2 posts tagged “capital centre”
After hearing about it for close to twenty years, I finally saw Heavy Metal Parking Lot over the weekend. It's a low-budget documentary of the parking-lot party activities before a 1986 Judas Priest concert at the Capital Centre in Largo, Maryland. What a scene. The Cap Centre was my local arena, and I went to a whole bunch of rock'n'roll shows there when I was in ninth and tenth grade (1979-81). While I never took part in any parking-lot debauchery (I was either too young, too scared, or too sensible), I sure did rock out. Seeing the now-demolished* Cap Centre made me try to remember all the shows I saw there, and for posterity I've put together a Seeqpod playlist that contains most of the bands I saw there. I've tried to select songs that represent the albums they were promoting at the time, but it wasn't always possible: there just aren't any tracks from Foghat's Tight Shoes, Blackfoot's Tomcattin', or Yes's Drama on seeqable sites. Some of the opening bands I couldn't find at all (Marseilles, FM) and some I've forgotten altogether. If I could find again my wooden box with all my ticket stubs in it that would help a lot, but I'm afraid it's lost forever. But now I will always have this playlist to remind me, because the Internet is forever, right?
*
There were four of us in the same grade growing up: Kevin at the top of the street, me in the next house down, Mario across the street from me, and Robert two houses down. When we started buying records in junior high we planned for maximum variety, coordinating our purchases so as not to duplicate each others' collections, taping the records that the others bought. Add in taping off the radio (the new album in its entirety every night at 11:00 on WAVA) and we amassed pretty sizable cassette collections. But of course the cassettes are long gone, and I never got around to replacing most of them with records or CDs. In 1980 Kevin bought Michael Schenker's first album after leaving the Scorpions (again) and helming the new Michael Schenker Group. I've been longing to hear "Feels Like a Good Thing," so I snapped up a copy of the album at last weekend's record show, and here it is, aw, yeah!
Like the Piper track I posted a while ago, the drums at the beginning are some tempting sample fodder. And Schenker has always been a great soloist; he may have the most fluid playing style in all of hard rockdom. Deep Purple's Roger Glover produced the album, I really like the balance here, just before turning the snare up to twenty-two became all the rage. The four of us saw MSG at the late, lamented Capital Centre, where we saw so many concerts during our teenage years. They would run a summer series of B-level acts with tickets for just eight bucks! I think that was the deal with MSG. They may even have been the opening act, but I can't remember who the other band was. Was it Foghat? No, I think they were paired up with Molly Hatchet. Anyway, I don't remember the show at all, but I do remember the concert jersey I bought: black with white sleeves, with the MSG logo and Schenker's trademark white Flying V on the front, tour dates listed on the back. I wore that one a lot.
