Rock This Town

So Secret Squirrel and I went to Jack's First Show on Friday night. We had a great time counting mullets and breast implants. The music was fantastic too!

The Stray Cats (original lineup! EEeeeeeeee!) started off, and they were the highlight for me. They were totally on top of their game. Of course Bryan Setzer has been busy with his orchestra and other stuff, so he's never stopped singing and performing, but the three of them put on an amazing show. There were only a few people who had obviously just come to see them- the Bettie Page bangs and tattooed sleeves and pompadours were pretty thin on the ground- but the whole audience caught on quickly and most of the floor section was on their feet after the first song. And they played my favorite, Fishnet Stockings, which was really unexpected.

Any group who has been around since the 1980's and can still vault over their drum kits and stand on the upright bass while playing...mad props. You guys are killer!

The Pretenders, to be fair, also played a wonderful set. (No Middle Of The Road though... hmph) However they flunked the "Know Your Audience" portion of the evening. Chrissie Hynde gave a shout out to all the animal activists in the audience.

This was met with an almost deafening silence. You could see her brain processing- Ok, you're in Fresno....maybe they didn't get it? So then she gave a shoutout to the vegetarians. Which perhaps isn't what you would want to do at a concert when ZZ-Top is the headliner, and you're following a rockabilly act, and you're in one of the only conservative patches of California.

There was booing. There was hissing. Secret Squirrel and I were still cool with her, until she stuck out her chest and flexed and said, "Well, I guess if you're not a vegetarian, you don't want to look like THIS!

Okay. For the record, she does look great, although a big part of that is due to the long shaggy bangs that cover a multitude of sins. (As I said to Secret Squirrel- Yeah, that's a pretty good long-range plan...if nobody's ever seen your forehead, who's to say how wrinkled it is? You could be a Shar-pei under there.)

However, the way not to endear yourself to your audience is to imply that they're a bunch of obese assholes.

And it may have had an unintended effect on Secret Squirrel and I. We skipped ZZ-Top and went to a steakhouse, where we both made a concerted effort to order the reddest meat we could find.