I attend live performances about twice a month. Where I live in Arizona, there are many retired people, so we get lots of tribute shows. I’ve attended tributes to The Allman Brothers, Elton John, Tom Petty. The list is long. These are not the real deal, but tributes–people playing the music of these famous people. Sometimes the performers will actually pretend they are the star, but everyone knows they are not.
I attended a John Denver tribute a year ago and it was not good at all. The man came out with the John Denver hat. He said things like “far out.” Yet he forgot the words to some of the songs and did not know the first names of the people playing on stage with him. The Van Halen tribute sucked also–an old man with a sock in his spandex pants is all I will say. The Santana tribute was loud and fun at first, but the second set just seemed like the same songs over and over–the same loud sounds, no variety.
I think my favorites were the tributes to Chicago, Godon Lightfoot, and Elton John. The bands were awesome, and the songs touched my heart. It helps if you grew up with the songs. I cried a bit at each of these shows, memories do that.
Speaking of memories. In 1977 I was in high school, and I went with a friend to a Led Zepplin concert–the real Led Zepplin. It was awful in its own way. This concert was the first large indoor concert in a domed stadium. We sat in the club level, and I could not recognize what songs were being played. The sounds just bounced off the dome and around the stadium. Not that it mattered. I hardly remember a thing anyway. Another thing I recall from that concert was the stadium men’s bathroom. I had to pee and walked into a crowd of a thousand men trying to stand in line to pee behind a thousand others. There were men peeing on the walls. I decided I needed to just hold my bladder until after the show. The whole experience sucked, but at least historically I can say, I Was There.
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