40 Year Old Pepper

Time to catch up on what we did on the weekend. On Saturday we went to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, our second in three months. This was a little quirky and slightly difficult to explain. The concert was Sgt Pepper's at 40 and it was the music of the Beatles, especially the songs from the Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, played by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Cheap Trick, Aimee Mann, Joan Osborne, Ian Ball (lead singer for Gomez), Rob Laufer (was George Harrison in Beatlemania), and Al Jourgensen (lead singer for Ministries). What a mix.

What attracted me to the concert was Aimee Mann and Joan Osborne, two of our favorite performers. It turns out everyone was great. The first half of the show was the special guest vocalists singing their favorite Beatles songs and the second half was all the performers singing all the songs from Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. We learned a lot about Cheap Trick. Their first album was produced by the same guy who did Sgt. Pepper and the sound guy, Geoffrey Emerick, also did both albums. He also helped with the sound at the Hollywood Bowl for the concert. Cool! Some people have compared Cheap Trick with the Beatles and I have to say they sounded great on Saturday night.

Overall, it was a great time. I was more impressed with Joan Osborne and Cheep Trick then with Aimee Mann. Aimee did some pretty obscure stuff that I had never heard of before which made it harder to get into. Joan Osborn, in my opinion, was amazing. Her slightly bluesy rendition of Lady Madonna was great. The weird one was Al Jourgensen doing an Industrial Metal version of I Want You (She's So Heavy) - at least that's what I think he was singing. We were laughing as he belted out the lyrics - more like yelled and screamed the lyrics - HA!

The night ended with one encore with everyone sing All You Need Is Love.

We were in the nose bleed seats and most of the performers were little dots in the distance but the tickets were cheap ($45 for both our tickets) and you could see them on the big screen so we didn't miss much. I had my doubts going in but I came out entertained and happy. Sorry, no cameras were allowed so no pictures.

Our next concert is coming up in October - The Eagles with the Dixie Chicks! Cool Beans!