This past Sunday I had the opportunity to head back up to Ridgefield, WA to attend the Counting Crows / Santana Oneness Tour concert at the RV Inn Style Resort.
I got up there a little after 330 and set up camp in the parking lot with some good reading material, some snacks and a small thermos of Westward Single Malt Whiskey for good measure to pass the afternoon away while waiting for the concert to start.
My philosophy is that I’d rather get there early and hang out in a great parking spot doing some quasi “tailgating” and relaxing than show up late, get a crappy parking spot and try to spend hours fighting traffic on the way out of the venue. The gates open at 5pm for every concert, which gets attendees into the concession area. I didn’t see a need to head right in, so around 630 I made finally my way through the gate, picked up a pepperoni pizza and sat on the grass to eat it before the concert began.
The Counting Crows were up first. However, they didn’t bother to get on stage until 730, 30-minutes late. This was already starting things off on the wrong foot in my book. They sang 17 songs over about an hour or so, and I knew exactly two, Mr. Jones, and Round Here. I wasn’t in the minority though as people sitting around me that had been going to concerts since Woodstock also mentioned they only knew those two songs and at one point people started yelling out, “Play some damn songs we know”. Bottom line they sucked, and I didn’t even bother to save any video of their performance because even those two songs weren’t done well.
Speaking of videos. I just realized as I was writing up this post that I’ve been operating for who knows how long on less than my maximum settings for both my photographs and my videos on my phone. So, hopefully after making some adjustments in my upcoming posts the resolution will be much improved.
Luckily, I wasn’t there to see the Counting Crows though. I was there to see Carlos Santana and what may be the 77-year old’s last national tour.
After a half hour intermission to reset the stage, where Counting Crows were lacking Santana more than made up for them from the moment he came on stage, and the energy never subsided. Playing about 15-17 songs, every one of which the audience all knew and loved, the band jammed for well over an hour non-stop, and it was just a continuous raucous party.
Here are the videos I captured:
Evil Ways Black Magic Woman and again here Oye Como Va No One To Depend On
Carlos jamming near the end of the concert as I was heading out to get out before the crowd
Unfortunately, even though I had a great “A” row seat in section 201, I had this fool “sitting” in the ADA section in front of me doing this the whole concert, so after a couple songs I ended up standing the whole rest of the time so I didn’t have to watch him flopping around. I get it. It’s a party and he has every right to be himself, but it was still pretty annoying.
Overall, a great end to a great week and merely a snippet of what is yet to come as I will be going on a run, attending 4 more concerts over the next 9 days. Whew, what a rush that will be (actually I really with Rush was one of the concerts). Until next time.