......I have a couple of suggestions. I know you all ready know about Youtube.com .But it is much more than some jackass jumping up and down on a bed singing 50 cent. They have on there, performances by bands that you dont see performances of very often ...I have been looking at Humble Pie, Buck Owens, the Byrds,Buffalo Springfield, Frank Zappa. These are old videos ,a lot of them come from a German TV show called the Beat Club . Fantastic.
Also check out Wolfgangsvault.com there are some amazing recordings of concerts of all these bands from the 60s and 70s .Anyone from Miles Davis to Skeeter Davis !
I was listening to a concert from 1970 of Frank Zappa and the drums were monsterous. I look to see who it was and it was Aynsley Dunbar. Now Aynsley comes to see us play sometimes when we are in Santa Barbara. So I call him and tell him he should go and listen to how great he played on "Call any Vegetable" back in the day . He said he would . Speaking of Aynsley....onetime I was at the MPE museum in Seattle ( you know the music museum that Paul Allen of microsoft bankrolled, it is great by the way ,chick out the garage band section when you go ) well I went to the Jimi Hendrix section and it said that it was between Mitch Mitchell and Aynsley Dunbar for the job with The Jimi Hendrix Experience .
So they flipped a coin and Aynsley lost .that sounded like a likely story so I asked him and he said "No ....Jimi was paying 25 quid a week and the going rate was 30 quid so I cut it loose "
It is ever thus.......
YOUR PAL
KENNEY DALE
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