Sound of Your Soul

Cheap Trick performed their final Sgt. Peppers show Saturday, September 18, 2010 at Paris Las Vegas, so it’s too late to catch the wonderful concert, but you can relive the adventure here with me, Laura the Explora (okay, lame, but I’m originally from New Yawk and it rhymes). Though I saw the show in June, this time (September 9 and 10th), my 81 yr old mother, Diane, accompanied me to Vegas, and I thought I’d write part show review/part adventure with my mom. Every trip is a journey, filled with moments of surprise, but this one had more laughs and hair pulling than any recent Cheap Trick rendezvous (I go to lotsa Trick shows) that I recall.

“A Little Ditty about Laura and Diane”

Laura picked up an excited Diane at her apartment on Wednesday, ready to begin their journey. Diane hadn’t been to Vegas in a decade, nor had she seen a live show in ages. We had tix for Trick on Thursday, and mom was going to see Cher on Friday night (while Laura returned to Sgt. Peppers for her Trick fix).

Diane has post-polio syndrome, and lost most of the use of her left arm when she was two years old. These days, exerting any kind of energy to walk leaves her gasping for air, so Laura had an electric wheelchair reserved for Diane at Bally’s in Vegas. When Laura and Diane finally got to Sin City, it was late in the evening. Her electric wheelchair was waiting, but she can’t see very well (ya know cataracts and glaucoma are an 81-yr-old’s best friend). Laura wished she could have had one of those hot orange bike flags attached to the scooter so people could see Diane coming and get the hell out of her way.

Laura was exhausted and went to bed, but Diane doesn’t sleep very well any more. She gets up about 30 times a night to go to the bathroom, have a drink, and/or eat a snack. Laura would be asleep and then SURPRISE!, wake-up to the sound of “clink-clink” ice in a glass and mom munching on left-over potato chips from their airport dinner. Diane must have woken Laura up a half-dozen times when I finally decided to get up and go for a walk at 6am.

Walking down the strip at that time of the morning is really…..interesting. Why anyone in their right mind gets up that early on vacation is beyond Laura’s comprehension…that is of course unless they’re rooming with Diane.

After breakfast, Diane followed Laura in her electric scooter over toward Paris to play some slots. Since Diane can’t see very well, she has to be Laura’s shadow wherever they go, which means Laura has to constantly look back and make sure mom hasn’t accidentally taken a detour into some glass-menagerie of a store (think bull in a china shop) because everything is so sparkly. Diane loves bling.

Along the way, SURPRISE! Laura had a possible Mr. Robin Zander, Cheap Trick’s lead singer, sighting. As Diane complained about the annoying Paris cobblestones which made her ride oh-so-not smooth, Laura may have seen the Z-man walking about 20 feet ahead of her. The dude had a blond looped-up ponytail like the singer wears, but she wasn’t sure if it was him. She turned around for a moment to make sure Diane hadn’t been swallowed up into a Parisian fountain, and when she turned back around, the blond dude had disappeared. So there’s Laura’s weird random “maybe-saw-a-rock-star-from-behind” moment.

After losing about $7 on the penny slots and having lunch, Laura and Diane went back to the room where SURPRISE! Laura read an email she hadn’t expected. She’d wished it had said that she’d won the lottery, so that she could play real slots, like quarters, but alas, it was not to be. No unfound money was found and Laura decided to leave Diane in the room to nap.

Diane woke up around 3:30pm, and SURPRISE!, her digestive system was oh so not happy. The internal organs of an 81 yr old are always giving Diane surprises, but this was not one that we’d hoped to have 4 hours before the Tricksters were to surprise and delight us with their singing/musical showmanship. “Holy Crap! (pun intended) What do we do now Batman?”

Laura offered Diane lots of stuff to ease her tummy troubles. Wanna peppermint? Wanna homeopathic remedy? Wanna high colonic? Diane refused everything but cold “clink-clink” ice cubed water, and was determined to feel better by show time. Diane had a new outfit from JC Penney to wear, and nothing was going to stop her from being seen in public wearing her snazzy digs.

At 7:22pm, Diane’s gurgling intestines seemed to only be quasi-gurgling, and the two fancy schmancily dressed women decided to head to see Cheap Trick perform Sgt. Peppers at Paris Las Vegas. Laura prayed to the intestinal gods to leave Diane alone for two hours.

We arrived twenty-minutes before show time, and a nice lady asked us if we’d like our picture taken. “Sure!” After the show, Laura picked up the cool photo of mother and daughter with Sgt. Peppers printed over our heads, and little guitars at our feet. When Diane saw the photo, she gasped, “The circles around my eyes are so dark it looks like someone punched me.” That’s what happens when you only get 3 hours of sleep every night. Laura’s head, on the other hand, appeared elongated and quite huge, making her resemble an alien from another galaxy.

After the Kodak moment, Diane scooted to her seat in the first row, Mr. Rick Nielsen’s side. The pre-show anticipation was building, but Diane was cold. She’s always cold. And hungry. So I helped mom put on her white sweatshirt underneath her snazzy jacket, and she was happy. When Diane’s happy, Laura’s happy too.

********SHOWTIME!*********

For those who haven’t seen the concert, the opening number features an elevated orchestra playing “I Am The Walrus” with six singer dudes with fancy schmancy hairdoo’s going “goo goo g’joob g’goo goo g’joob” (or whatever those onomatopoeia-like sounds are that they’re making) while Daxx Nielsen (Rick’s son) pounds the drums. It’s all very energetic and Diane had a big smile on her face.

Then, they bring the curtain down with a large screen and play snippets of Trick being referenced to in movies, some interviews with the band, and all that jazz. This allows the audience, many of whom have probably never seen the Tricksters before, to know what a great freakin’ band they are, and that this is not a tribute show to the Beatles. I still smile every time Mr. Tom Petersson says he’d mow Geoff Emerick’s lawn.

This little interlude gives the band a chance to take their places behind the magic curtain, so that when it rises, Mr. Nielsen is on a platform, and the guys surge into “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Within a few moments, SURPRISE! Mr. Nielsen was pelting me with a pick. And then another. He was quite animated and being right in front of him was mega fun.

Diane doesn’t know the lyrics to any songs…I mean any songs from any time period. She just sings “la la la” no matter what. So, when “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds” started, she immediately recognized it, but has no idea what they’re singing about. She believes “La, la, la” is all anyone needs to enjoy a song. So, Lucy has been rechristened, “LaLa in the Sky with more Lalas.”

The “Within You Without You” Indian ensemble featuring Mr. Tom Petersson is still a highlight for Laura, but this time they added smoke to enhance the mood. There’s this green light which is way cool in an eerie, Halloweenish way, but with the smoke now included (don’t remember it from previous shows), it was trippy beyond any hallucinogenic one could ingest. The smoke machine was cranked, and at one point, I looked toward the folks in the first row, center, and they were totally obscured by the fog. Laura hoped they wouldn’t start coughing, and they didn’t. Smoke or no smoke, it’s still a smokin’ song sung by the inventor of the 12-string bass.

The second half of the show, with the Tricksters doing some of their own tunes, always brings the energy up a notch or two. However, this audience was hesitant to stand up and most sat through the majority of the show. No matter, Laura and Diane still had a great time listening to “Lala Police” and “I Want You to LaLa Me.”

Ya’ can’t really prepare anyone for this, though I told Diane that by sitting in the front row, Mr. Nielsen might toss a pick or two her way. After he pelted moi at the beginning of the show, somewhere in the second half, he very gently tossed a pick to Diane, looked at me and said, “Tell her that’s a “heart” pick from me.” And then I believe he did a little pitter-patter with his hand over his heart. Laura then yelled in Diane’s ear what he said, and she smiled. I think she thought he said, “La la la heart la la.”

Mr.Zander also wears some very sparkly outfits in the second half, and since Laura and Diane are descended from seagulls (they really like shiny things) they both enjoyed all of the holographic sparkles bouncing off of the bling-bling jacket he dons at the end of the show.

Now, at one point, while Laura sat attentively listening to Mr. Nielsen talk about their Sgt. Pepper CD/DVD (of which all the proceeds go to cancer research) SURPRISE! Mr. Nielsen tossed Laura the DVD after he was done with his spiel. Laura then paid it forward and SURPRISE! handed the DVD to the guy behind her because she already has a copy. The guy behind her was stoked. It’s all about spreading the love, cause love is all ya need, and love is a many splendid thing.

During “All You Need is Love,” Diane enjoyed the zillions of pink paper things that descended from the sky. She inquired, “Why are they in the shape of a tooth?” Laura told you her eyes weren’t functioning at their optimal level. After the show, Laura retrieved the electric scooter, and Diane proceeded to have so many paper hearts stuck on her clothing/hair, that they fell to her scooter, and then ultimately to the floor. If anyone had wanted to rob us, all they’d have to do is follow and paper trail all the way back to our room at Bally’s.

Random Ramblings from Diane (in her heavy Long Island accent) during/after the Sgt. Pepper’s show

“That drummer (Daxx Nielsen) is really cute…and so good at playing the drums. I love the drums.”

“Man, that blond fella really can sing.”

“Oooo….look at his sparkly jacket. I’d love to wear that.” (Told ya we were seagulls)

“Oh, that Rick is such a nice boy to throw me a piece of plastic. What does it say? I can’t read it.”

“Who’s this man? (pointing to Bill Lloyd) He’s working really hard too.”

“Aren’t they afraid to be playing up there?” (remarking about the elevated orchestra. Diane is deathly afraid of heights)

Day Deux

Laura and Diane ate some dinner after the show since Diane’s intestines were happier. Diane didn’t wake Laura up as much as the night before, but Laura still didn’t sleep well. Must have been the Nathan’s hot dog scarfed down at 11pm.

Laura and Diane hung out most of the day, played a little penny slots, and got ready for Diane’s big night out to see the one and only “Snap Out Of It!” Cher. Laura knew that getting Diane to Caesar’s Palace on her electric wheelchair would be an adventure in and of itself. And it was.

L&D left plenty early to get to Caesar’s, which is diagonally across from Bally’s on the corner of Flamingo Road and the Strip. It’s deceptively close, but since the only way to actually get there is via elevated cross-walks where you take either an escalator/stairs/elevator toward The Flamingo hotel or Bellagio, it gets more complicated with someone in an electric wheelchair who is terrified of heights and glass elevators, since elevators are the only option.

In some twisted phobic recesses of Diane’s brain, she believes that she will somehow catapult her scooter through the glass elevator and die, which makes having to go up and down in the lifts a complete joy to be with her. We approached the elevator at the corner of Bally’s which was to take us up to the The Flamingo crosswalk, and as we got closer, a guy in the elevator said SURPRISE!, it isn’t working. Sure enough, I pushed the up button, and nothing happened.

No big deal. “Okay, back up Diane, let’s go to the other elevator which will take us to the Bellagio instead.” We arrive at the elevator and SURPRISE! the sign says, “OUT OF ORDER.” Laura’s like, “Oh crap. Caesar’s is so close, yet so far. How do we get Diane over there?” I remembered there was a street crosswalk at the other end of Paris, which Trick fan Budokanasana (Claire) and I had taken after one of the June Sgt. Peppers shows. “Okay Diane, we’ve got to go past Paris. Follow me.”

Laura thought Diane might have a heart attack, since to her it felt as if she had to make it all the way to Rockford, Illinois in an electric cart. Like a greyhound, she’s easily excitable, has zero patience when stressed, and the crowds on a Friday afternoon didn’t help the situation. “Why are all of these $%^&$@# people in my way?” she’d complain.

When we finally got closer to the Paris crosswalk, Laura tried to rush Diane so that she could make the light, and then remembered Diane can’t really see all that well. For fear of her missing the little sloped ramp and instead going off of the curb and flipping her scooter, Laura felt like a ground air-traffic controller dude waving his arms for the airplane to follow….”Over here Diane,” I said, as I flailed both arms up and down. “Go up this ramp.” Diane cursed as she tried to negotiate around the thousands of bodies that got in her way.

We were finally on the Bellagio side of the street when Laura realized that the fountains were dancing to the music, and almost everyone was watching the aquatic show. That meant Diane had a clear path to go the length of the block toward the next elevator without the annoying people, so Laura cranked the scooter to “jackrabbit”, and yelled, “Go Diane, run like the wind!” And Diane, not really being able to see where the hell she was going, darted off in as straight a line as she could with Laura lagging behind her. It was too bloody hot for Laura to run, but Diane made it almost all of the way before the fountains did their grand finale.

When Laura caught up, she turned the speed back to “semi-turtle” and Diane was cursing that she was exhausted, as if she’d run the length of a Vegas block. She was so delighted when Laura reminded her that she had to now go in an elevator, that she cursed nicely at Laura too. Laura went in first and had to coax Diane, wishing she had a sugar-free chocolate (Diane is diabetic) to entice her into the glass booth of death. Diane yelped as she drove about two inches past the door with her eyes closed, certain she was about to be launched into the afterlife.

We went through the yelping and eye closing again on our “down” elevator over at the Caesars corner, and at that point, Diane was about ready pack it in to go back to Bally’s, cause Caesar’s is like overwhelmingly huge. After more polite cursing and almost taking out a young couple in love with Diane’s impatient scooter driving, Laura finally gets mom to the Forum where Cher performs. You can tell Cher draws an older crowd, cause there is a nice man who will escort Diane to her seat and puts a ticket on her scooter which he’ll bring back to her after the show is finished. Laura is relieved and heads back to the hotel via the oh so simple stairs to get ready for Sgt. Peppers.

***********SHOWTIME PART DEUX***********

I had third row center seats Friday night, and chatted with the woman next to me. “Are you a Cheap Trick or Beatles fan?” I inquired. “Both”replied the bubbly woman from Queens, NY. “You’re from Queens? I grew up in Massapequa, Long Island” remarked Laura (Queens/Brooklyn/Long Island are all neighbors, in case yer not familiar with lower New York geography). Then a woman in the 2nd row turned her head and said, “I’m from Islip, Long Island.” Then the guy on Laura’s left gushed, “I grew up in Merrick and Hicksville, Long Island.” Rod Sterling entered, and instead of playing the Twilight Zone theme song, he asked Frank Sinatra and the orchestra to strike up “New Yawk, New Yawk.” It’s a hell of a town… or state…in case ya forgot.

The enthusiastic woman from Queens had seen lots of Vegas shows and said that “O” was the best show on the strip. When she asked Laura how many times she’d seen Cheap Trick and Laura replied “around 75 times,” the woman was delighted to be sitting next to a “real” fan. That made Laura giggle.

The show was just as enjoyable as the previous night, with lots of great energy from the band and audience. When Rick saw that Laura was Dianeless, he gestured/mouthed, “Where is she?” as if he was wondering what happened to the nice old lady he’d “picked” the night before.

Even after seeing Sgt. Peppers a total of eight times, (including the Hollywood Bowl/Hilton shows) I still picked up some new things I hadn’t noticed before. The singer dudes with the fancy hairdoos play gazoos for a few measures on one song (forgive me, not sure which tune, having a complete brain fart…does anyone actually know?). And mom is right…Billy Lloyd, as well as Magic Cristian (keyboards), really add a great deal to the overall sound of the production.

The Queens woman was grinning the entire evening, and when Trick got to “Lala Police,” Laura encouraged her to stand. She did, and Laura enjoyed watching the woman from Queens rock out. Laura, for some unknown reason, got teary-eyed during “World’s Greatest LaLa.” The lyrics hit her particularly hard that night, and “She’s Leaving Home” and “Carry That Weight” were heart twisters too. During “The End” she closed her eyes and listened to the orchestra. It was a cosmic experience.

As the show ended, the woman from Queens turned to Laura and SURPRISE! screamed, “THIS IS MY NEW FAVORITE SHOW ON THE STRIP!” Listen to the lady. She knows her stuff. It is the best show in Vegas.

THE RETURN

On any mythic journey, the return voyage home can be just as daunting as the beginning of the trek. Getting Diane back to Bally’s was no easy task. Cher was awesome because she started her show with a “boom-boom” very loud drum according to Diane, but the scooter driving octogenarian was mega cranky and beyond exhausted. Laura still had to get her back on two elevators, which was not going to be easy. When they approached the first one, Diane, like a stubborn mule, refused to ride the scooter onto it. She looked at Laura and said, “YOU DO IT!” and with that, she grabbed her cane and got off the scooter. Laura drove it in without yelping, and they made it to the Flamingo side.

They crossed over the bridge and got to the next elevator and SURPRISE! it doesn’t work. Oh crap! Laura had tested it on the way back from Caesars a few hours earlier, and it worked if ya pushed the button from the elevated crosswalk, but not at street level. The homeless person (looked homeless) sitting next to it said, “Go down Flamingo.” Laura looked down Flamingo Road and sure enough, there was a crosswalk in the middle of the street, leading right into Bally’s. It was one of those “Wow, I coulda had a V-8″ moments. It would have been nice to have known a simpler option existed earlier in the day, but sometimes we are guided to take the long way home (or to Caesars) for some reason we just don’t understand at the time. When things don’t go as planned, that often becomes the most memorable part of the journey.

So, mom and I went back down another glass elevator and after more arm flailing and yelling by Laura…. “Mom, no, that red thing is the curb! Over here!” finally get back home. I was never so relieved to be back to a noisy, crowded casino in my life. They say that life’s a journey, and when you journey with Diane, expect the unexpected.

Thanks Las Vegas and Cheap Trick for an unforgettable mother/daughter adventure. Diane says she had such a good time she’d like to go to Vegas every three months. Don’t think so, at least not with moi. Maybe next year if the Tricksters do Sgt. Peppers again, and only if Diane promises not go near Caesar’s Palace.

P.S. I recently took my mom and daughters to see “Alpha and Omega” in 3-D. Diane has never seen a 3-D movie before, and since her vision isn’t what the lady at the DMV calls “stellar,” (Diane got ZERO correct on her license renewal vision test) we weren’t sure what to expect. As soon as the movie started, she was delighted. “The screen is so clear! This is wonderful.” As we left the theater, she asked me, “Why can’t they make these 3-D glasses for real life?” It made me think of the song “3-D” by Cheap Trick.

That reminds me! I was going to write about Rick’s newer guitar with the wonky checkerboard pattern and totally forgot to include it in the review. It’s got a warped checkerboard with a 3-D perspective, kinda bent, hard to describe, and reminds me of the new slightly distorted checkerboard backdrop they’ve been using lately. So, 3-D rocks for older folks with poor eyesight and it makes a neat guitar design as well.