Hey there,

Is it me or do the shows just keep coming? I swear everyone is on tour this year. From Springsteen to R.E.M to even the Doors everyone is making jingle as we head into the fall. I’m pretty sure I saw the Beatles playing somewhere (actually believe it or not their last live show was in the summer of 1966). Well, I was there for a few of the shows as usual and met some new friends along the way. So get a drink, have a snack and sit back and enjoy . . .

"Look Over There, Where?"
Joe Jackson Band @ The HOB, Los Angeles, Thurs. Aug 28 2003

Well my promise not to go to a show after playing softball was short lived because I had a 9pm game in Santa Monica and TM Lisa, who I was going to show with, had practice ‘til 9pm in nearby Rancho Park. So, I picked her up and we both changed and cooled down prior to going to the House of Blues to see Joe Jackson. If this sounds familiar, well it should as we saw Joe back in March at the El Rey theater in Los Angeles. By the way, I went 1-3 with 2 runs scored, a walk and yes, I’ll admit it a K. Thankfully, I didn’t have to buy the team beer because I had to go to the show. Priorities. Anyway, the HoB is smaller and more intimate than the El Rey, so we wanted to get a good spot and when we arrived Joe had just taken the stage with a solo piano version of "Steppin’ Out", one of my favorite tunes by him. We situated ourselves in front of the rails by the bar on the left side. The show was great and thankfully I was not as swampy as I thought I would be, but it was hot in the House of Blues as we would see later. Great energy by Joe and his band. The same band from "I’m the Man", "Look Sharp" and "Night and Day." And this is their last U.S tour before disbanding. I don’t get that at all. TM Lisa got her wish as "Fools In Love">"For Your Love">Fools in Love" was played. Very solid. Then during the latter part of the show things got a little strange. All of a sudden I felt a kick to my right shin, I looked over to see who kicked me and then looked down to see the woman who was standing next to me collapsing like a ton of bricks. Her boyfriend (he’s the one who accidentlly kicked me) helped her out and brought her to get some air. Very scary. TM Lisa of course caught the U.S Tour Finale in Anaheim. Don’t worry, we’ll see more of her and her family soon. Here’s the set list.

28 Aug 2003 – West Hollywood, CA, House of Blues – Sunset Strip
Steppin’ Out (solo)
One More Time
Take It Like A Man
Awkward Age
Down To London
Fools In Love/For Your Love
Fairy Dust
On Your Radio
Is She Really Going Out With Him?
Love At First Light
Real Men (solo)
Girl (Beatles cover) (solo)
A Slow Song (started solo)
Still Alive
Little Bit Stupid
Sunday Papers
Don’t Wanna Be Like That
Got The Time
encore:
Look Sharp!
It’s Different For Girls
I’m The Man

Random Top 5 "Simpsons" Lines
1. "Your manager told you to shut up!" Nelson Munce to Robert Goulet when he showed up to play Bart’s Casino. Goulet responded with "Vera said that?" Vera is his wife.

2."I left my Porsche keys in Mrs. Glick" Dr. Hibbard, after Lisa urged on the pulpit for the thief of the church basket money to come clean.

3."This sounds like Rock and or Roll" Rev. Timothy Lovejoy after Bart changed the psalm music to the chords of Iron Butterfly’s "Ana Gada Da Vida"

4."Can’t Talk Now Flanders, I have a class To Teach" —Homer, "But You Rang My Bell" Ned Flanders. After Homer stops by on his way to teaching How to have a sucessful marriage at the local community center.

5."Gee Mr. Burns, you’re the richest guy I know. Way richer than Lenny" Homer Simpson to Mr. Burns about money.

No Poppa Funk, No Problem
The 24th Annual Long Beach Blues Festival Sat. Aug 30, 2003

No rest for the weary as I headed down to Long Beach to TM Lisa’s abode to meet up with her and her husband BG plus my good friend Stephanie for a day of the blues in the sun at Cal State Long Beach. It took us a little while to get into the venue as we walked around the campus and took in the sights. Okay, so we were just misdirected, whatever you want to call it, but we could hear the end of the BluesMasters Jam that featured amongst others Bob Margolin and PineTop Perkins. True or False: I’m going to name my first kid Pinetop. It is true. I digress,as we finally entered, actually I had to go thru the main gate because I screwed up and didnt’ get a VIP ticket, but that didn’t really matter at all. Anyway, as the others enjoyed their complementary beverage, I went around the venue and checked out the scene. First of all, I got some Cajun Shrimp to accompany me on my journey. Not bad, but fried. So I had to wash it down with a Bud. Now drinking in the sun always gets me, so my goal was to pace myself. "Slow and Steady wins the Race"—Marge Simpson. So as I’m talking to the Yankee fan about the pennant race, TM Lisa and co. come out of the VIP area and plant themselves right by the KLON merchandise stand. We were shortly joined by Dave and Dave along with their valet’s for the day, Kara and Erica.

It’s always good to have D2 there because he is not afraid to get food. I just have to give him a shout out for bringing the food to us in a timely and not over abundant fashion. Meanwhile the music was on. Charlie Musselwhite performed a solid bluesy set wth the Continental Drifters and Keb’ Mo came out and brought the ladies to their feet with his energetic style. There was even an "Electric Slide" type of dance going on in front of us. Very entertaining watching a whitle woman trying to keep up the rhythm dancing among a large group of dare I say large black women. "White people dance like this" —"it’s so true, we’re so lame"—Homer Finally the headliner act, the Neville Brothers took the stage with special guest Leo Nocentelli. I was pysched. Two Original Meters on the stage, but upon furthur review, there was no Art Neville. Just Charles, Aaron and Ivan today. Cyrill was out as well. They played well, but I needed Poppa Funk. He was out with complications due to his back surgery from last year. But the word on the street is that he’ll be playing with the Funky Meters this fall around New Orleans. So say a prayer. BG rallied the troups after a solid "People Say" and called it a day. I did get a poster for the show too. Plus passes for the next day featuring Al Green and Joe Cocker with Leo sitting in, but I couldn’t answer the bell. Something to do with not keeping my pace and the effect the sun has on beer intake. It’s got to be a science project or something like that. Oh and yes, I must apologize to Mo for missing Billy Preston. Mo is on a Billy Preston mission. Good luck to him and his sponsors.

Johnny Cash, Warren Zevon and John Ritter and Mr. Carlson too

They say it always happens in three’s and this was it. I mean Mercury was in Retrograde when all this went down. No offense, but we all knew about Warren’s condition and that wasn’t much of a surprise. Check out his new album it’s so on the target about what he was going through his last years of his life. The same about Johnny Cash. After his wife died earlier this year, you kind of knew it was only going to be a matter of time when Johnny would check out. The same thing happened to my Papa in April of 1982. My grandmother died in Dec of 1981 and maybe it was a broken heart, but he joined her rather quickly. But John Ritter came out of left field. Not even Vegas had it on the board. He was always one of my favorites too. The "Three’s Company" episode when he imitates Mr. Furley goes down as my all-time favorite moment. And his new show isn’t bad either. They ‘get’ you the way "Friends" used to ‘get’ us. Good for ABC for letting the show go on. We’ll see how long. And finally a fine farewell to Gordon Jump, Mr. Carlson on "WKRP in Cincinatti", a great show which just celebrated it’s 25th Anniversarry last week. Incidentally, Jump was one of three or the original cast who returned for "The New WKRP in Cinncinatii which aired from 1991-93. Can you name the two others? The original still can be seen weekends at midnight on TV LAND.

I don’t know, Sixty Bucks Sounds like A lot

The Allman Brothers Band and Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe Sunday September 7th, 2003 @ The Greek Theatre, L.A

Okay this was one of those show were we debated until the last possible minute to go and of course we went scored great seats and had a fun time. A new combination skating for Team PAKM had Fritz centering myself and J-par for the evening. Rak scored a single 10th row center seat earlier in the day and J-par and I scored 20th row but to the left. We would never see those seats. Fritz set up his taping gear early and wouldn’t you know it we were the first ones there. That was kind of cool. It was nice to see the place fill up. Karl came on first right around 7 to a pretty empty Greek. That’s when Molasses and the SF Saloon Chicas came to the party. Now Fritz has very specific rules when he is taping the show and the single most important one for obvious reasons is ‘no talking’ during the show. On his tombstone it’s going to read, "If you talk, then you get clipped." Well, I don’t know what it was, but Molasses started cracking up which just drove Fritz nuts. It was very funny, but since the Chicas and Molasses wanted to hang they decided it was time to go. Meanwhile, KDTU played on and treated the crowd to it’s usual array of funk and what I like to call jazz. First of all, how cool to have both Karl Denson and Warren Haynes on the same bill and secondly to be outside on a picturesque night at the end of the summer in Los Angeles. Anyway as much as I love the KDTU, I would prefer to see them in a smaller more intimate place. But their jamming took us into a nice break before the ABB took the stage.

Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe
Greek Theatre, Los Angeles,
Sunday September 7, 2003

1. Check Out Your Mind
2. New York City->
3. Bag of Funk
4. Nasty Disposition->
5. Manic Depression->
6. Drums->
7. Reality->
8. Chance With You

So now it was just Fritz, J-par and myself. I ran into Molasses at Gee-Mo’s seats and somehow she lost the SF Chicas. Oh great with the Allman’s ready to hit the stage too, but that would be alright. Finally the ABB came on and launched right into a ‘Revival>Statesboro Blues" to open the show. Great start and the fans were into it. However, I had to use the facility and sure enough who do I run into but the SF Chicas. Well the next thing you know the Chicas are now dancing with me and J-par and being very considerate of Fritz’s taping policy. It was an all out great show. Karl Denson comes out for "Desdemona". And then Warren Haynes takes the microphone and introduces Marc Ford, Chris Robinson and fellow Mule mate, Matt Abts. They combine on a swampy rockin’ version of "Rock Me Baby" complete with Kate Hudson sitting indian style on the side of the stage. A great "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" came later on plus Warren’s version of Van Morrison’s "Into the Mystic" is such a keeper. Throw in "Dreams", "Whipping Post" and a "Layla" encore and what you’ve got their my friend is a keeper. Oh and by the way, Jeers to D1 for missing the show. All that kid talks about is the Allman Brothers and not only does he miss the show, but someone calls him and offers him tickets. I’m sure the Karaoke Sunday night at the Blue Whaler is much cooler.

Aallman Brothers Band
Sunday September 7, 2003
Greek Theater, Los Angeles

Revival
Statesboro Blues
Come and Go Blues
Woman Across The River
Old Before My Time
Wasted Words
No One To Run With
Desdemona (with Karl Denson, saxophone)
Rock Me Baby (with Chris Robinson, vocals; Mark Ford, guitar; Matt Abts, drums)
You Don’t Love Me
Melissa
In Memory of Elizabeth Reed (with Neil Larson, piano)
Into The Mystic
Dreams
.Whipping Post
=Encore==
Layla

My top 5 Will Ferrell Characters

5.Robert Goulet—seriously that sketch is brilliant. From the duet with Jay Z to the musical featuring his brother and daughter, "Red Ships Of Spain". What’s with me and Robert Goulet today?

4.Neil Diamond—of course. Watching his final episode on a re-run recently, Neil himself does a cameo joining Will as Neil on Weekend Update for "Cherry Baby". It is just amazing how Will does it so much justice. Neil reminds me of Leslie Nielsen now.

3.Harry Caray—it could be my favorite, I don’t know. All I know is that my sister Marcy makes me leave her voice mails starting with the line, "If the moon was made of cheese, would you eat it?" Plus all summer long CoCo P and I would walk around camp quoting Caray err. Will doing Caray.

2.Ted Brogan—I don’t know if this was a reoccuring one or not, but the one sketch I remember is that Rachel Dratch was delivering a baby and she had 37 year old Ted Brogan, basically a dude. He bets on hockey and when questioned about it he says, "Hey I’m a baby, I don’t know any better!"

1.The Devil—So good. I don’t think Comedy Central repeats this one. But Garth Brooks is a song writer who offers his soul to the devil for a love song, well out comes Will dressed in this horrific mask and horns but is trying to come up with a love song. The problem is that he’s not that good. It was on during the 25th season. On his way out after disgracing himself, he say "Take her easy" then pauses and starts to sing "Take her easy, she’s my lady and that’s wha . . hey, that could be . . . no"and at the same time Garth says no. Well played.

Wow the Beer Lines were Long Tonight
The Dead- Verizon Amphitheater, Irvine CA Thurs. Sept. 18, 2003

Ah yes, a home game. What could be better the Dead are in town? We’ve got tickets, we’ve got good people, we’ve got good parking and we’ve got game going on too. Well see for yourself. Team Itzy featured Dave2, Summertime and Dr. Bruce and his valet Julie. Being the veteran that I am, I took the liberty of packing the cooler prior to the arrival of everyone so we could hit the road and battle the 405 south to Irvine. It took us around 2 hours to get there and we had the carpool lane, so it was gnarly out there. Anyway, we got to our seats in plenty of time and the Dead finally came on around 7:45pm, pretty late start. Out of the gate they got us with a "Help>Slip>Hard to Handle" and Joan and the boys had the place feeling good. Joan Osborne has really come into her own and I love the fact that she calls playing with the Dead ‘like hanging out with a bunch of your eccentric uncles.’ They’ve really taken a shine to her as well as you they look as they’re having a pretty good time up there. Once the first notes of "Down the Road" hit, you know where this hombre went. Once I returned, they launched into a tight "Ramble on Rose". Joan went into a Dead original and once again I was missing in action. A set closer of Bertha was just pure rock and or roll. Blevin moment of the night. Some hoser knocked over 4 of our beers that were "safely" under D2s seat. He made up for it. I think he and Doug2 are going to Islands for lunchdate next Tuesday. The second set opened up with a nice version of "Friend of the Devil" with a very cool intro. But here’s where even I get a little confused as they went into the Ratdog trilogy of "Even So>the Deep End>October’s Queen" then another Mickey led "Only the Strange Remain." Don’t get me wrong it was played top notch, but I’m pretty sure the interest level amongst many a Head probably dwindled and the concessions probably picked up around then too. I know choosers can’t be beggars, but I suggest that at least Bobby leave that stuff with Ratdog, as for Mickey, well email off list and we’ll talk. He’s so great at drumming, let him concentrate on that, end of story. A "Wheel>Other One" and we were off into a huge Drums with Mickey going nuts in a mask and a what looked to be a doctor’s coat banging away on this Xylophone type machine. Billy is so tight when he’s playing. They were joined by former Other One and present day Phil and Friend, John Molo for the extendend drums. They launched into a Joan led "China Doll" after space and really rocked out with a set closer of "Throwin>Franklin’s Tower". An encore of "We Bid You Goodnight" and the game was over just like that. It left me wanting a little more and wondering why the song selection was all over the place. Once again the playing was fine.

9/18/03 Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, Irvine, CA
I: Jam > Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Hard to Handle > Down the Road > Ramble On Rose, Strawberry Fields > Mountains of the Moon > All That We Are > Bertha

II: Friend of the Devil > Even So > October Queen > The Deep End > Only the Strange Remain > The Wheel > The Other One > Drums* > Space > China Doll > Throwing Stones > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower

E: And We Bid You Goodnight
*-w/ John Molo

Same Team, but This time It’s a Home Game

_The Dead@ Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View, CA
Friday September 19, 2003_

Well the plan was for me and Dr. Bruce to cruise up to Mountain View and check out the show and hang in the Bay area and maybe hit the Gorge show on Sunday if we felt like it. Well Dr. Bruce couldn’t answer the bell, maybe it was too much on Thursday, maybe it was his valet Julie, who knows, but all I knew is that I was going regardless. My first destination was at Kash’s folks place in Atherton a mere five hours north of Los Angeles. No problem as my buddy Dewey hooked me up with an Explorer for the weekend and I was in full road trip mode. Incidentally, Kash is TM Lisa’s cousin, whom I met in Maine at her wedding last fall. How strange. Great place too. I mean really a cool place to hang with a pool, jacuzzi, roomy, good food, I could go for awhile. A big shout out to Kash for the hospitality. On to the show. I got a lift with some of Kash’s co-horts to the show and the party started on the car ride to Shoreline. We got their in plenty of time, but were waiting to park. I got out at some point and went in the show. As I was walking to my seat, I could hear playing and was like "did they already start" and sure enough "Lazy Lightning" was in full sway. And to boot, great seats next just left to the soundboard down the row. A real good set featuring a tremendous "Shakedown Street>Mr. Charlie" and once again a pure rock and roll version of "Jack Straw" to shut down the set. During the set break, I met up wth my good friend Danny and his girlfriend Shoshana. I had no idea that they were at the show, but thanks to cell phones I now had two buddies for the second set. It was one of those nights where everything worked out nicely. The music, the company and the whole vibe was really on. As we walked to Dan’s seats, not too far from where I started, I could hear them noodling into "Scarlet Begonias" so big. Easily in my top 5 Dead songs of all time. Then they played "Peggy-O" which I was so happy to hear. I’ve heard their version and I like the way they split up the verses between Bob, Phil and Joan. They do the same thing with "Stagger Lee" (played in the first set) and it really reinvents the song at least to me it does. The rest of the show was just great. I mean an "Uncle Johns" into Drums and out of Space with "Dark Star>Born Cross Eyed>He’s Gone" is just top notch. Ratdog’s Mark Karan joined the boys for "Dark Star". Karan is an original Other One by the way. The "He’s Gone" was so good, Bob really does a nice job with that one. They were supposed to play "Sugaree" after the set closer of "I Know You Rider", but ran out of time. The "Iko Iko" encore was a great way to close down a home win. After the show, we finally ended up back at Kash’s after a pit stop here and there. I slept for a few hours and went into SF. I ended up getting invited to see the Neville’s at the Monterey Jazz Festival, but passed and went to the Polk Street Fair for a little while before watching the Red Sox game. After a nap at my buddy JayRo’s place, I called an audible and cruised back down to Los Angeles. Which means I passed on the Gorge and was more than satisfied from the shows I saw. For some reason I did not get a poster. I think that will be only a temporary thing.

9/19/03 Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA
I: Jam > Lazy Lightning > Supplication > China Cat Sunflower > Reuben and Cerise > A Little Piece for You > Shakedown Street > Mr. Charlie > Stagger Lee > Self Defense > Jack Straw

II: Jam > Scarlet Begonias > Peggy-O > Uncle John’s Band > Drums > Space* > Dark Star* > Born Cross-Eyed > He’s Gone > Days Between > I Know You Rider

E: Aiko Aiko
*-w/ Mark Karan

Pick Up the Pieces

Check out J-par’s band Rodeo Cold if your ever in the Los Angeles area. Jrap throws down some funky bass. He’s band is a cross between Little Feat and the New Riders. Plus they cover Elvin Bishop.
A lot of you have asked me how to get an Itzy’s Insight T-Shirt. I thought they were on www.diggiddy.com but maybe I was wrong.
So I’ve been getting a ridiculous amount of live music through trades and such as of late. Plenty of Meters, GD, Jerry Garcia projects, Phil stuff and Bob stuff. My apartment has been turned upside down.
I still have to get a couple of Michael Everett posters. Anyone out there help a brother out?
Simon and Garfunkel tickets are $120 a pop before service charges. My insides sources say that the two despise each other so much that even rehearsing is painful. Deadpool.com has a tour stoppage in Detroit about mid way through.

The S.N.L season premiere is October 4th. The samd day as ArrowFest in Irvine featuring, Journey, Forgeiner w/Lou Gramm, Cheap Trick, Eddie Money and YES. Or I could listen to the radio station for a day and hear every single one of their hits for free.

Who’s My Plus One?

Itzy

My vegetable of the month is Canadian Bacon.