About a year ago, I published a series of uncharacteristically informal, personal, and in many cases off topic articles to close out 2010 (see London Journal 2010). If doing it again to close out 2011 makes it a tradition, well, I can hope that is the case, but cannot predict if I’ll be making a similar trip next year. In any event, I will be traveling to three major cities this year – London, Paris, and Liverpool (having visited both UK destinations last year; this will be the first visit to France). As with last year, much of the journey will be adventures related to various rock/pop music concerts, but will again be meeting up with many of my friends in the television and movie prop collecting field, and visits to prop-related venues.
Of course, December 2011 will go down as a month with seemingly continuous entertainment memorabilia auctions; my review of those events will likely be in summary form via my annual “year in review” article for 2011.
If any readers are based out of London or Paris and want to meet for a cup of coffee or the like, please feel free to get in touch.
Articles that are part of this London/Paris/Liverpool Journal will be published within the “England/France Journal 2011” category:
I will also tweet various updates on the official Original Prop Blog Twitter account throughout the journey (which now also feeds into the middle column on the main page of the OPB).
As my upcoming itinerary is packed with concerts, I thought I would publish some photos as a recap of U.S.-based gigs I’ve attended in the past few months (with the trip to Madrid for a special Coldplay concert already having been summarized in a prior article – see Photojournal on Coldplay’s “Unstaged” Mylo Xyloto Live Concert Event with Anton Corbijn at Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas in Madrid, Spain).
November 2011
Working backwards, in late November I was able to catch one of the last live performances put on by The Pixies as part of their “Lost Cities” tour. Playing in Napa, California, the band played through their landmark ‘Doolittle’ album, in order along with B-sides and a few extras. It was a real pleasure to see them again, not having attended a live performance since seeing them play UC Davis back in 2004 as part of their first reunion tour, and shows in the early 90s and late 80s prior to that.
Below are some photos I took at the show, as well as videos taken during the performance.
October 2011
On October 12th, I have an opportunity to see Billy Idol perform at Mountain Winery in Saratoga, CA for the second consecutive year. My favorite (relatively) local venue, I was fortunate enough to have front row center seats, literally standing right in front of Idol’s front center position for the entire show (as you will see from the photos below). Because I was “right there”, I opted not to shoot video at this gig (but did from a few rows back the year before – “Eyes Without A Face”, “Rebel Yell”). Last year I was lucky and caught one of Billy Idol’s autographed plates, and one of the bassist’s stage-used guitar picks. This year, Billy Idol came off the stage and handed me an autographed set list, and I also got one of Steve Steven’s well-used guitar picks. At the end of the show, Billy Idol reached down and handed us his one stage-used guitar pick, so now I have a full set spanning the two shows at the venue.
Below are photos taken at the gig this year.
September 2011
On September 11th, I went to one of Hall & Oates shows, which was incredible, as I’ve come to expect from seeing them many times over the years (including at Mountain Winery last year). With such a deep catalog of hits, any fan of 80s pop music would not come away disappointed.
Below are some videos and photos from the show this year at Thunder Valley in California.
August 2011
In August, I caught a special one off Coldplay show benefiting MusicCares at UCLA – the Samsung AT&T Summer Krush Concert Series on 8/3/11. This was another great Coldplay show, and like with the Madrid show, I had the benefit of VIP tickets and some special perks and front row in the seated section. Two of the songs were recorded for the Jimmy Kimmel show, which aired later the same night (with some funny video with Jimmy Kimmel at the very bottom).
Below are some photos and video from the show.
Jason DeBord