Ok, so I’ve never been a really big Beatles fan, even though my Mom wouldn’t appreciate me saying that.  Even though I’m not really a big fan, I do absolutely love the song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.  Now with that being said I came across a video of this song with with Eric Clapton on lead vocals.  I love Eric Clapton so I was super excited about this and in my mind he is one of the top guitar players in the world.  Seriously just watch him play in this video and you tell me who is better.

Check out the video and hopefully you’ll enjoy just as much as I do.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Last Saturday I went to 1 of the 9 Garth Brooks concerts in Kansas City with my wife Amber and brother Kyle. What can I say, the concert was an awesome time and its defintely something that I’ll always remember. I’ve been to several concerts in my life, but I can honestly say that none of them have compared to this. Overall the energy at the show was amazing and I don’t think I sat down in my seat one time over his set that lasted nearly two and a half hours. The only negative experience that I had was some moron drunk chick behind us kept spilling her beer on my wife. So here is little bit of advice, if you can’t consume alcohol in public without acting like a dumbass then just stay at home.

I hope that I get a chance to see him again someday, but if I don’t then this show definitely lived up to all my expectations. If you ever have the chance to see Garth live then I highly recommend it.

So I’m really not a country music fan, but I’ve always wanted to see a Garth Brooks concert.  I actually never figured that it would happen, until he announced he was going to play a show here in Kansas City on Nov 14.   I got my wristband for the lottery system on Thursday and this morning I was lucky enough to get tickets to one of his shows. Pretty much all of the 9 shows are sold out for the most part and it only took a few hours to do so so that’s pretty amazing.

I’ve got say I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for the guy on the way that he handled tickets for this show for the following reasons.

1. Ticket Prices  -  All tickets were no more than $32.50 a piece including ticket fees.  It’s nice to see someone do this considering what most acts charge these days.
2. Beating Ticket Scalpers – They restricted online sales to residents in the area here and the wristband system  used for buying tickets in person did a good job of discouraging people camping out for tickets.  It may not of been a perfect but it was definitely better than I’ve seen anyone else do lately.
3. Adding 8 Shows After the 1st Sold Out – Lets be honest, Garth didn’t have to add 8 additional shows, but he did for his fans because he wanted to make sure that everyone that wanted to see the show had a chance to.

Overall he did an excellent job of trying to accommodate everyone that wanted to see the show for an affordable price.  I know I’m super excited to see the show in November and I’m sure it will be a great time.

I just finished watching the Grammys and I must say that I’m extremely happy for the Dixie Chicks as they won 5 grammys tonight including album of the year.  I’m not much of a country music fan myself, but then again I don’t really consider them to be typical country music anyway.  They were definitely well deserving of these award as they put out an amazing album that did great even when country radio turned against them, because lead singer Natalie Maines chose to use her constitutional right and speak her mind on something she believed in.

I have to applaud these three women for coming back like they did after everything they went through the past three years.  Honestly, I just think it is absolutely ridiculous that they received the backlash they did over these comments.   They received threats on their life and I can only imagine what their families had to go through as a result of this.  This was all because someone spoke their mind and unfortunately since they are in a traditionally patriotic industry like country music it caused even more of a disturbance.  My biggest issue with this is that it shouldn’t matter if they are country music stars, if they want to speak their mind then that is their right just like everyone else in this country.  If you don’t like it then that is fine, don’t listen to them or their music, but the some of the stuff they have had to deal with over the past 3 years is just plain ignorance.

Here is a thought for all of you that don’t support the Dixie Chicks or think what was said was unpatriotic.  Thats fine if you want to boycott them, but the bottom line is a very large percentage of other entertainers in hollywood and in the music industry have been very outspoken about this same issue as well.  So I guess if you want to keep things equal across the board then you should stop watching their movies and listening to their music as well.  I myself think it is great that their industry can pretty much turn its back on them and they can still have the wide range of success they had this year.  It says alot about their talents and not alot of artists out their would have been able to overcome this like they have.  Even some of their fellow country music artists (one in particular), have had some harsh things to say about them since this incident.  Well the only I can say about that is the Dixie Chicks now own 13 grammys, so I would say that some people including myself seem to like what they have to say.  I applaud them for their courage over the last three years and for their grammys they received for the great music they have made.