August 17 - 19

Well folks, it's been a busy summer so I haven't had too much time to blog as of late. However, today I'm making the effort! This past weekend is an example of the crazy times that have made up this summer.

August 17 - Gnarls Barkley, Central Park Summerstage
My company is a sponsor of CPSS so we get a certain amount of free tickets to shows all summer. So many people wanted to go to GB that names were drawn out of a hat. I WON!
We all had a similar assessment of the show. If we had paid $ for it we would have been pissed. The band was good but not great. Cee-lo kept asking us if we understood what songs like "Feng Shui" and "Necromancer" were about. I wanted to yell back "duh, we're in NYC, c'mon now!" The songs were similar to the album, no extra pizzazz, beats, dancing potatoes, etc. Overall, I enjoyed myself but definitely not the best show I've seen all summer.

August 18 - Tom Petty & The Allman Brothers, Tweeter Center
I was really excited for this show because I have never seen the Allman Bros. before. They did not disappoint and played a great mix of songs from favorites like "sweet melissa" to songs I don't even know the names of. Then, before TP & the Heartbreakers took the stage, Petty came out to help on a Dylan song and a Clapton song. AMAZING STUFF!
TP & the Heartbreakers were amazing as usual. Totally on the ball with all of their songs, jamming out and talking in all the right places and just a really fun experience. The crowd at Tweeter was fantastic and random strangers next to me would turn and sing and dance with me or input their thoughts about the current song. To me, that is what concerts are all about - the people in attendance and the music coming together, feeding off each other and kicking ass. Every Tom Petty show I have been to has this vibe.

August 19 - Amsterjam, Randall's Island
Due to a wayward baby's daddy, we got to the show about 3 hours late and missed Busta Rhymes (who apparently was taken about by 5-0 right after his set for that assault charge). We saw a fun band on the second stage, Pangaea, and then went over to the main stage to see LL Cool J, Foo Fighters & Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. LL was awesome. He put a lot of bounce into his live show and played a lot of old school songs. His wife even came out and danced with him for one song, awwwwww. Foo Fighters were also good, Dave Ghrol looked hotter than normal which was fun. Then, of course TP & the H were phenom as usual with Ghrol coming out to play the last few songs with them. It had been a perfect day for a show, not too hot and a slight mist of rain came down during the FF set. The show had grossly undersold so there were barely any people compared to last year but it was great not to have to wait on line for drinks and to be close to the stage and still have plenty of room to dance.

And that my friends is that.