The day after the AZ State Fair

He’s probably long gone by now, but RS was only a few miles away this weekend.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I wasn’t able to go to his concert at the fair last night, which I was really sad about, but I was there in spirit. Can’t get a guitar pic or human touch when you’re there in spirit, but some people shared videos that I watched afterward, so that helped. (Thank you to those who shared your videos and pictures!)

I ended up giving my tickets to a friend (it’s difficult to sell tickets to a free show) so she got to see him for the first time and in exchange,  she sent me a photo so I could see what the view would have been from my seat in the fifth row:

As you can see, he is back to playing guitar in concert – the first time in several weeks after his surgery. Whoo-hoo! (Though sorry I missed the big comeback.)

It was also his and his wife’s 33rd wedding anniversary – so Happy Anniversary to the two of them.  And more family trivia – today is his oldest son’s birthday – so happy birthday to Liam.

Birth announcement in a 1985 fan club newsletter.

And since we’re on the subject of trivia, here’s an interview with a local radio station before the AZ State Fair, where we learn a little more about RS besides that he loves cotton candy. I’ve never been to Australia, but I did watch “Jaws” at a young age so I feel exactly the same way about sharks.

 

So that’s that, nothing else to report. There are no RS concerts that I have tickets for, there’s no word on “Magnificent Vibration” or “Late, Late at Night” sequels, there’s no updates on a release date for “Traces” and “The Snake King” isn’t scheduled to come out until March 2018. Maybe we’ll get a sneak peek soon at a song from “The Snake King”? One of the pics say “I Know What You Want” so maybe that will be the first one we hear?

Oct. 29 update: 

Click here for a fan review from somebody who actually was at the concert.

Yes, that was Rick Springfield on ‘American Horror Story: Cult’

 

 

I don’t talk about Rick Springfield’s Dr. Noah Drake character very often because it was a long time ago and he moved away from that character a long time ago. But I did miss Dr. Noah Drake tonight…

Instead RS was Pastor Charles on “American Horror Story: Cult,” which is a horror anthology TV show and not something I’d usually watch. But I thought I’d give it a try tonight to see what RS’s character was like. 

The episode, “Winter of our Discontent,” was creepy, as I had expected. I didn’t take a photo of the last scene – too gruesome – but it did remind me of RS’s injured rib.  He may not remember how he hurt his rib, but now we know. (Just kidding.)

He sure likes to play  creepy roles (think the freaky Dr. Irving Pitlor on “True Detective” in 2015 and Lucifer on “Supernatural” last year) and he’s disturbingly good at it. (Could this be a hint of what his upcoming new CD “The Snake King” is going to represent, some kind of creepy character?)

 

True Detective

Supernatural — “Mamma Mia” — SN1202a_0136.jpg — Pictured: Rick Springfield as Vince Vincente — Photo: Diyah Pera/The CW — © 2016 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Fortunately there was a good character in the mix these past few years (Greg from “Ricki and the Flash.”)

Ricki and the Flash

Now I need to erase the image of Pastor Charles from my head and think of RS in my favorite role.

OK, that’s better. Now I can sleep tonight.

Cotton candy and other random pieces of information I have learned

On the way to pick up my kids from school, a promo came on the radio for this weekend’s Rick Springfield concert at the Arizona State Fair. It was advertising a contest for third-row tickets and the sound clip was RS saying, “I love cotton candy.”

So that’s something else that will involuntarily be filed in the Rick Springfield folder somewhere inside my brain. He likes cotton candy. (So which of you fans will be bringing state fair cotton candy to give him during the show?)

I’ve also noticed that in recent pictures he’s drinking beer instead of red wine. He likes dogs, all kinds of dogs. He loves the Beatles and wants to perform with Paul McCartney. The shoes he wears most often are Converse. His favorite movie was “A Clockwork Orange” (or at least it was at one time – I remember because I watched it years ago after reading that he liked it. Weird movie.)

So I have all these random little pieces of information about him stored in my brain. To some degree I blame it on all those teen magazines I used to read when I was a teen and from reading so much information about him in my formative years, such as this bio sheet from sometime in the 1980s. (Maybe from the fan club)?:

I can’t keep up with my email and often forget my passwords, but for some reason RS information, including lyrics, stays in my head. Even though there was a decade or so when I didn’t think about it, apparently my internal RS folder was never discarded.

Two years ago tonight my kids sang with Rick Springfield

No biggie, just my teen crush singing one of his songs with two of my sons. 😍😃

Two years ago tonight at the Arizona State Fair. Such a weird time-warp experience. The guy on my teenage wall singing “Don’t Talk to Strangers” first on a record album in my teenage room and then decades later sharing a microphone with two of my boys.

Have I mentioned that he’ll be in town again this week? Yes, on that same stage as seen in that video. But I won’t be there this time. 😒

But there will likely be other lucky kids singing there this Friday night, continuing the tradition. To those going, have fun!

Pinterest stalking

I was checking out Pinterest the other day so I thought I’d do a search on Rick Springfield just for the fun of it. Holy cow, there are a lot of pictures of Rick Springfield there.

Photographs from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.  Five decades of Rick Springfield, screens of more and more photos continuing as I scrolled down, down, down and down some more.

Concert pics, candid shots, photos from the Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, photos that were posters on my teenage bedroom walls. Magazine covers, album covers, CD covers, paparazzi pics, pics with dogs. Photos taken on the stage, at the airport, on a plane, in a bookstore, on a baseball field. Dr. Noah Drake, Greg, Lucifer, Rick F’king Springfield. Photos of him with his family, with his band, with other celebrities. Long-haired ’70s-style, short-haired, mulleted, long-haired 2010s-style, bearded, goateed, clean-shaven, scruffy, tattooed, suited, shirtless. Lots of pictures.

Some of my favorites are those teenage memories – the photos from the posters – just because of the nostalgia factor. My favorite more recent pics are the photo shoots from the “Late, Late at Night” cover and last year’s IHeart80s Radio concert. I even saw a photo taken on the day I met him for the first time – at The Wherehouse in Los Angeles in 1999!

After a few minutes of this, I started feeling like a stalker. It reminded me of those scenes in movies where investigators break into a locked room and find the walls covered with photographs of whoever the perp is obsessed with. That’s what my computer screen looked like. So I had to stop. (Plus, I think my husband was getting a little annoyed.)

But it’s not all superficial. It goes much deeper than that. (Ha, get the reference?) One post that caught my eye didn’t even have a picture. It was a link to an interview with the title, “Rick Springfield: The Journey is Never Over” a Huffpost article – originally from June 2014 – that focuses on his lifetime spiritual exploration. It’s really this type of thing – in addition to his music – that makes me such a big fan.

In the fifth row – or not

View from the fifth row in Sahuarita, Arizona.

I’ve been working on a little song in anticipation for the upcoming Rick Springfield concert at the Arizona State Fair this month.

In a sense, it’s a follow-up to “One in a Million,” a song I wrote back in January 2015 about the difference between how a fan views a rock star and how a rock star views fans. That was before my first RS concert in 15 years.

This one, “In the Fifth Row,” is about the feeling a longtime RS fan has at a show. (It could apply to a longtime fan of any musician, really.) Although I’ve now seen him six times since March 2015, I’ve felt this way each time.

In the past, my seats have ranged from 30th row (but moved to 17th row when I found empty seats after the opening act), to right at the stage (because there was some empty space there) so I’ve been really fortunate to have some nice views.

For this next show, which is the only scheduled full-band show from now until December, I have tickets in the, as you may have guessed, fifth row. Here’s the song, which is only one minute long:

Here are the lyrics:

In the Fifth Row

I’m in the fifth row, you don’t know me
I’m one of the faces in the crowd
I’ve been listening to your songs for decades
Tonight I’m gonna sing them out loud

Hello from the fifth row, sorry to stare
I can’t believe it’s really you up there
So long ago and so many years
And right here in front of me

I’m in the fifth row, can you see me?
I may look older, but I’m young inside
All of my worries wash away with your music
A refuge from the storm of life

After the last note fades
Reality invades
We go our separate ways.

Unfortunately, in my zest to purchase the tickets to the show as soon as they went on sale, I didn’t confirm the date and now it appears that I have a family conflict and I won’t be able to go to the concert. I’m so, so, so, so, SO sad about that, but I know family has to come first. If it was one night earlier or one night later I could do it, but not that night. I so wish he could just switch nights with Marilyn Manson or Old School Jam, but that’s not likely.

I feel silly feeling so sad about it because there are so many other people dealing with all kinds of horrible things like the aftermath of hurricanes and earthquakes and fires and floods and the massacre in Las Vegas and  I’m sitting here bummed out because I can’t go see my favorite rock star in concert for the seventh time in three  years. Pretty pathetic, I know, and I need to get over it.

The year I started this blog, he was in Phoenix twice – once in May 2014 to sign copies of “Magnificent Vibration” (it was an interview video I saw from this visit that ended up being the spark that started this blog) and in July 2014, a few days after I saw that interview.

So hopefully it won’t be too long until he is back in town again. Is the “Magnificent Vibration” sequel coming out anytime soon? Maybe I’ll just go hang out at the fair during the day of the show in case RS wanders through the fairgrounds in search of funnel cake.

Side note:

I know most of you are reading this blog for Rick Springfield content, but on the off chance that anybody is following the songwriting storyline, here is some additional information about the song:

I recorded vocals and guitar at the same time using Audacity and a Focusrite Scarlett Solo (2nd Generation) USB Audio Interface. It took about 50 tries to get this version and it still didn’t come out exactly the way I had hoped, but I pretty much hit all the notes in this version and it was the best of all of them so I decided to go with it.

I also revised the song quite a bit throughout the process because some of the verses ended up sounding a little stalkerish, which was not my intention, and hopefully I’ve gotten rid of anything that could be construed that way. Hope you enjoy it!

Another legend gone: Tom Petty

There’s such collective sadness in our world today. Not only is there still the aftermath of earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and fires, there’s the horrifying news out of Las Vegas of the mass shooting at an outdoor concert, with 58 confirmed dead and more than 500 injured. Then on top of that, news that legendary rocker Tom Petty died at age 66.

Although I don’t know much about his personal life or never saw him perform live, he’s another one of those singers whose music I’ve always enjoyed and who has been part of the musical backdrop of my life. Thank you, Tom Petty, for the four decades of music. The song I found myself singing the most through the years was “Free Fallin’,” especially each time I passed a sign for Ventura Boulevard. Then there were those MTV videos that come to mind: “Don’t Come Around Here No More” and “You got Lucky.” But there were so many other songs: “I Won’t Back Down,” “Learning to Fly,” “American Girl,” “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” “Into the Great Open” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream” are only a few I enjoyed through the years. Then there were also the Traveling Wilburys songs.

Hard to believe this video was from just last week, a week ago today.

Between this and the deaths of the attendees of last night’s concert in Las Vegas, it’s another reminder how precious life is and how none of us know how much time we have left. So let’s just be kind to each other and help one another when we can, OK?