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Kid Sings Punk Rock With Murphy’s Law On His Birthday Murphy’s Law was on stage at The Other Side for a sold-out show with Clutch and VOD. No barricade. Right up front was a 10-year-old kid in Big Smith overalls. And it was his birthday. Jimmy Gestapo called him up on stage and asked if he wanted to sing with the band. The kid said yes, but he did not know the words. Jimmy told him, “Just sing wha...

Holding Rick Nielsen’s 5-Neck Guitar This happened in Wichita at inCahoots. Rick Nielsen’s famous five-neck guitar was sitting on a stand in the dressing room, and people could see it from the parking lot. One kid spotted it and could not stop staring. He kept saying how cool it was. The band had already left for the hotel, and the guitar was still sitting there. So Jeff told the kid to come over....

Some product names are too perfect. Tommy Chong had one called “Urine Luck.” Spelled U-R-I-N Luck. And once that name came up, the whole room lost it. It sounds like a joke. It sounds like something only Tommy Chong would be attached to. And that is exactly why it works. The conversation turns into everybody repeating the name, laughing at it, and making it even more ridiculous. Urine Luck. Once y...

April had a pretty cool run of shows in Oklahoma. April 10th at Bricktown Brewery was JGB. The Jerry Garcia Band members. Jerry Garcia had already passed by then, so it was not Jerry himself, but still, having members of that band upstairs at the Brewery is pretty wild. Standing room only. Tickets were $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Then the Brewery kept rolling. April 11th was The Verve Pipe...

Three weeks into Hollywood Recording Studios, the first band in front of him was Guns N’ Roses. Not a bad welcome to LA. They were cutting demos for Spencer Proffer, who was deciding whether he wanted to sign the band. Several labels had already passed, which looks like a massive mistake now. The music was there. The chaos was there. And according to the story, the wild Guns N’ Roses studio legend...

Max only saw Van Halen twice. The first was the 2008 comeback tour at the Ford Center. That was a huge moment. Then came the later run with Kool & The Gang, which sounds like a strange pairing, but it worked. Max saw Kool & The Gang with Van Halen twice. Once at the BOK Center in Tulsa. And once at what was then Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City. That is what makes concert memories...

CAKE is one of those bands that surprises people live. They look like normal guys on stage, then the groove hits, the horn kicks in, and the whole room locks in. Max calls them one of the best live bands he has ever seen. There is even an autographed poster from that Diamond Ballroom show hanging in The Diamond. The conversation also turns to Fashion Nugget , which still holds up enough for Josh t...

This is what happens when the ticket guy forgets the tickets. Max was on a hard run, headed to the Red Hot Chili Peppers show, and somehow left his moneybag at home. The tickets were inside it. Total rookie mistake. Everybody looked at him like, “How are you going to fix this?” Luckily, Max had pictures of the tickets on his phone. He showed them at the box office, gave them his ID, they checked t...

Jeff Lynne’s ELO & ELO II Jeff and Max were getting ready to head to Dallas to see Jeff Lynne’s ELO at the American Airlines Center. When you have worked in the concert business and seen so many bands, certain shows still stand out as ones you do not want to miss. That was this one. They started talking about how many times they had actually seen ELO. Max remembered the Out of the Blue tour wi...

December 15th at the Diamond Ballroom. Sponge played to 444 people with Ruth Ruth and Red 5 on support. Max calls Sponge one of his all-time favorite bands, and Vinnie Dombroski gets a lot of respect in this story. Great songwriter. Incredible vocalist. Years later, that connection carried into Texas Hippie Coalition. When Max first started managing THC, they ended up in Detroit at Vinnie’s studio...

September 1997 had a wild mix of shows. September 19th, Flotsam and Jetsam played Bricktown Live with Nevermore. Then September 21st, Leon Russell returned to The Boar’s Head. A few weeks later, Days of the New came through for two Oklahoma dates. October 7th at The Boar’s Head. October 8th at The Brink in Tulsa. This was early Days of the New, when Travis Meeks was still just a kid and the band w...

Arlo Guthrie, Leon Russell, & Presidents of The United States January 17th was Arlo Guthrie at City Blues, and it ended up being the very last show at that venue. Then February 23rd, Leon Russell played The Boar’s Head, marking part of that shift north in the Oklahoma concert scene. A few days later, February 27th, Presidents of the United States of America played the Diamond Ballroom. 1,095 p...

Rob Zombie at the Zoo Amphitheatre became legendary before he even hit the stage. The story goes that he paid a $10,000 fine up front so he could say whatever he wanted during the show. Then he walked out and did exactly that. He told the crowd he was there to rock, be loud, and say what he wanted because he had already paid for it. Some people might call that a waste of money. But in rock and rol...

Reba, Brooks & Dunn, Metallica, & COC May 1997 had a wild mix of shows in Oklahoma. May 8th, Brooks & Dunn and Reba McEntire played The Myriad. That was a huge country bill for that era. Then May 11th went in a completely different direction. Reverend Horton Heat played The Boar’s Head, while Metallica and Corrosion of Conformity played The Myriad Gardens on the Poor Touring Me tour. T...

October 14th brought Prong, Clutch, and Drown.  October had a strong run of shows at The Roxy. That was one of those snap-your-fingers kind of lineups. Heavy, tight, and a great deal at only $8 in advance or $10 day of show. And Clutch for ten bucks? Money well spent. The very next night, The Roxy flipped into southern rock mode with Molly Hatchet. Seven dollars. Danny Joe Brown was still with the...

RATT, Steven Pearcy, & Scott Johnson RATT at In Cahoots June 17th, 1997, Oklahoma City That venue tells part of the story. By the late 90s, some of the 80s hair metal bands were in their lean years, playing rooms people might not expect. In Cahoots was a country bar. But RATT still did not disappoint. The show had Warren DeMartini and Robbie Crane in the lineup, Hair of the Dog as special gues...

KISS and Aerosmith at the Ford Center. 15,000 people. With a production that big, the stage had to be pushed up, nobody sat behind it, and there were no restricted-view seats sold. So 15,000 in that setup was basically a sellout. That bill was massive. KISS and Aerosmith together made sense. Big songs, big production, and a packed arena. Then the conversation turned to Ace Frehley and Peter Criss...

October 2003 had a loud run of shows. October 20th, Dropkick Murphys and The Casualties played the Diamond Ballroom with 473 people in the room. That number feels low now, but back in 2003, Dropkick Murphys were still building their crowd. Then there was Static-X at Cain’s Ballroom with Soil, Scrape, and Twisted Method. Wayne Static always brought that industrial metal energy, and that show was a...

John Mayer Show & Drowning Pool With Saliva Show February 2007 had two completely different shows back to back. One night was John Mayer at the Cox Convention Center. Max says he did not really pay much attention to Mayer at first, but that changed after seeing him play with legends like Eric Clapton, J.J. Cale, and B.B. King. That was the moment he realized John Mayer could really rip. Then t...

December 14, 2003 was a loaded night in Oklahoma City. At the Bricktown Event Center, it was All American Rejects, Something Corporate, Blue October, and Headroom. All American Rejects were taking off, Blue October was on the bill, and Headroom brought in the local side. But across town at the Ford Center, KISS and Aerosmith were playing the same night. And here is the trivia. That OKC show was ju...

Ace Frehley At The Diamond & Tyler, Texas Ace Frehley at the Diamond Ballroom was one of those shows that should have had way more people in the room. The show was amazing. But hardly anybody was there. It was around 2008, and even with a light crowd, Ace still brought it. Then years later, there was another wild Ace Frehley memory in Tyler, Texas. Ace Frehley and Enuff Z’Nuff played inside a...

Early 2007 had two very different rock shows back to back. One night had 3 Days Grace, Buckcherry, and Red. Buckcherry was making the rounds, Red was still tied strongly to the Christian rock scene, and 3 Days Grace still had Adam Gontier in the band. But the next night was the one Jay really remembered. February 2, 2007. Slayer and Unearth at the Bricktown Event Center. No local opener. Just Unea...

Roar Festival hit the Zoo Amphitheatre on July 8, 1997, with a stacked lineup. Gravity Kills, Sugar Ray, Sevendust, Bloodhound Gang, Iggy Pop, Sponge, Reverend Horton Heat, and The Nixons. Tickets were only $15. The first half of the bill almost felt like a TVT Records tour, with Gravity Kills, Sevendust, and Bloodhound Gang all tied into that same scene. But the wild story happened the day before...

Making Tee Times For Alice Cooper Jay tells this one from the Zoo meet and greet. He had been working Sports Animal radio stuff all day and was wearing a Masters hat from Craig Humphreys. Craig goes to Augusta every year, broadcasts live, and brings back official Masters hats for the station. They call it Masters Christmas Day. Later, Jay is backstage wearing the hat, and the guys in Slayer lock i...

Mushroomhead, Avenged Sevenfold, and The Agony Scene played the Diamond Ballroom. November 29, 2003. 452 people showed up. Tickets were $19. And Avenged Sevenfold? They were only $100 as an add-on. At the time, nobody knew what that band would become. They were just routing through, added to the bill, and playing in front of a few hundred people. The Agony Scene was also on the show, coming out of...