What do writing and Rocklahoma have to do with each other? Absolutely nothing. Which is the reason why I didn’t work on my rewrite at all over the weekend. I had time. I just spent it napping (this old man can’t stay up that late for that long any more) and reading. So instead of blogging about writing. I’ll tell you about the concert.
Rocklahoma 2008 was 5 day concert of 80’s hair metal bands with some early 90’s stuff thrown in the mix.
Wednesday – we got there about 5 pm. We had just enough time to get the camper set up and run to the stage. Firehouse was first up Wednesday night then Jackyl with RATT last. Firehouse was OK. My wife likes them. Jackyl was great and hilarious. The only unfortunate aspect of the show was the lead singer, Jesse James Dupree, mooning the crowd with his pasty middle-aged buns. RATT was a bit of a disappointment for me. I don’t know why. I guess I was expecting more.
Thursday – it rained Thursday morning. We were not vigilant in making sure the water drained off the camper’s awning and it filled up with water. When we realized it, I ran out to lower one side to drain it off and managed to collapse the whole thing. It was my in-laws camper. So after the rain and destruction, we didn’t get out until late in the afternoon so I missed LA Guns. We did catch part of Dokken’s show and wished we had seen all of it. Sebastian Bach followed Dokken. His Skid Row songs were great, but we didn’t know any of his solo stuff. Last on Thursday was Brett Michaels. He sang a few new songs off his new solo album, several Poison standbys with some cover songs thrown in. I think his cover songs were the best, and his performance was one of the best of the weekend. I wish I could have seen him last year with Poison.
Friday – we were lazy again and missed Living Colour. Night Ranger was next. They have a good live show. I was surprised at how many metal heads knew all the words to ‘Sister Christian’. Extreme came on after Night Ranger. I didn’t care much for their set as a whole. It’s not that they were bad. I just didn’t think they were as good as they could have been. The most rockin’ song of the set was ‘Play With Me’. Triumph closed out the night. I’ve never listened to them much, but their live show rocked. I will be expanding my music collection with some Triumph songs.
Saturday – this is when things got interesting. We were watching Trixter when a storm blew in. We pulled out a poncho and shared it thinking that we could ride it out in our seats. Trixter kept playing but the wind picked up then it really started raining. Suddenly Trixter stopped playing (the weather shafted them, but they were doing great) and people starting running for shelter. We skedaddled with them and took shelter to the left of the main stage against a building. With in a minute, a 60 mph straight line winds hit and blew over the two side stages (one on each side of the main stage). We were about 50 yards from the left stage when it collapsed. With the wind, rain and thunder we never heard it fall. A big guy next to us was screaming into his cell phone that he was in the middle of a tornado and to come pick him up. A woman ran up crying and screaming about more tornadoes coming. After the wind and rain let up (there were no tornadoes then or on the way), we sloshed back to the camper and put on some dry clothes. It continued to rain off and on for the next 6 hours. About midnight my wife woke me up and said that they had started again. Warrant was supposed to start about then, and my wife REALLY wanted to see them so we rushed back to the stage. Sure enough Jani Lane was on stage belting it out as best he could with his cold. Despite the phlegm, Warrant put on a great show. I’d say they were second best so far after Brett Michaels.
Sunday – we started out with Steelheart. They put on a good show, but I felt bad for them. The crowd was a little subdued. I guess 5 days of inebriation takes a toll. Ace Frehley came on next. We watched part of his set then grabbed some supper. After Ace was Tesla who put on the best show of the whole weekend. They were awesome. I wish the Rocklahoma folks would have closed out the weekend with Tesla instead of Queensryche who were the last act. Queensryche performed Operation: Mindcrime in its entirety. While Mindcrime might be popular, I thought it was very weird, extremely depressing and only interesting in a car crash sort of way. It may have gotten better as it went along, but we’ll never know. We left halfway through.
And that was our mini vacation. Hope it wasn’t too boring for you. We had a ball and are thinking of going back next year.
Next up for the blog are reviews of Dean Koontz’s Odd Hours and James Rollins The Last Oracle that I read over the weekend.
