'Color Blindness' A mix CD by Chip Kinney

I meant to do an update on Wednesday, but the powers of the Universe kept me busy. So when I eventually got home, I cocooned in front of a television for a little Netflix comfort.

And after yesterday, I am thankful for the powers of the Universe keeping me safe. I had an incident that could have been very nasty with deadly results… More on that Sunday. I gotta save something, right?

--Through my liars and backstabbers, I got into the exclusive and private show with Cheap Trick during the Furniture Market in High Point Tuesday night. Free beer and Cheap Trick… A realization of Heaven for me.

I met up with my network near the statue of John Coltrane in downtown High Point. We chewed the fat while I tried to contain my giddiness. I had so much giddiness… Yes, that’s right… More than a Japanese schoolgirl. If you could’ve hooked me up to a small town of 3,000 households, my giddiness could’ve powered their lights all night long.

We dodged the traffic and made our way into the BIG tent just outside the big convention building. We hit the bar and I was ready with my beer. One can in the hand and the other in my jacket pocket. The way the good Lord intended.

I was unsure about taking a digital camera, but as I looked around… Everyone had one. People had them in hand, there were some around the necks, and there were so many of them… I may have seen women with digital cameras as earrings. Oh well… I’ll snap a few with my camera phone. Not great but it’ll do.

The show started promptly at 7:30pm and we were at least 6 rows away from the stage barrier. But it seemed like there was more distance than that… More on that later.

The crowd atmosphere was very different from the usual Cheap Trick show… It was like a drunken Frat Party, except all the boys were in their early 30’s and WAY up. And to make it even more surreal… All those jokers were wearing suits! Yeah… They were drunk, wearing suits, high-fiving each other every 3.8 seconds, and lifting willing and unwilling women into the air. There was sex in the aisles!

Very weird. It just seemed wrong.

I looked around for the usual suspects that I see at Cheap Trick shows… And I found Clay Howard’s head towering above the crowd. He was over to the right facing the stage and too far away for yelling. I wouldn’t want to pierce the eardrums of any drunken Frat boys. So whenever he was looking my way, I opened up my cell phone and waved it hoping that he’d see the light source. He didn’t and after 3 attempts, I gave up.

As our network snaked our way step by step closer to the stage, I found Maddog (Friday Night Rock Party / WQFS 90.9 Guilford College Radio). He was too far to reach and the din of Cheap Trick (louder than a Boeing 757) kept me from yelling. Eventually, he turned around and pulled me up to the second row.

But the second row was more like the 10th row. For some reason, they had at least 10 feet between the stage and the barrier. That explained why the 6th row seemed so far away.

The good news… Cheap Trick were on!

Last year, I went to see them in Charlotte and Robin Zander’s voice wasn’t in the best of shape. I felt like the end was near for Cheap Trick.

I was wrong.

Zander’s voice was in powerful form! And with the rest of the band, they tore through a great set of Cheap Trick material. Here’s the set list that I wrote down for you Trick fans out there:

Hello There
Big Eyes
Oh Candy
Welcome To The World
If You Want My Love
California Man
I Want You To Want Me
I Know What I Want
Voices
High Roller
The Flame
Theme from That 70’s Show (think it’s called “Down On The Corner”)
Surrender
Dream Police (Encore)
Auf Wiedersehen
Goodnight

It was funny… I mentioned that it really wasn’t the Cheap Trick crowd and the proof came during the song “Voices”. There’s a part when the song slows down and the audience takes over the singing duties. No one was singing except Maddog, Clay, and myself. Rick Nielsen accepted this and stopped trying to coax the crowd along with the chorus they may have never heard. “Voices” charted in the Top Forty back when a lot of the audience were soiling their diapers.

Yeah, that made me feel kinda old for a minute. And it also made me sad for the folks that didn’t know the full goodness that is Cheap Trick.

Here’s some video captured by one of the members in my network… Enjoy.



Here’s the pics taken with my camera phone:








And here is Rick Nielsen’s guitar pick that I ended up with… The quintessential Trick souvenir...