More About The Crowes

I'm still very tired and my ears are ringing a bit, but I want to make my comments on the Black Crowes show I saw last night before I head down to Boston with my dad to catch a matinee of The Phantom of The Opera. Yup, I'm a busy girl this weekend.
So, as I wrote before, seeing the Black Crowes has been something I have always wanted to do but never had the chance to do before. I think I'd have to say they're my favorite band.
I went to the show with my boyfriend and my sister, so I was in my favorite company. We had dinner at a little restaurant right near The Casino Ballroom and then after the usual seccrity checks, went inside. I had been hoping to get a concert shirt, but they didn't really have anything I thought was great for the prices they were charging. My sister went to purchase her coupon for a CD of the show. They sell double-cd board mixes of the night's show, all packaged and everything, right after the show for $25. My brother inlaw went to the show at the Orpheum on Wednesday night and got the CD fo that and said it was excellent sound quality. After we got all that taken care of we went over to the far end of the stage to check out the guitars and decided to stay over there since we had a pretty good view of the stage.
The opening band was the 22-20s. I thought they were pretty good. They're a four piece with guitar/vocals, bass, drums and keyboards. During their set Marc Ford came out to check them out for bit, standing not 10 feet away from us. Later Sven Pipien, the bass player, came to check them out too.
The Crowes came on at 9. They all looked good. Chris Robinson has his full beard going on again and looked healthy and happy to be there. Marc Ford is sporting what I read someone else refer to as a 70s porn star moustache, but I think you could also interpret it as a 70s southern rock look as well. He was at "our" edge of the stage, which was awesome since he played most of the solos and I could see everything. The set list was a mix of songs from most of their albums, but nothing from Shake Your Money Maker, I think.
I got a big kick out of watching the band dynamics. Rich Robinson was always looking over at what the rest of the guys were up to and seemed to be the one who keeps things under control. Marc Ford is my guitar hero this week, even though he never really made any efforts to look out at the audience or even his bandmates much. The only one he seemed to be interested in making eye contact with was Chris' wife, Kate Hudson, who was sitting next to a speaker just a few feet away from us for most of the show. She was there for most of the show, occasionally smoking butts and hanging out with someone who looked like he might be her brother, except for a couple of times when she went back stage. The last time she left and came back with a pint of Ben & Jerry's. You could see all the Crowe's look over at one point or another with an "Oh man! I can't believe you're sitting there and eating that now. I want some too!" look on their faces. My sis and I got the impression that she was quite a princess type, but my boyfriend seems not to agree with us. Then again, he's a guy and most guys are suckers for beautiful, blonde movie stars, so what are you going to do?
I lost count of all the different guitars on stage. It seemed like both Marc and Rich changed guitars for every song, but I saw a lot of Telecasters, Les Pauls, SGs, possibly a Strat, something Rich played that I had no idea what it was that was a silver hollow body with cut outs in it and what looked like a Danelectro headstock. I loved that Sven stuck with his Fender Jazz bass the whole show. Chris played an acoustic on their cover of Bob Dylan's Forever Young. Marc and Rich sounded great together and Marc's solos and slide playing was awesome. It was all awesome. I'm a sucky music writer and I have to go figure out what to wear and go meet my dad so we can head down to Boston. Later!