Tunnel of Love Express, Part 1--"You've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above"

In 1988, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were on the Tunnel of Love Express tour.  Unfortunately, it was going to be a lot smaller tour than in 1984-1985, and they would be playing less venues in the USA.  So no Phoenix date.

My friend, Sue, who lived in New Jersey, had already seen 5 of the Bruce shows that year.  We noticed that Los Angeles was going to have 5 dates.  Either she or I would try to call Ticketmaster and get tickets to a few shows for me.  Being a novice to the ticket game in the 1980's, I thought I had called the right number, got repeated busy signals, then when I got through I was told the shows were sold out.  Thankfully, Sue was calling from New Jersey and got through to Ticketmaster.  She got me 2 tickets each for the April 22 and April 23 shows!  Awesome!

The plan was once she received the tickets in the mail, she would send them out to me.  I would need to find transportation (cheap Southwest Airline fares) and a person to go with me.  Luckily, a friend from church was living in Sherman Oaks and she agreed to pick me up, let me stay at her place, and accompany me to the Friday night show.  Her roommate would go with me to the Saturday night show.  All set, right?

It was the 2 weeks before the concerts.  Sue had yet to receive the tickets.  She called Ticketmaster and they said the infamous line, "The tickets are in the mail."  I believe the last set arrived on Monday in New Jersey, 4 days before the first concert.  And they didn't arrive on the same day!  Basically, I received a Federal Express overnight package once she got both sets of tickets!  Here is her note that accompanied the tickets!

So with tickets in hand and a small bag, my parents dropped me off at Sky Harbor Airport to fly to Los Angeles on April 21.  It was raining here in AZ and in LA.  I had a bad sinus infection but I was going to see Bruce and that is all that mattered!

Stay tuned for show number one on April 22, 1988 in the next blog...

Hey, Hey We're the Monkees Back in the High Life

3 of the 4 Monkees pictured above appeared

It was the fall of 1986 and my best friend was off at UofA while I was in Mesa going to Mesa Community College.  When it came to concerts, I had no one to go with me.

It was the year of the Monkees 20th Anniversary tour.  I will admit I watched the reruns in the early 70's.  My cousin, 9 years older than me, had caught the TV show when it was first on in 1966.  Of course, MTV was showing the program to a new generation of pre-teens.  My cousin needed someone to accompany her to this glorious spectacle.  Also on the bill was Herman's Hermits (who the Who first toured with in America in 1967), Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, and the Grass Roots.

Not surprisingly, there was a new batch of screaming pre-teens at this show.  I am not sure how they made it through the 3 opening acts.  All I remember is my cousin singing to the Herman's Hermits songs.  

When the Monkees came out, it was just Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz, and Davy Jones.  Mike Nesmith only appeared at a few shows on this tour (Texas and Los Angeles).  But these guys were good entertainers and if you'd watched the TV shows you would know the songs.  The screaming pre-teens never ceased but it wasn't as bad as the Beatles experiences of the 60's when they would fake play their instruments because they couldn't hear each other.  I can actually say I enjoyed the show.

A month later on October 15, 1986, a fellow MCC friend of mine (and former high school friend) went with me to see Steve Winwood on his High Life Tour.  The beauty of this was that the concert was only 4.5 miles away and it was outdoors.  The opening act was Level 42 who had hits with "Something about You" and "Lessons of Love."  Unfortunately, all I could remember was the throbbing bass in all of the songs.  We are not talking melodic intense Thunderfingers-John-Entwistle bass lead guitarist stuff--oh no.  It was all I could hear--no other instruments.

Needless to say I was relieved to see them go and the piano chords of "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" start.  Winwood opened with an old Traffic classic, not one of the hits from Back in the High Life album.  How amazing is that?

Of course, Steve Winwood played at least half of the songs from this amazing album from 1986.  I remember "Back in the High Life" and "Finer Things" really standing out.  I also remember "Dear Mr. Fantasy", "Valerie", "While You See a Chance", "Arc of  a Diver" and "Gimme Some Lovin'".  He had an amazing band with him and he is an amazing singer and multi-instrumentalist.  

This same week of October 1986, I wished I had known about Neil Young's first Bridge School Benefit in Mountain View, California at the Shoreline Amphitheatre.  I found out about this 3 months later when I saw Bruce Springsteen and Nils Lofgren on the cover of Acoustic Guitar magazine.  A friend of mine ended up with a bootleg copy of the whole show (on videotape) so I got to see Bruce, Nils, Neil, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Robin Williams, etc., do amazing acoustic performances.  Here is picture from my scrapbook from that performance.  I believe they were doing "Teach Your Children" in this shot.  

Anyway, that is my story from 1986.  I still want to catch a Bridge Benefit one of these days.  If it would just coincide with October break for the kids....