Wow guys - what a night!
The stage at the Roxy is very low – about to the top of my thighs and I’m 5 feet 5 inches. We were RIGHT up front, right at their feet.
It turns out this whole thing was put together by a group of ninth graders who were concerned about the AIDS crisis in Africa, Deacon Frey among them. They gave a short speech about the problem (with a movie that unfortunately didn’t play fully) and then introduced the first band. It featured a young ninth grade guitarist named Nick Shapiro who was very good and had Glenn-circa-1972 hair. An excellent player.
After that band finished, Daniel Powter came on and allowed Nick Shapiro and a couple other young guys to be his backup band. Don Was also came out. Powter only did three songs, one of them an abbreviated version of Bad Day (I was disappointed he didn’t stretch it out like he usually does). He was terrific.
Next were the headliners – Glenn and Deacon Frey. Before, I assumed Deacon would be backing Glenn, but that was far from the case. Deacon sang lead on more songs than Glenn! It was very cool. Deacon sang and played guitar on Get Over It, then I Hear You Knockin’ with Glenn backing along with Don Was (Michael Thompson was on piano). After that, Glenn sang Some Kind of Wonderful and Take It Easy with Deacon backing. Finally, for the climax of the show, Deacon did Hotel California. He played the ending guitar duet with Nick Shapiro and it was pretty freaking amazing. Our minds were blown. What an experience! We did get some photos and video.
We’ll be more explicit later – right now we’re all getting ready to leave to go back to our respective homes. My flight is at 7:00 am and it’s currently almost 4:00 am – I’m not bothering to go to sleep, and neither are PLS and dreamer.
More exciting details to come…