Extremely Forced Reference

Thanks to Mrs. Driver for pointing out this very out-of-context... er... pop culture (maybe?) reference.

It's a long way to go for a very Driver-friendly, yet otherwise trite payoff.

Click here and read the first paragraph.

Happy Birthday, Rob Halford

Above : Judas Priest poster, ca. 1981. You know, before Rob Halford (center, in Village People attire) was gay. Also shown : guitar heroes K. K. Downing (blonde hair, black leather) and Glenn Tipton (brown hair, red leather). From The Driver's private collection.

Turning 57 today : Robert John Arthur ("Rob") Halford, legendary frontman (insert joke here) of Judas Priest.

And what better way to celebrate in a purely coincidental fashion than to witness the "Metal Gods" live in concert on Friday, August 22?

The Driver -- accompanied by Mrs. Driver, another married couple (read: a fellow man-child and his equally resigned wife) and our pal "Joseph" (name slightly altered) -- paid good money to watch Mr. Halford amble about the stage and sing to the floor. But hey, let's see you try to stand up straight (insert joke here) and belt out "Eat Me Alive" (insert joke here) while wearing 50 pounds of leather -- including a full-length duster and biker boots. And let's not discount the massive goatee that seemed to be pulling his face closer to the ground with each note of every song.

Photo : Rob Halford ca. 2005. Friends of The Driver will appreciate the uncanny resemblance to The Driver's friend, Jeff. Everyone except Jeff himself, that is.

It takes a lot of energy to put on a show like Judas Priest. Many of today's bands rely on fancy lighting, distracting video screens and other technology to make up for a low-fi stage presence. Not these guys. Instead, "The Priest" employ old-school theatrical set design (plus the aforementioned costumes) -- and they complete the presentation with some good old-fashioned amplification. In other words, the guitars are metaphorically turned up to 11 -- at which point the symbolic knob is metaphorically ripped off.

Then there's the patented (or should be) choreography -- which features guitarists K. K. Downing and Glenn Tipton (sometimes joined by Halford for maximum effect) rocking out in a rhythmic sort of up-and-down or side-to-side motion, axes swinging to and fro with the beat in a powerful tribute to their ground-breaking dual guitar approach. Why does your favorite band have two guitar players? Ask Judas Priest. Better yet, ask the guitarists in your favorite band. Odds are they'll tell you about the times when they would put "Unleashed in the East" on the turntable, plug in the headphones, turn up the volume and play the entire album on tennis racquets -- one guy taking K. K.'s solos, and the other playing Glenn's parts.

Or maybe that was just The Driver and his buddy, Brian.

Today's Judas Priest concert still delivers 80 - 90% of its former metal punch. Rob Halford's geriatric lumbering is more about his need to focus in order to deliver his famous ear-splitting high notes. He still can, and does. So he's got that going for him.

The set list hasn't changed much on their last three tours. And yes, The Driver knows this from personal experience. The 38-year-old band does a good job of playing what the fans want to hear. Only about a third of the show's 19 songs, for example, were recorded more recently than 1985. And they continue to surprise by dusting off at least one great oldie per tour. In 2006, it was "Beyond the Realms of Death." This time around, it was "Dissident Aggressor" -- a tune more recently immortalized by Slayer.

Noticeably absent from the show were all but one of the tracks from the new double-length concept album "Nostradamus." The Driver was not upset by this. He purchased "Nostradamus" in preparation for the concert. Let's just say it's no "Hell Bent for Leather," if you catch The Driver's drift.

And chances are, you don't.

But The Driver thinks you owe it to yourself to check out Judas Priest's "Unleashed in the East," "Hell Bent for Leather" or "British Steel" records. He also dares you to resist the urge to air guitar.

For more on the "Masters of Metal" show, Judas Priest, or Rob Halford's big gay facial hair, please enjoy the following links :

Rob Halford pre-concert interview

Concert review

Rob Halford on Wikipedia

Driver Lessons : The Cover Band Years

ABOVE : Vertical Hold (and The Driver) rock your neighbors' living room at some kid's birthday party, ca. 1985. Left to Right : Clark Hamlet, The Driver, Brian Faro, some kid. Not pictured : Bobby Ziegler.

The year: 1985. The band: Vertical Hold. The music: See below.

Bonus points for anyone under the age of 35 who can explain the origin of the name.

 Don't Change

INXS

White Wedding

Rebel Yell

Dancing with Myself

Billy Idol

Walking on a Thin Line

Huey Lewis and the News

Runaway

Bon Jovi

Don't You (Forget About Me)

Simple Minds

Save a Prayer

Planet Earth

Duran Duran

What I Like About You

Talking in Your Sleep

The Romantics

She, Sheila

What's He Got

The Producers

Modern Day Delilah

Van Stephenson

New Girl Now

Honeymoon Suite

Major Tom

Peter Schilling

Magic

Drive

Just What I Needed

You Might Think

The Cars

New Year's Day

U2

Turning Japanese

The Vapors

Run to You

Bryan Adams

Jenny (867-5309)

Tommy Tutone

Vertical Hold are:

Brian Faro: Bass

The Driver: Guitar, Vocals

Clark Hamlet: Keyboards, Backing Vocals

Bobby Ziegler: Drums, Vocals

The Driver Kisses Girl, Likes It

Writing from his home in the Blogosphere, located on the World Wide Web, The Driver announced today that he not only kissed a girl, but also found the experience to be enjoyable.

"I kissed a girl, and I liked it," said The Driver, 40.

The Driver went on to repeat the statement several times in succession, singing the words in the form of a catchy melody, or "hook." Later, the words were replaced with humming and / or whistling.

The "girl" cited is most likely Mrs. Driver, whom The Driver first kissed in 2001, and whom he subsequently married on this day in 2004.

In an unrelated story, Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" is currently ranked #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The controversial pop song is in heavy radio rotation, and can also be heard playing in an endless loop inside The Driver's brain.

Judgement Day : Sign of the Apocalypse?

The Driver believes in collecting experiences. Occasionally, this means The Driver goes places / does things that he might not otherwise go / do -- just so that he can say he went / did.
Sometimes, this works (See also : Going to an Elvis impersonating contest = meeting Mrs. Driver). Other times, not so much (See also : watching the film "Two Weeks Notice").

Now for a bit of musical background (not to be confused with background music) on The Driver. According to The Driver's brother, he and The Driver were the original Beavis and Butt-head. From the original air date of a little cable network called MTV -- and for several summers thereafter -- our adolescent rear ends were firmly planted on the couch in front of the TV. For hours at a time, we waited for our favorite videos. And by that, I mean we waited for three videos :

1. Judas Priest : "Heading Out to the Highway"
2. Judas Priest : "Hot Rockin'"
3. Judas Priest : "Don't Go"

[Okay. Certain aspects of technology are pretty cool. YouTube is greatness. You can find and watch an entire summer's worth of Judas Priest videos in a matter of minutes. Sweet.]

The first of these videos enjoyed fairly regular rotation -- airing once or even twice a day. When this happened, general rocking out and air-guitaring ensued.

On the rare occasion of a "Hot Rockin'" sighting, the subsequent rocking out and air-guitaring would increase exponentially -- due to both the relative infrequency of the video being played, and to the song's significantly more head-bob-worthy riffs.

"I wanna go / I wanna go / I wanna go... Hot rockin!'" (Repeat)

Yes.

The latter clip, "Don't Go," was a more down-tempo number with a more surreal (or "conceptual") story line. But the fact that it might air only once or twice in an entire summer kept us glued to the set in rapt anticipation.

True to the characters we probably didn't actually inspire, we spent our time in between Priest songs reviewing the "other" videos. Most of them "sucked in ways that have never sucked before." Especially anything non-metal.

And especially hair metal.

And that brings us to the subject of this weekend's experience.

Mrs. Driver works with a gentleman who plays drums in a band called "Judgement Day." They are a tribute band for the hugely popular 80s group Whitesnake.

At the drummer's urging, we agreed to "check out" Judgement Day... sometime. After several well-meaning attempts were thwarted, we marked our calendars for Saturday, June 7th.

As it turns out, the 7th was a big night for The Driver family. The Driver was for some reason recognized at a fancy awards show thingy for (get this) his writing. From there, it was off to the Lakewood Bar and Grill for an evening of live cover tunes.

Here's the flyer that greeted us at the gig :






















We arrived at 11:15PM -- too late for the opening acts, but a bit too early for Judgement Day. We waited patiently, if not awkwardly. We also had a brief exchange with Judgement Day's drummer, who seemed surprised to see us. Perhaps it was the fact that Mrs. Driver doesn't come across as the type to frequent Whitesnake tribute band gigs. Maybe the drummer didn't really think we'd actually show up. Or perhaps it was that, having just come from a fancy awards thingy, we were dressed to the nines -- including (for her) a tank top with sparkly stuff around the collar, white slacks and designer shoes, and (for The Driver) a black suit with a striped shirt, cuff-links and designer shoes. At least one of us wore fake eyelashes. We looked hot. And wrong.

Granted, the designer shoes were probably lost on this particular audience. The fact that we were wearing them at all is another topic. Suffice it to say that they were on sale. And fabulous.

The point is, we stood out. A lot. So much so that The Driver feared a bar fight. This was a crowd who paid money to see a band that plays songs that were recorded twenty years ago. And they've done a lot of living since then.

One particularly inebriated patron staggered up and announced to Mrs. Driver, "I love your look. The whole thing. And I'm not gay or anything. I just have five sisters."

Thankfully, the guy was sincere -- and relatively harmless. He even hugged The Driver, gesturing to his natty attire as if to say, "You're trippin' me out with your clothes, man. But you're alright."

Which is good. Because The Driver hates to have to throw down.

Where were we? Oh, yeah. The band.

Judgement Day is pretty good. In fact, if you want to spend eight bucks and your Saturday evening listening to a band that sounds like another band that you still love twenty years after they were huge but you don't give a crap because today's music sucks, then Judgement Day delivers.

Technically speaking (WARNING: mild music geek language ahead), the harmonies were super-tight. The guitar tones were really good. And Mrs. Driver's drummer friend was the real deal. At the same time, there were limitations. Whitesnake used to play in arenas. Judgement Day was playing in a club the size of your garage. The drums couldn't get "big" enough, and they sounded a little dead. Plus, 1980s synthesizers must be really expensive, because the keyboardist's rig sounded at times like a Casio. To his credit, Whitesnake probably had seventeen keyboard tracks, and a month to mix them all down. Judgement Day was dealing with a house P.A. system with the house P.A. guy.

Check out Judgement Day's studio demo. For something that was probably produced with a few hundred bucks and a twelve pack for the engineer (again, compared to an epic studio session with big-time producers, layers and layers of tracks and countless hours of post-production), it's a very fitting... er... tribute... to the real thing.

As any connoisseur of tribute bands worth his salt knows, however, it's all about the vocals. The lead singer for Judgement Day not only could have passed for a much taller version of Scorpions' Klaus Meine, but he also proved he could pass for the frontman of a Whitesnake cover band. Given Whitesnake's heavy Robert Plant influence, that's saying something. The guy has pipes -- and showmanship to boot.

Unfortunately, the showmanship got a bit ahead of itself once or twice. Or more specifically, nine times. Because that's how many times Judgement Day's lead singer referred to the crowd as "Dallas, Texas."

"How you doin' tonight, Dallas, Texas?"

We're fine, Judgement Day. Except that there are about thirty of us here, and we don't feel that we adequately represent the entire population of the greater Dallas metropolitan area. And aren't you guys from Dallas? I'm pretty sure you are. My wife works with your drummer.

Still, thanks for asking.