Now this little adventure started out very hectic and dysfunctional. The first day of the festival wasn’t until Friday, but I flew into Dallas for a pre-party with Ratt and the Scorpions. The plan was to leave for OKC the next day but things didn’t go quite as planned. What started out as a Rocklahoma-revisited idea turned into something else entirely. If you have read some of the other posts you know that I’ve got a little crew or musicians and we have made two very successful jaunts to Tulsa the last two years for their Rocklahoma spectacle. Well instead of having to wait a whole other year, here was this thing called Rock N America that promised a more 80s centric lineup than this past years updated Rocklahoma and it was closer being in OKC. So let’s rawk right? Well..sorta.
Pre-Party w/ The Scorpions and RATT – Verizon Theater – Dallas, TX – July 21st
If I have a flight first thing in the morning, I can’t sleep so I just stay up cause I’m a night person by nature. So on the morning of July 21st as I was leaving NYC at 10am I had already been awake for 24hrs. Between the subway ride from my apt in Brooklyn to Laguardia Airport, to several delays, flying to DFW, taking buses and trains to get home was another 8 hrs. I walked in the door at 5pm and hadn’t eaten and I was there 10mins before my crew was honking outside to take me to the concert. Hungry and tired as fuck I wasn’t quite ready to rock but once we got there I soon got over that. Now with all respect to my crew their were some headaches to get over. Bass-dude, my normal johnny-on-the-spot (and who picked me up) wasn’t gonna make it to OKC this weekend because of work and it was also undetermined if his wife was gonna make it to the pre-party due to illness. That’s fine, he let me know plenty of time in advance he wasn’t making it to OKC and obviously his wife couldn’t for-see her health issues.
Now singer-dude, who is impossible not to love, however has the most unreliable and infuriating judgment and is incapable of any sense of urgency was pushing it. I got 4 comp tkts to the show and was originally taking Singer/Bass dudes and bass dudes’ wife (originally as a kind of get-out-jail-free card so he could go to OKC in the first place). When word got out that she wasn’t gonna make it Singer-Dude took it upon himself to offer the tkt to anyone that was gonna do something for him (namely drive him and pay for drinks/parking) so his selfishness kinda put me in a position.
So me and bass-dude meet up with singer and his uninvited chauffeur. I give everyone their tickets and we go in. Chauffeur guy is fucking insufferable. A guy with less self-awareness you will be hard pressed to find. Just a walking caricature of all that is super not cool. I give this guy a 3rd row seat for free and when the gesture was made by bass-dude to reward me with a beer he actually threw a tantrum. This tantrum lasted the whole evening, he literally complained the whole time.
We get to our seats and look for drummer-dude who rounds out our Rocklahoma crew, just in time as RATT is starting
Now it should be that I could say that I’ve haven’t seen RATT since I was a kid but this coming Sunday in OKC will have been my 4th RATT show in a year haha. And THIS performance was easily the worst, (and in the running for one of the worst I’ve ever seen by anyone). Their wasn’t an ounce of camaraderie among them, not even with good ol’ Carlos Cavazo now on board. It felt like you had just walked in on your parents fighting and them trying to act like everything is cool. Just the most uninspired thing ever from a band that is known for turning in half-baked performances. What’s wrong with this band? Why can’t they ever get it together? Do it right or give it up.
In-spite of their sucky-ness and the Chauffeur’s complaints, their is just something happens when we are all together, and we were laughing our asses off and generally having a good time. Doesn’t my face seem to say “Does this asshole EVER stop complaining?”:
Up next was the Scorpions who I’ve never really seen. I saw the end of Rock You Like a Hurricane when they opened for Motley Crue over 10 years ago but that was it. Not necessarily one of my faves, but in the name of Rock, necessary just the same.
The Scorps come out and dude, its immediately obvious why this band has lasted as long as they have, they were so surprisingly spectacular, and my jaw was on the ground. Just so top notch, and everything was executed so flawlessly. I had wondered how they had fared since losing their long-time drummer Herman Rarebell, and hell his replacement, James Kottak, was the highlight of the show!
Promoted as the final tour of their long, storied career, what a way to go out and totally on top of their game at the height of their command of their powers. I was crazy impressed:
So now with the show over, the plan was the Singer-Dude was gonna get me back home, and of course naturally, when something is left to his charge, things don’t quite pan out exactly. Bass-Dude was my link to the sane world, and now I’m in the car with complainer Chauffeur, who of course drives a Hummer. A symbol of over-compensation if I ever did see one. We were plotting what we wanted to do as I was to Ft. Worth and they are in Dallas. Going to a party or a bar was on the table but this life-sucker actually expected me to sleep on his couch and get home anyway I could the next day depending on the geography of where we decided to after-party. I was all about saying fuck-off to both and going home. We ended up at a bar and had an ok time, except that the Chauffeur was scheming to leave us there. Where does he find these primates?
Rock In America Festival – Day 1 (sorta) – Oklahoma City, OK – July 23rd
Ok so the dysfunction continues…as Singer-Dude was responsible for us getting there (we have a deal, I take care of the tickets/laminates etc, they take care of the lodging) and this has worked for the past two festivals in Tulsa. What I didn’t know was that it was because Bass-dude was in charge of it all and now that he was no longer on board, I was on a sinking ship.
I was pissed because I had flown all the way from NYC for this and was told that it was all taken care of and nothing had been done. In fact now he wasn’t even going. I told him that my transportation and accommodations were still his responsibility. He parlayed that into some Facebook contest that made it sound like the laminates were HIS and the winners would have to take me too per the fine print.
Can you fucking believe this dude? – I was clueless to all this and thought the people I was going with were friends of his, they had a ride and no tickets, I had tickets and no ride so the barter system was in our favor right? Wrong – they were leaving right after the Scorpions show from Dallas on Wed. Remember when I went to bed that night I had been up for over 42 hrs, no way after that I was hopping into a car with total strangers to go to OKC 2 days early.
So I wanted to leave on Fri per the original plan, and told him that he would have to pay for a bus/train tkt after all I had been put out. He fought me on this, continued this ridiculous FB contest to make himself look connected and at the zero hour finally relented and bought me a one way train tkt, that when I got there I found wasn’t all the way to OKC and I had to pay 20 more bucks to extend it. A scammer down to the last detail.
So thanks to this arrangement I didn’t reach OKC till almost 10pm as the last band of the day, Twisted Sister had already taken stage. I still had to get from the train station to the festival hotel to meet the people I was gonna be staying with and riding back with. I used my brain and called the hotel and told them I was with the performers and they sent a shuttle for me (saving me a $50 cab ride).
Though I missed all the bands the first day that’s not to say that I didn’t have fun, because the party was just about to get started and I had NO idea haha.
I’m at the hotel waiting by the indoor pool talking to some of the bands when my hosts finally arrive. We meet and they tell me about the day. To further the complications, the couple we will call Barney and Betty, who I thought I was staying with, it actually turns out that I’m staying with their friends Fred and Wilma, who in turn are actually staying as guests of Bert and Ernie. So I guess this makes me the Grouch.
It was a bit after 11pm when we all hooked up and what should have turned into an hour (2 max) and then retire to our rooms to get ready for a big day tomorrow, turned into a clusterfuck odyssey of total madness that stretched till 6am, that if I hadn’t been so entertained by what I’m about to unfold, I would have lost my mind completely.
First and one thing I thought was really cool that can’t happen at Rocklahoma (at least on the campgrounds) was that since all the bands are staying here and their is a tiny little convention room, it allows itself for late night jams/shows scheduled or otherwise.
So though I missed the entire first day and had no prior knowledge of this suddenly I’m in this tiny little room where you would expect toddler pageants to be held, watching L.A. Guns
After they played their drummer, Chad Stewart, (who apparently is in most of the bands this weekend….is their a shortage of drummers?) stayed behind the drumset as he was in also in the next band that played, Motochrist, who were pretty good. Their songs where real quick and fast like punk songs, but with a certain sleaze factor, they almost reminded me of the Dwarves (more on this later).
Come to find out, we weren’t even staying in this hotel and what took so long was that were waiting for Wilma to find Fred, who had the keys to the car, that was our transportation to our actual hotel. How did I get myself into this mess? haha – The nights ends with Wilma staggering naked thru the halls until she finds Fred and we finally make it to our hotel as the sun is coming up, and I find a corner of this roach trap while Fred is still raging loudly well past 9am.
Rock In America Festival – Day 2 – Oklahoma City, OK – July 24th
Ok so on almost no sleep I head to the campgrounds with Bert and Ernie to get an early start to see all the bands and to make up for what I missed yesterday. This might have been a bit misguided as the first band of the day, Steelheart, were just gawd awful.
I was pretty super unimpressed with the set-up, as I know that this was 80s Metal in Oklahoma, but even by those standards, this had a real back-yard feel (which was actually kind of cool). The place held approx 5k people all on a hill facing downward, amphitheater style.
One of the things that I also enjoy at these things is seeing the old 80s Hair bands, still trying to get that old look together and see how it holds up, and I equally love it when they abandon it completely where you would not know what band was playing just by looking at them (wait is THAT Cinderella?). A good example of this was up next was Firehouse. By the time they were doing their thing back when I was waist deep in the bloodletting of Slayer, so I only know a few of their radio hits, but by the looks of them you would think you were watching your dad singing karaoke at the family picnic.
They actually were not too bad at all, they still had their sound, the singer still carried the notes and they seemed like they were in pretty good touring shape. Next, I had a bunch of press to do so I headed over to the press tent, that was actually just an area blocked off by Port-A-Shitters. The first band to come in was that band Motochrist (featuring the drummer of L.A. Guns AND Faster Pussycat) that I had seen last night at the hotel after-party. Remember how I said that oddly they reminded me of the Dwarves? Well ironically, Chad Stewart was wearing a freaking Dwarves shirt today haha, so I went up to him to tell him the story and the odd coincidence when he informs me that its actually no coincidence because Marc Diamond of the Dwarves is in the band! Some reporter I am eh? Really did my research this time. We talked for a bit as we have some of the same friends. Dave Catching really does know everyone.
Next the guys from Cinderella come in – now I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before but I will always have a special place for this band as they were the first band I ever saw live. Opening for David Lee Roth when I was 12, the memories of that night still influence me. I had just seen them at Rocklahoma and they were ok despite some sound issues and I was looking forward to seeing them later today.
Singer Tom Keifer was either profoundly stoned or is just a space cadet by nature He came stumbling in, and from the waist up he had his rock gear on. But he was wearing jogging sweats and Keds on his lower half and could barely hold the microphone. This is going to be interesting I thought.
Next up was something I thought rather silly. As impressed as I was by their performance the other night in Dallas, the Scorpions press event was kinda ridiculous. You would have the thought the fucking president was coming in. The fact that it was lost on everyone but me that they had security detail 12 people deep to lead them into a corral encased by portable toilets is about as perfect of a description as I can give you of the madness that surrounded me.
I bailed on this horseshit almost immediately, and I wanted to see the Michael Schenker Group, whom I’ve never seen. And I made the right choice too, because when they hit stage the place really started to come alive, and for good reason because they were so freaking good and the best performance I saw all weekend. He ran thru a bunch of the UFO stuff and he had Carmine Appice on drums. Its a rarity that he was even in America so that was cool and the band I was looking most forward to seeing.
Now it was time for Cinderella and I was hoping that Keifer’s buzz from earlier had finally worn off so they could rawk. This was a good set from them and much better than the sound-problem riddled show from Rocklahoma a few months back. Eric Brittingham was so unrecognizable, I wasn’t sure that it was him. I guess he gained some self-awareness over the years haha.
Now time for the headliners’ the Scorpions. Though they duplicated the show I saw just a few days ago, it was a real pleasure to see it again. Something really special happened, that I felt unworthy of, as I appreciated it, it didn’t mean a fraction to me of what this would have meant to some Finnish rock historian and even some of the fans around me who looked to be in tears. What caused this reaction was that for a brief few songs, Michael Schenker joined his brother onstage as did Herman Rarebell on drums, reuniting them all for the first time onstage together in 30 years.
Now it was time to find Bert and Ernie where we would most likely meet up with Fred and Wilma back at the Rock Hotel. We get everyone together and when we get to the Garden Hotel, it looks like the scene in Rockstar where he rides the motorcycle down the hallway. People and debauch just everywhere. We go into the little conference room again tonight for the after-party performances to check out this band that Barney and Betty, my original suitors were actually there working with, whom I had met last night called Dirty Penny.
They were freaking awesome! Totally what I dig, that real nasty, sleazy vibe, but these were young dudes (who were attracting the hottest girls) so they put a fresh, fun spin on it and totally fucking rawked. Probably the best time I had all weekend was during this show. Even John Corabi who was watching sidestage came out and did a song with them. I’m always interested in the bands that the girls wanna fuck.
I had met a ton of new people today and was having a great time talking with everyone. I’m by no means a heavy drinker, but I don’t know if someone raided several mini-bars but somehow about 5 mini-bottles of Jack Daniels made their way into my pockets. A band I had hung out with last night and now tonight too were these crazy Italians (from Italy, not Jersey) called Rising Wind. Don’t see alot of metalers from Italy and they were really cool guys. So I’m having fun with the RW guys when one of them borrowed my phone and somehow my phone found its way into the hands of Meth Face.
At the time I discovered this, I was talking with some friends of Fred and Wilma, who in an act of total spontaneity had just arrived from Dallas at 3:30am. Wilma gave me the heads up they were coming because it was going to be my ability to get them into the festival tomorrow that was going to secure their passage from Dallas to here. I assured her I could, and was anticipating their arrival.
I stopped my attempts of retrieving my phone for a bit to greet them when they arrived. Nothing against my present company but I wasn’t prepared. I was expecting Thelma and Louise and what I got was Paris and Nicole.
Had it not been for Paris, all eyes would have been on Nicole, as they are both stunning girls.
However instead of being as bitchy as she was hot, she was actually even cooler, and something of a kindred spirit as we became instant friends and had a great time laughing and making jokes that seemed lost on everyone else. So you can imagine my embarrassment when I had to excuse myself to retrieve my phone from an insane, naked meth addict.
The party raged again till close to 6am when we finally made it back to our hotel.
Rock In America Festival – Day 3 – Oklahoma City, OK – July 25th
Ok so I’m used to hustling hard, but it was really starting to catch up to me and I don’t normally drink alot at all and probably drank more whiskey the previous evening than I did for most of the 1990s combined. I was hurting, just in that mode where you are awake and nothing is gonna help you but more sleep. Due to Ernie’s passiveness he was unable to secure a late checkout, so as early as 11am I found myself back at the Rock Hotel barely able to stand. We are in the foyer and its pretty quiet with places to sit and chill so I take full advantage. Paris and Nicole made their way down and the five of us are just hanging for a bit before I fell asleep right there in the chair.
When I woke up, it was just me and Ernie and I had that feeling that I might have slept alot longer than I had intended but that wasn’t the case. He told me that they all had to get over to the festival early as they were working with Dirty Penny who were the first band on the sidestage today. We still had a few hours and I wished I had used them to get even more sleep.
Then something even more crazy coincidental happened. I’m having a nice talk with Ernie and we are kinda bonding over some of our guilty pleasures. He’s a nice guy and I enjoyed him, but he has no self-awareness for just how nerdy he is, so our conversation was frequently paused, so he could get a quick picture with what was seemingly everyone that walked by at a ratio of a pic about every 5 mins. The punchline to this is that everytime he did it I wasn’t involved but as we were leaving to go he ran into the guys in Lizzy Borden and was pissing himself for me to take a photo with his camera, and he hands me this like wind-up 35mm fossil with no flash, and it was even unwound haha! Go into your mom’s kitchen right now, she has 3 of these in a junk drawer somewhere.
The fact that this camera belonged in a fucking museum was not lost on these dudes and I was super embarrassed.
On the way to festival we are having a good time talking and somehow the conversation turns to professional wrestling when this dude literally loses his shit. I mean he looks like a wrestling fan but this dude is fanatical and that I have given him a forum to talk about his favorite thing in the world is the equivalent of a stampede coming my way. While he was kicking my ass relentlessly with this incredibly long story about the Freebirds (he was so into it, that he managed to get us lost more than once on the way to the festival that was less than 3 miles away, for being unable to concentrate on anything else) suddenly it hit me – Aha! – He had said something that sounded verbatim to something that one of my oldest friends has said to me many times. In the annals of my old friend’s storytelling, their is one fave he likes to tell (and I enjoy hearing no matter how many times I’ve heard it) and so I’ve heard this story dozens of times during our 15 years as friends. In my friend’s story he unfolds this tale about this dude he once knew whose acts of nerdom revolving around professional wrestling, were so extreme, that they bared the repeatings I’ve enjoyed so many times over the years and have become legend. In all the times this story has come up, he never mentioned the dude’s name, when it hits me – ERNIE IS THE GUY FROM MY FREIND’S STORY!!! It has to be him! I snuck away to the bathroom to call him and sure enough he confirmed that indeed this was the guy!!
So we finally get to the campgrounds and thankfully I have no press today, so I’m just gonna relax and enjoy the spoils of backstage and have a great time. I had missed Dirty Penny because of the rain, and the first band of the day on the main stage was Warrant. The rain had really kept the people away as when they went on their were seriously less than 100 people there. I was never a Warrant fan, and you would think with a different singer that it would reek of illegitimacy, and I wouldn’t know this if I hadn’t seen them at Rocklahoma but the new singer, Robert Mason is waaaay better than the other dude.
Up next was Slaughter, who I only saw a few songs of. It was chow time in the artist mess hall, and of course I love Up All Night and Fly to the Angels but the rain was a real damper and the dining hall was the perfect escape. So I took Paris and Nicole over there with me to eat. It was fun as these two seemingly like girls as much as I do, so it was like sitting around with a bunch of dudes totally objectifying the rawker girls walking by, except it was with two of the hottest girls there. Good times.
After we got our beers we were gonna head to the mainstage to see Lita Ford. I’d never seen Lita before and I’m a Runaways fanatic so I wanted to get that one in. Something happened on the way over that I feel was a direct result of something I as just talking with Trunk about. Now in defense of the security in this place, the girls didn’t have backstage clearance, they just had the media passes I’d given them (and Nicole had already lost hers as well) but it was the last day, it was raining, the place was kind of a joke to begin with, and these girls are smoldering hot, and nothing against the girls but in their limited 19 yrs they had already grown accustom to the benefits of such. So it was with that confidence that I told them not to worry and I would handle it if we got stopped.
Before I got those words out of my mouth, they are being worked over by some very unreasonable security that made it instantly out of my hands.
So I hit the beer truck one more time (remember beer in OK has HALF the alcohol content as anywhere else) and go check out Lita Ford.
I was glad to be there and having a great time, but it was not because of Lita, who was having an off night and seemed like she knew it too. A bunch of funny stuff happened as I looked over and low and behold, not even scheduled to perform at anytime this weekend was Vince Neil like a foot in front of me. It was cartoonish as he was standing there with a blond bombshell on each arm, like this is how you would find Vince on any given Sunday.
I stuck around and had a funny chat with Herman Rarebell, the old Scorpions drummer.
Now up next came what turned out to be the worst thing I saw all weekend and one of the most embarassing things ever. I assumed this dubious honor would fall to RATT after their series of atrocities, but Dokken beat them all in the stink nugget dept. I was a huge Dokken fan back in the day and hadn’t seen them in over 10 years so I was ready to rawk. I mean this dude really can no longer sing, like at all, and have no idea why he chooses to embarrass himself like this. I guess he made some really bad business decisions back in their heyday and he has to forge on for the cash, but this is freaking joke. Even lamer is that somehow because he admits he can’t sing he get this pass for being honorable and everyone seems ok with it. Dude if you can’t perform, I don’t give a shit what your intentions are.
He also has to have the worst between song banter on record. It’s like he doesn’t know what to say so he goes on these long cringe-inducing tangents.Even more interesting was the former guitarist George Lynch was standing next to me as his band the Lynch Mob was going on the sidestage next, fueling rumors of a one-time reunion. That shit never came and I don’t blame Lynch for not wanting to be onstage with this dude.
Was it time for RATT, the final act of the festival already? – I was in such sleep dep mode that I was incapable of retaining anymore music and mentally this had been over an hour ago when RATT started. Believe it or not, they were not that bad (for them) and certainly nowhere near as hideous as they were in Dallas last week. I realized that I had been backstage this whole time and wanted to peruse the crowd and see some of the stuff on the grounds I hadn’t had the chance to see yet, so I used this time as I could still see and hear RATT.
Ernie made an earlier departure so I now had to find Fred and Wilma and get our plan together and ended up watching the last few songs of RATT with them before we headed back to the Rock Hotel for the final after party.
We get there and I’m partially wondering if we will see any debauch this evening but mainly too tired to care. I’m hanging with Jessica again when I see Paris and Nicole, and we all go inside for the after-party. Those Italian guys Rising Wind, I’ve been hanging with all weekend were playing in that little conference room. These guys were so cool, I really hoped they would be good and they were. They did kind of a douche move in the beginning as the singer made some silly late dramatic entrance and wearing a white belt and the latest from Hot Topic, but they quickly made me forget about that and totally fucking rocked. Kind of an Iron Maiden sound that kicked ass.
Barney came out and even sang on one song with them.
It’s about half way through the Rising Wind set that rumors start flying around about a secret late-night slot. First it’s said to be Don Dokken (who I actually already saw retire to his room) then it comes down that its gonna be George Lynch.
Now THIS was so the real deal – It was interesting to see Lynch in such a candid environment and attire. You could tell that this guy was probably never the flashy rocker type as he looked more like a jock that could play guitar really freaking well. What made it so special
other than the spontaneity, intimate setting and late hour, was just how it really was just 3 dudes who just wanted to play and a feverish crowd that appreciated it.
It was truly a jam session and everyone wanted in – this was not rehearsed, and they were just doing covers that they thought of just seconds before they played them. Bobby Blotzer of RATT eagerly jumped on the drums and getting to see this from behind the stage was really cool. Jessica and I just kept kinda looking at each other like “Holy Shit!” Sadly all good things must come to an end, because not only did all the musicians want in, but when it was made kinda clear that they would let just about anyone from the crowd sing as well, this horde of drunks were not shy and passive about sharing the stage with one of their heroes, and that was the show’s undoing. Just belligerent drunk guys with zero touch of reality and had seen the movie Rockstar way too many times got up there not realizing its not gonna go down like it does in your dreams. One guy was just all over Lynch trying to live out some fantasy and he was tripping all over his rig until Lynch’s tech finally had to toss the guy. After about the fifth time with five singers doing this to him, and then frat boys literally fighting over the mic, Lynch had enough and called it an evening. Sucks that people couldn’t let something this cool go on longer.
They did get thru Ain’t Talking ‘Bout Love, N.I.B. and Into the Fire before all was said and done.
It was now close to 4am and their was yet another band about to go on, but we had all had it and were still planning on driving back to Dallas shortly. I slept almost the whole way home as I rode with Fred and Wilma who graciously made sure I got home safe.
All in all it was a crazy fucking weekend I won’t soon forget.
