doodledee

A couple years back Kid Rock was scheduled to play a show over at the Alpine Valley and Libby, being a huge fan of bad country rock/rap music, naturally begged me to go. I, being somewhat less of a fan, naturally declined the invite. She politely insisted. I politely resisted. She put on the full court press. She stomped her feet and yelled things like MY NAAAAAME IS LIIIIIIIIIIIBBBBBYYYYYY!

I still took a pass.

She downshifted into guilt mode. She pointed out that I once dragged her all the way to Charlotte, North Carolina to see the Dead*. She got out a map and showed me how Minneapolis is way, way closer to Wisconsin than it is to North Carolina. She reminded me of how we had to sleep in the back of the van on a beanbag at rest stops instead of getting a motel. Powerful stuff, yes, but I stayed tough and held my ground.

Ten minutes later I acquiesced and promised we'd go see the Kid next time he visited Minneapolistown. Spit. Shake. Deal.

Well my friends, yesterday, March 13, 2004, Libby's long wait finally ended. Woo hoo! Get out your cowboy hats, take off your bras, and put on your ass-kickin' attitude, 'cause we's about to tear one up!

If you don't want to hear how the show was, just try and remember what I said in my Dylan review from the other night, because Kid Rock put on basically the same show. Well, I guess not *exactly* the same show, seeing as at the Dylan concert the strippers pole-dancing in cages on the sides of the stage were all wearing black bikinis, while at Kid Rock, a couple of the girls were dressed in red. Details, details.

But the details are best part. See, Kid Rock puts on a capital 'R' Rock capital 'C' Concert. He had huge pyro - flames and showers and explosions and all that stuff. He mentioned Minneapolis by name approximately 30 times - and the near sellout crowd went crazy every time. He strutted around the stage, singing and dancing and yelling and, by the end of the night, taking a turn playing every instrument in the band. During the harder songs, his guitar players lined up and headbanged in unison as though they were soldiers in an army of metalheads. During one of the ballads, he rose out from beneath the stage playing a white grand piano. Who can get away with stuff like that?

Kid Rock can, I guess.

About 30 minutes into the show, with nearly every Rock Concert cliche already exhausted, I thought to myself that the only thing this show would be missing would be a roadie coming out and trying to put a cape on Kid ala James Brown.

Needless to say, that's how the pre-encore show ended.

And people went gonzo.

And I was right there with 'em.

Compared to the shows I normally go to... well, it's not really comparable. Seriously, it's not. People used to say Dead shows were half baseball game, half church. Kid Rock seemed to be more like half bar fight, half ashtray. Or maybe half biker rally, half wrestlemania. And the whole thing had maybe two-thirds stripclub mixed in for good measure.

Anyway, it was fun.

* - props to the Puds for letting us use their van