I saw the EAGLES!!!

Holy shit! I'm finally updating my blog for the first time since March! Since March work has actually been busy (imagine that!) and in what little free time I had, I wasn't motivated to write anything. A lot of the reason is that things have been going pretty well, which leaves me less stuff to bitch about.

So, let's get to the Eagles. On Monday Kristin and I left home on our way to some fancy hotel on the original site of the Boston Tea Party. All was going well on the ride down, except that the GPS was being a bit finicky and kept losing satellite signal. Just as we were about to get off of I93 in downtown Boston, it went tits-up and refused to work at all. Fantastic timing. The one thing I immediately realized upon being in the middle of downtown Boston with a non-functional GPS and a wife that hates it when I lose my cool, is that I was over my head and way out of my element. I've always felt that I have a very good sense of direction, and if I don't have somebody screaming "stop and ask for directions!!!" in my ear every 30 seconds, that I can always find my way anywhere. I may not get there on the first try, but if I just think my way through, I'll find it. Boston, however, has shaken that confidence in a way that I never expected. Boston is nothing but a clusterfuck of 1 way streets, all of which change name every fucking block! When you finally get your bearings straight and realize where you need to go, the street name changes, or the place you need to be is at the wrong end of a 1 way street. Unlike any other city in the country, you can't just go "around" the 1 way street, because the next 5 are likely to take you to entirely different parts of the city. It's like you just got sucked into a black fucking hole and without warning, you're at the other end of the universe.

So anyway, an hour later we got to our hotel which was about a half mile from where we got off of I93. Nice place. Valet parking. $39/day to park. It's free to park at Alwife, but apparently there's a $39 stupid-fee. No, the fee isn't stupid, it's a fee for retards who are too short sighted to realize that driving in Boston is just plain stupid. But at least some other dude parked the Jeep for me. Thank God I didn't take one of my cars or I would have had to kill the guy instead of letting him park the car for me.

The hotel was nice. It was expensive, and the bed was just as uncomfortable as in cheap motels, but the place certainly was nice. After a few minutes that I needed to decompress, we took a walk to Quincy Market. We walked around there for a while. We had burritos for lunch and enjoyed the weather. Other than the great selection of foods, Quincy Market is a bit of a let-down. There aren't really any shops that appealed to me at all, and even Kristin found very few that she wanted to look in. After we had enough of that we decided to go through the acquarium. The acquarium was fun. We saw a variety of very large fish in the tanks along the walls as we walked up the outside spiral. In the middle is one very large tank with another spiral walkway. In the large tank there were some sharks, some very large turtles and a bunch of other crap. Overall, it was a nice time.

So anyway, back to the hotel, then onto the T to get to the Banknorth Garden. We got there early and ate pizza across the street. Finally, we got over to the Garden, stood in line, then took our seats in the 18th row directly across the floor from the stage. They weren't the best seats, but they weren't the nose-bleeds either.

At about 8:20, the lights went dark and on walked a lot of the "other" musicians to the stage, followed by the 4 Eagles. Recall that there used to be 5 of them, but when they shitcanned Don Felder, they replaced him with a guitarist who isn't really part of the band, which I think is a shame. The 4 line up straight across the stage, with the guitarist shoved way over to the right.

They opened with "How Long". It's a great song of their new album, but it sounds like old-school Eagles, and for good reason. It's a song written by JD Souther, who wrote a few of their earliest songs. They've performed the song live since the early days, so it really is an old Eagles tune that just took until now to get released. After that they played about 4 or 5 more songs off their new album.

And then, there it was. The stage went dark, and a single red light was illuminating a trumpet player at the rear of the stage. As soon as he started playing, I recognized it as the intro to Hotel California. Over the years they've made subtle changes to the song to keep it fresh, but I immediately recognized this intro because it's the same intro they used on their "Farewell 1" DVD. The rest of the crowd apparently didn't recognize it yet, because they were completely silent. After he played his part, the first 6 familiar notes on the guitar were played and the crowd went bullshit. I couldn't even hear the next bar of the song. The crowd settled, and I got into my "Hotel California Trance". This is something that Kristin can tell you all about, and she'll probably laugh at me the whole time she tells it. Every time I hear that song, I sit there like a retard at the Chuckie Cheese rocking back and forth, completely consumed by the sound. Nothing interrupts me, and I wind up in a place that I can't really describe. The sound of those 3 guitars plus Schmitt's bass guitar playing that funky rythm mesmirizes me every single time. Seeing it live took that to an entirely different level. Sure, the sonics are nowhere near as good as what I hear at home, but there's something different about it when you hear it at this level, with that much sound and that much energy. My eyes were glued to the big screen monitors, watching how Joe Walsh and the new guitarist (Stewart something) played those notes that I've heard a million times. I listened to henley sound as good as ever, although I couldn't wait for him to finish so I could hear the solo. Finally Henley was done, and Stewart started in on his portion of the solo. It was magic. His guitar screamed with all of the passion that he just didn't have on the Farewell 1 DVD. He's no Don Felder, but he sure fooled me on this song. Quickly his solo transitioned into Joe Walsh's part, which sounded as perfect as always. After Joe's part, the two of them both play the last 1/3 of the solo together, which gives it a bigger-than-huge kind of sound, but also requires them to both be in synch with each other. This part of the solo pretty near made me piss myself. It sounded bigger, fuller, richer than I've ever heard it in any of my recorded versions. When the song finally came to an end, I think I screamed like a sissy who just saw a spider in his boyfriend's hair. I could have listened to that song 50 more times and not gotten the least bit bored with it.

The only problem with playing your biggest hit that early in the set, is that it really doesn't give the momentum anywhere to go. I've always felt that a band's "signature" song should be played near the end, perhaps right before the final encore. That way the entire evening can build up to that one moment, and then just give you that last encore to help bring you back down to earth. When you show your best hand so early, you just can't keep the same level of excitement out of the crowd for the rest of the night. Of course, that's not to say that the rest of the concert was dull. It was every bit as good as you could expect, but I got so into Hotel California, that I was actually a bit burned out afterward. But, that didn't stop me from enjoying every single song they played. All told, they played 12-13 songs off their new album, and the overwhelming majority of their previous hits. The concert didn't end until around 11:45, and they played pretty much non stop except for a 20 minute intermission between sets, and a couple very short breaks before their two encores.

I've wanted to see the Eagles since they re-formed in the 90s, and I'm incredibly happy that I finally was able to do it. I regret that I wasn't able to see them while they still had Don Felder, but at least I got to see the rest of them, and to hear so many of my favorite songs sung live. It was an incredible experience and I'm glad that I got to share it with Kristin.

By the time we got back to our hotel at around 1:00, we were beat and after quick showers, we were done. We got up on Tuesday morning, packed up and got going. Rather than hop right onto I93, I wanted to shoot through town over to Commonwealth Ave (rt 2) so I could check out the Boston Guitar Center. This time we were armed with a detailed map so getting there should be a simple matter of just 2 or 3 turns.

Wrong. The clusterfuck that is Boston once again showed me that my navigation skills are nowhere near adequate to pilot an automobile in that fucking city. For the first few hundred yards it was all going fine, but we came to one of those wonderful 5 way intersections where the road we needed to be on was apparently not one of the choices, and within a block or two after that we were completely lost and had no idea where we were on the map that was so clearly drawn. After my usual bout of swearing at everything that I can find a swear word for, and being yelled at and given more directions from my copilot, we found our way and just had to shoot up one more street to get to our destination. As usual, when we get to that street, it's a 1 way, and not the way we need! Using my typical navigational skillset, I figured that we could go up one more light and take a 1-way street going the right way and get us where we needed to be. But as usual, Boston streets follow absolutely no logic whatsoever, and when I did what I'd hoped would bring us sucess, it wound up dumping us on the goddamned Mass Pike!!! No signage at all when I turned onto that godforsaken road, but instead of being yet another road to oblivion, this was an onramp for the pike. I can't tell you how badly I just wanted to throw my still non-functional GPS right out of the fucking window. The only reason that I didn't was because Kristin, who was already so pissed off at me that she wouldn't talk to me, would have probably demanded a divorce on the spot. I can't ever remember being so pissed off in my life as I was during my 2 driving excursions during my 30 hour stay in Boston. At that point I was able to get myself back to rt 2, but I was far too pissed off to even want to see the guitar store, so rather than back-track on Rt 2, I just drove home. Just to add insult to injury, as soon as I got off the pike onto I95 (toward Rt 2), the stupid fucking GPS started working and didn't so much as hiccup for the rest of the ride home now that I had no use for it and knew exactly where I was going.