Anyone see Roth in Florida last night?

[Mambo Slammer Casalad]

Reviews? Comments? Anyone?

[Executionor]

So quiet you could hear a pin drop! I had no idea he was going to be in Florida.

It does sound like Sam and his crew had a great time though. Vince, ya had a great review there! Sounds like u had one hell of a time.

Edward, I wish ya well. If you never give me anymore music, I still have my favorite 6 albums to listen to. God bless ya man!

Peace on earth, good will to men!

[Zahzoo]

The whole concert was canceled for some reason...

[dirtymovies]

Originally posted by Zahzoo:
The whole concert was canceled for some reason...

I guess that's why I couldn't find reviews!

[QBF5150]

The concert was not cancelled. I was there. It was called "Rocktoberfest" and was held on the grounds of "Fantasy of Flight" (which is an aviation museum) off of I-4 near Lakeland and Plant City, Florida. It is basically in the middle of the state, readily accessible to Tampa and Orlando. It was being promoted by radio station 102.5. They were promoting the show on classic rock radio stations throughout the state. The "Fantasy of Flight" grounds' listed capacity is 100,000 people.

The show went from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. General admission tickets were $80 each, while "VIP" tickets were $250 each. The lineup included Dokken, Warrant, Quiet Riot, Joan Jett, Billy Squier, Meat Loaf, Lynard Skynard, and David Lee Roth. Technically, Dave was the headliner, being that he was the final act to play that night. However, the advertisements on the radio and the billboards along I-4 all promoted Skynard as the main act. This was the 25th anniversary of their tragic plane crash, and Plant City, Florida is Skynard Country, if you know what I mean.

My wife and I arrived at 6 p.m., just in time to see Meat Loaf. While the venue holds 100,000 people, I had been told that the show needed 20,000 people just to break even. Well, my visual estimate upon arrival was that there were, at most, 2,500 people there. I would bet there were even less. It was amazing to look out over what was basically an empty football field dotted with empty garbage cans, waiting for an audience that never came.

The set-up itself was bizarre. There were two stages, one right next to the other. As one act would play, the other would be setting up right next to them. In the distance behind the stage, you could see the museum. Immediately behind the right-hand stage, you could see a U-Haul moving van. There was no video screen. In front of the two stages was a 15-foot strip of lawn. Then, in front of that, was a 75 to 85 foot lake! (Meat Loaf kept asking why they built a moat in front of the stage.) Then there was a chain link fence. Then there was the field. In the center of the field was a 50 x 50 foot VIP area that was sectioned off by non-permant orange plastic fencing and housed dozens off plastic lawn chairs. This was the VIP area! In the middle of the VIP area was the sound board and spotlights. The rest of us were past this.

The crowd was a rag-tag group of what appeared to be Skynard fans - similar to the folks that you see in Daytona Beach for Bike Week. I did see one normal-looking guy with a Fair Warning t-shirt and a few guys with Dave t-shirts. Otherwise, my wife and I noticed little overt signs of support for Dave.

Skynard came on after dark (around 7:30 p.m.). They were good, and the tattered, wasted hill-billy rock crowd went nuts. "Gimmee Three Steps" wasn't just a great song, it was something they could all relate to. When Skynard left before their encore, the sparse crowd could hardly muster an ovation. "Free Bird" closed the show in predictable fashion.

Then came the exodus. Of the 1,500-2,000 fans that watched Skynard, at least half left before Dave even hit the stage. When Dave came out, there were 50 back-stage pass winners on that strip of lawn right in front of the stage. There were maybe 250 people in the VIP section, with most of them on the other side of the sound board in front of the stage Skynard had been on. There were 400-500 of us on the lawn beyond that.

The funny thing was how normal the Dave crowd looked after the Skynard fans left. It was actually a younger crowd, with what looked like a lot of college-aged guys, probably from USF and UCF.

Dave was dynamite. He opened with Hot for Teacher, and then played Panama, And the Cradle Will Rock, Mean Street, and Dance the Night Away. He was dreesed in a shiny silver-and-black suit that flared out with big bell-bottoms. He was in great shape and gave us a lot of his signature kicks. His show continued with a mixture of cover tunes, VH classics, and radio staples. California Girls, Just a Gigilo, Pretty Woman, Eruption, You Really Got Me, Ice Cream Man, Yankee Rose, Little Dreamer, I'm the One, Atomic Punk, D.O.A., Little Dreamer, and So This is Love were performed to perfection. Dave's guitarist was Eddie, note-for-note. Dave's voice was far superior to the Kermit the Frog days of YFLM and BOVI. He sounded like the 1984 Dave, letting out screams that I didn't think he could do anymore.

Unfortunately, the exodus of people continued throughout the show, and I would gues that only 300-400 people remained by the end. Nevertheless, Dave saved the best for last, knocking off Everybody Wants Some, Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love and Jump off with a passion and attitude of a hungry, up-and-coming band. Dave's sword dance was absolutely amazing, and his tow-touching jump off the drum riser floored the 20 year-olds who thought that Nirvana invented rock and roll.

This was the first time my wife and I had ever seen Dave, and we were not not disappointed. We loved it. To be honest, there could have been 10 people there, and we would have had a blast. Dave performed like he was at the U.S. Festival.

How can such a great performance be wasted on such a bad venue and such a small crowd? I felt bad for Dave, wondering what was going on in his mind as he played to such a pathetic festival. It was not as bad as Spinal Tap with the puppet show, but it wasn't far off.

I think the thing is, it's not that Dave left us. We, the rock audience (what's left of us), have left him. I thought about the more pedestrian hard rock acts that have thrived over the years and continue to thrive today -Aerosmith, AC/DC, Bon Jovi - and lamented Van Halen's (and Dave's) predicament. Van Halen, almost forgotten today, was bigger, better, more popular, then all of them, both live and on record. The difference is that those bands stayed together, and have continued to employ the record companies, promoters, managers, and other image-makers that are essential to keeping a band's image intact. All three bands have sold-out their rock-and-roll credibility and are, musically, irrelevant. However, all three continue to sell millions of records. Van Halen, for reasons unknown to me, have pursued a series of suicidal career moves that have banished them to oblivion and destroyed their pop image.

[ October 21, 2002, 09:06 AM: Message edited by: QBF5150 ]

[aajonny]

300 to 400 people? Guess Sammy was right on VH1 when he said Dave would have to go back to playing small gigs. This is getting very sad.

[Dennis]

Thanks for the review QBF5150. I know exactly the area your talking about.

To everyone else...think the dueling banjos theme from deliverance. Thats where this was held. lol.....

[JMJ]

300-400 people?

i don't know whether to laugh or cry anymore

JMJ

[Top Jimmy #1]

Hey let's get something straight here: Dave is performing great right now, his agent is the one who should be shot. I, for one, have reservations in Vegas on the 6th-7th of Dec, in case the Alladin show happens. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I wish DLR would put out a live full-length DVD of the tour, with a full show on it, and a C.D. of the show released at the same time. I also think that both those products should have a couple of new DLR songs. [img]graemlins/devil.gif[/img]
I would spend my money on that.
Too bad him and Sammy didn't put out a Tour DVD together, that would have smoked!!!! I'm quite sure they would have NEVER agreed on the $$ terms, though..... [img]graemlins/irked.gif[/img]

[man of the people]

Roth plays to 400 and Sam sells 6,000 records. It's over Johnny. Nowhere to go from here except for retirement.

[D]

(Sounds of crickets chirping)

[nc cherone fan]

Sounds like a gig out of Spinal Tap. Didn't see their name on that bill but I'm sure they are somewhere between Dokken and the puppet show.

[Eddymon]

400-600 people? [img]graemlins/wtf.gif[/img]

Sam has sold around 6,000 copies of "not 4 sale"?

Lets see, "if" Sammy DOES reunite with VH, expect those sales to go up significantly.

He has gone up against new releases from ELVIS, and Bon Jovi.
6,000 sales of an album that hasn't had any push what so ever from the label, and no single on the radio ain't that bad. He wasn't planning on putting out an album this year, it was just something he threw together.
I don't know what his contract has in it, but maybe he owed an album in a certain amount of time, and with the possibility of another project (ie: VH or Planet Us), he wanted to satisfy the label.
This was all recorded long before the Sam & Dave tour came to fruition, and maybe there is something to Mike's rather constant presence at Sammy's shows.

[QBF5150]

Let me mention one other thing about the show that I forgot to mention. During Dave's show, there was a small Bobcat-style vehicle with a lift machine that was hauling away equipment from the sound-board area that was right in the middle of the VIP section. They must have made three seperate hauls during Dave's show, and, each time the vehicle would back up to drive away, it would make that "beep....beep....beep" sound that trucks make while backing up.

Also, on the south side of the "Fantasy of Flight" museum was a mobile home park! I am not making this up. We had to walk past this mobile home park to get to the lot where we were parked, and, as we walked back, there were guys sitting outside of their mobile homes, drinking beer, and yelling "Freebird" and "Skynard" at us Roth fans as we walked by.

But, let me tell you, 300 of us left that show after Jump, and we all left with the biggest grins on our faces, bigger than those drunk Skynard fans had as they hollered at us. We had just seen perhaps the greatest front man in the history of rock and roll, and he was great. It kind of reminds me of the stories of people who saw Shoeless Joe Jackson playing baseball under an assumed name in some small back-woods town after he had been banned from baseball.

There is a beauty, a nobility, in lost causes. Lost causes can be glorious. Remember the Crusades. Remember the Alamo! Indeed, there were scarcely more of us at the "Fantasy of Flight" field than defended the Alamo 150 years ago.

Arguing about Dave versus Sammy misses the point. Both are lost causes. They are both lost causes because Van Halen is a lost cause. As Eddie sits in seclusion, he is a lost cause also.

But you and I know the truth. Van Halen, Fair Warning, 1984, 5150 are glorious moments in a mostly mudane pop culture. They made us feel alive, made us smile, made us feel like we could take on the whole world. Don't they still?

Eddie is the greatest guitar player in rock history. We know it every time we hear Eddie's solo on Jump or tapped-middle-section on Dance the Night Away or wail and scream opposite Sammy before charging into Best of Both Worlds. We know Dave's greatness as a frontman every time we listen to him rap in the middle of Everybody Wants Some or watch him clown around with Miss Chemistry in Hot for Teacher. We know that Sammy kept alive a great rock band every time we listen to 5150, every time he tells us to dry our eyes in Dreams, every time he asks us if this feels like summer or what.

As Van Halen fans, we can mope around about Dave's shows and Sammy's album sales, but shouldn't we instead be celebrating. We've got something fewer and fewer people have. They are missing out, and we should be just as pround of Van Halen as ever.

Screw MTV, Rolling Stone magazine, Bon Jovi, the pop charts, etc. Screw them all. They would have been kissing Van Halen's feet if the reunion had gone on in 1997. It would have been the biggest tour in American rock history, but it wasn't and it won't be again. Does that matter? Not to me it doesn't. As long as Dave (or even Sam) is out there, keeping the flame alive, we have a great and glorious cause.

Too bad we don't have Eddie out there in the fight. Our chances would be pretty good then, don't you think?

[ October 21, 2002, 01:52 PM: Message edited by: QBF5150 ]

[QBF5150]

[ October 21, 2002, 01:46 PM: Message edited by: QBF5150 ]