All Hallow’s Eve is here. I’m sitting in the living room at 9:30 am on Halloween Day, rocking a solid 5 hours of sleep. No, it’s not that I had a bad night of sleep. It’s that we didn’t get home till 1:30 am last night and I didn’t end up falling asleep until after 2 am. Last night was the big BEAT Tour show in Indianapolis and holy moly what a show it was. When the dog woke me up at 7 am to go to the bathroom I figured I might as well stay awake, otherwise I’d waste my whole day.
So yeah, The BEAT Tour with Adrian Belew, Steve Vai, Tony Levin, and Danny Carey performing songs from the 80s King Crimson albums…it was amazing. Easily the best concert I’ve seen all year, and up there with some of the best shows I’ve seen period. Adrian Belew and Tony Levin, the two original members of the 80s iteration of the band, are 74 and 78 respectively. You would not know how old they are by their performances last night.
Belew was the ringmaster and was all over the stage, jumping and running and engaging with the crowd. He sounds and plays as well as he did 30 years ago. And Tony Levin is an absolute beast on the bass and Chapman Stick. He was Belew’s back up vocalist as well, and had a little synthesizer he used on a few of the songs. Neither showed any signs of “old guy” vibes. They were hip, engaging, still killing it on their instruments, and Levin would break out his camera to take pics from the stage time to time.
The “new guys”, Steve Vai covering from Robert Fripp and Danny Carey covering the drums for Bill Bruford, were absolutely incredible. They did the original parts proud while bringing their own unique styles and sounds to the King Crimson fold. Honestly, they both sounded so fresh and vital. I knew Carey was a great drummer, but not until last night was I completely floored by his playing. Such power, but also tons of nuance as well. Just an absolute beast on the drums.
The band played two distinct sets, with the first set being the more esoteric and out there tracks from the 80s King Crimson song catalog. The second set were the more pop-ish sounding songs. The songs where Belew truly shined by bringing his pop songcraft to the proceedings. Highlights(there were many) were “Three Of A Perfect Pair”, “Frame By Frame”, “Elephant Talk”, “Indiscipline”, “Model Man”, and “The Sheltering Sky”. And the encore was them covering 1974s “Red”, following it up with “Thela Hun Ginjeet”(“This is a dangerous place”).
A top 5 ever concert experience.
Oh, so when we got there we parked in our prepaid parking spot and headed to a MASSIVE line that seemed to crawl almost all the way around the building. It was like 15 minutes to showtime and there were still massive crowds outside moving at a snail’s pace. We never heard what the issue was, but thankfully someone from the venue came out and offered “Club Room” tickets. For $20 per person more we could skip that line and enter through a private entrance with lounge access, private bathroom, and a secret stairwell entrance up to the balcony. Best $40 we spent.
With Halloween off, I’m not really sure what I’m doing today. I’ve got a hair cut with my daughter at 1 pm. Besides that our old Mr. Pooch McGooch has a hair cut as well. The wife is heading to nearby Goshen this morning to buy some new walking shoes. It’s currently very gray and overcast(yes!) for Halloween, 2024. It’s also raining pretty heavy at the moment(no!), so no morning walk for me.
(New Halloween song from yours truly below. Hit play!)
I do know that later on today I’ll be watching some horror movies, because, well, it’s Halloween. I pulled some out of the movie library last Saturday and brought them upstairs. I also picked up the movie Cuckoo Tuesday afternoon, along with Hawksmoor’s new album Oneironautics. I’ll definitely be watching Cuckoo as I haven’t seen it yet.
Mainly, I just want to enjoy my time off from work. I was beginning to reach burnt out levels, so this staycation is much needed and appreciated. I’ve got music I want to work on, and some artwork I need to dig into as well. A rainy Halloween day seems as good a time as any to work on that. Tomorrow my wife is heading back down to Indianapolis to stay the night with our oldest. They’re seeing Taylor Swift at Lucas Oil Stadium, along with 70,000 other screaming Swifties. Should be fun.
The only thing I have planned was heading over to my workmate’s house so he can install the dust cover on the Pioneer turntable I bought from him. Since he redid the walnut veneer there’s no spots to install the hinges. I’m not comfortable drilling into it, so he’s going to do it for me. I really don’t want to ruin the thing I just bought.
Enjoy Halloween, folks.
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