I never thought that I'd hear those songs played live. Or played that well live. Manzarek and Krieger still have their considerable chops. "Roadhouse Blues" was raw and lively. Robby's roaring guitar in "When the Music's Over" was simply an exhilarating rock moment. Manzarek's keyboards were somewhat understated, but his sense of tonal coloring and timing were like running into an old friend. His persona of a post-acid master of ceremonies (who didn't take himself or anything else seriously) kept things loose. The guitar and keyboard interplay in "Love Me Two Times" and "Riders on the Storm" were worth the price of admission. The band played a lot from the L.A. Woman album, plus most of the songs that you'd expect. The segue from the raucous "Peace Frog" dropping into "Blue Sunday" was just lovely. The last encore, "Light My Fire" (what else?), featured some extended instrumental interplay that varied the most from the standard versions of songs.





The guest lead singer, David...

I look forward to the Outside Lands Festival because there's no better place to soak in a day and evening of music than smack-dab in the middle of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. The lineup is always as eclectic as the tastes of its host city, although I admittedly don’t spend much time in the electronica dome—no guitars! The production at Outside Lands is on par with pretty much any major festival, from Bonarroo to Coachella. There have been occasional hiccups such as the power cutting out on Radiohead a few years back, but each year Outside Lands runs more smoothly. That was certainly the case this year, although Leo Nocentelli would surely beg to differ.

Leo Nocentelli's Amp Issues

Whenever all four of the original Meters actually meet up onstage, it's a big deal to them and to legions of funkateers....

Everyone knows how far an engaging video can go toward advancing an artist or band’s career, or promoting a record—but making a music video costs major clams, right?

Fast forward (just a little bit) to 1965. I'm out of high school; I'm on the road a fair amount, but also playing in the NYC (and surrounds) nightclubs—six nights a week, and in many instances five-six shows a night. For a young aspiring musician, you couldn't beat this "basic training"—anywhere! Many of these clubs were in midtown Manhattan and in Greenwich Village. They included The Peppermint Lounge, The Wagon Wheel, The Headline Lounge, and further downtown we had Trude Heller's, The Eighth Wonder, The Village Barn (which later became Jimi’s Electric Lady Studios) and more.

I'll never forget the night my older brother burst my bubble about something I'd believed to be true. It was like finding out that there was no tooth fairy. I was in the ninth grade and had just come home from my very first Van Halen concert. Earlier that evening, Van Halen vocalist David Lee Roth had said something from the stage that thrilled me as much as Eddie Van Halen’s supersonic guitar pyrotechnics. It was as though Dave, king of all Jewish surfer dudes, had pointed me out in the back of the arena and spoken to me directly: "Hey kid! Yeah you! Up there in the balcony! Ya see this bottle of Jack here? I’m takin’ a sip for you, buddy … L’Chaim!"  I did a "play by play" recap of the concert to my older brother, an aspiring bassist who’d chosen not to attend, and waited for just the right moment to relay the big news. That's when I quoted the exact words of Mr. Roth, who’d made me and approximately 13,999 others swell with pride by saying “San Francisco—you guys are the best crowd of the whole tour!” ...