The Sons are father to The Man!

Great venue, great band, featuring The Great White himself, Bill Champlin and his Sons. What more can you ask for? I'll be back again tomorrow night to shoot more pics (Gonna have to get in the wings onstage tomorrow). Got some good ones tonight.

Melanie, Bill's publicist, gave me a copy of the Sons' "The Ariola Years" CD last night at the Santa Fe gig. I been listenin' to it today while it was goin' into my iPod. Wow, what a flash.

What an incredible body of work these cats have accomplished since the 60's. To now be up close & personal with these cats whom I have been diggin' so much for 40 years is beyond words for me.

A few of my keeper shots for now:

Above, Bill called Jerry up for some slammin' "Gold Mine" action. One more show tomorrow night. Y'all come. These peeps are rightfully legendary among musicians, and should not be missed.

PROPS

I gotta give a shout to Santa Fe fan and all-around good cat Howard Alder, who owns Optical Thursdays. When April and I were down in Florida in July to fetch my Ma and transport her to Vegas, my second pair of bifocals broke, with the screw hole stripped out on the left hinge. I taped the sumbitches together with a thin strip of black -- what else? -- duct tape to get me by till I could deal with it. Well, about 3 weeks ago my luck ran out, and the left lense fell out somewhere and is lost.

Screwed. I cannot see at night, period, without my glasses anymore. Everything's a complete blur (I had perfect 20/20 till I hit 50 more than a decade ago, dang it).

Well, Howard took my old busted rimless "Professor Gladd" FDRs and read the Rx right off the lenses, and had me some new ones made. He even fixed the old ones for a backup. He brought me the new glasses last night at the Sons' South Point gig. I been gettin' by miserably on some drug store reading glasses for the past two weeks. Ugh. The new specs are fabulous, sharp as a tack.

Howard is God. "...our Father, who art in Heaven, Howard Be Thy Name..."

He charged me less for all this than it would have cost me at the original place just to get my FDRs fixed. Steer your business his way.

Thank you, bro'.

UPDATE: A FEW MORE PICS

And, of course, the day would be incomplete absent a Vegas Media Moron Watch Update. Below, what the R-J considers priority coverage today.

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UPDATE NOTICE ON MY PHOTO POLICY

The photos I shoot and post on this blog are of my copyright as of the year of their posting. However, I grant an unlimited royalty-free license for use of these images by the artists whom I support and cover. A byline would, of course, be nice. Any other use, particularly for unauthorized commercial purposes, is expressly forbidden, and will result in my hunting the perp down to have my homie Ron Crews kick the violator's ass.
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