Yep, I pulled a trick I learned from promoter Louis Messina of Houston's Pace Concerts fame. Years ago, for a KTRK 13 story I was working on, he told me if you want good concert seats, buy them the morning of the show. Bingo. I was 18 rows back from the stage and 14 seats away from the extended stage! Thanks to my glasses, I could see the glitter covering Tyler perfectly. And when he shook his ass, I could see that too. Maybe I should have stepped back some...
Here's the deal, this makes my fourth Aerosmith show. And compared to 20 years ago, they still do pretty well. As I've written before, I'm a fan of 70s Aerosmith. Not as much the Aero 2.0 relaunched around Permanent Vacation, Pump and beyond (some of it is good though). As a Rocks fan, the band did not disappoint. Houston set list here. Seeing "Rats in the Cellar" live was choice. They played "Combination," but Tyler sat that out and let Perry sing it. Still not bad.
Things that were different this time around: They had a lot more support players. The band always seems to have a semi-obscured keyboardist/back up singer, but this time they also had two female back ups (one played horns too) and another percussionist.
I have to mention Perry's smoking amp and Tom Hamilton's iPhone bass too.
Cheap Trick were the openers which I was excited about because I only heard them a few years ago while walking up to The Woodlands Pavilion for a Def Leppard show. They sounded good there, so I was excited to actually see the band. Robin Zander still has a great voice and looks great in his Dream Police uniform. Rick Nielsen is quite the showman on guitar and even announced his own kid who now plays drums for the band.
And no matter what you think of Tyler on American Idol, the Toyota Center looked almost sold out and it was full of everyone from kids to grandpas. Maybe Tyler really was as sly as a Fox.
Sprint sent me a demo HTC EVO 4GLTE phone to test out its new network. I took the opportunity to test out the phone's camera at the show which you will see above. Photos weren't too bad. Way better than what my original EVO can take. CONTACT: Leave me a Houston or Texas media news tip | COMMENT: Click to leave your thoughts on this post here
