Another five-year stretch of not-very-many-annual-concerts. But I know we saw quite a bit of local music in those days. My memories of this time period seem to be just as sketchy as some older times, but a few of the artists that we’d go see were Earl & Arch (from Bleeding Hearts, RIP Earl), Basic Rock Outfit (Jeremy Thomas), and later, Mojo Gurus (Kevin Steele of Roxx Gang and Jeff Vitolo, ex-Intice, ex-Tyger Tiger, ex-Dive Bar Stalkers and who can still be seen locally as Jeff Vitolo and the Quarter Mile Rebels). For the life of me I can’t remember the clubs we went to during those years … maybe Gators on the Pass, Jimmy Bs, Ringside Cafe (when it was on 4th Street), or Two Buks Saloon.
At this point in life I was a 30-something just starting a legal career in professional baseball (even though I was clueless about sports) with a 10-year old kid and a dwindling interest in newer music. While I had been moving in that direction since the mid-’90s, I must have hit that neurological musical acme when we prefer to primarily listen to our music of yore.
It was about this time that music was plunging in a digital direction, and around the same time that I was shamed by my kid into ditching the walkman for an iPod.
I travelled out-of-state a lot to see shows during this era, in particular for Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas (my personal favorite of all of Sammy’s musical iterations) and to hang with a fun online “mailing list” of people called the SHML (Sammy Hagar Mailing List, i.e., an ancient form of social media). I’m still friends with some of those peeps and have run into others at various shows here and there over the the decades. I’m old now but it’s good to be old for stuff like this lol.
Summary of concert ticket stubs and shows below – which primarily includes seeing Sammy Hagar touring with the Waboritas, Sammy Hagar touring with David Lee Roth, and Sammy Hagar touring with Van Halen ;oD:
1999 – Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas at the Hard Rock Live in Orlando, Florida; Aerosmith at the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville, South Carolina; Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas at the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas in St. Louis, Missouri.
2000 – Just one stub… The Red Hot Chili Peppers with The Foo Fighters at TD Waterhouse Centre in Orlando, Florida.
2001 – None. Hard to believe now that I’ve got this far after starting in 1980, but I do not have one single ticket stub.
2002 – Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth at UMB Bank Pavilion in St. Louis, Missouri; Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth at the Ice Palace Arena in Tampa, Florida; Default at Jannus Landing in St. Petersburg, Florida.
2003 – None. We’ll call this the “lean years” … as in lean funding, and probably lean musically as far as shows I wanted to spend to see; I don’t think the ’80s bands had yet to make their comeback.
2004 – Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas with Jerry Cantrell and The Fabulous Thunderbirds at the Super Bowl/Super Bash event in Houston, Texas; A Glenn Miller Christmas at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Florida; Van Halen (with Sammy Hagar) at the Ice Palace Arena in Tampa, Florida, and two nights of Van Halen (with Sammy) at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.
1999 – The Turn of the Century
ABOVE and BELOW: Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas on 3-16-1999 on his Red Voodoo tour at the Hard Rock Live in Orlando, Florida. Cost $12.50 plus $2.75 “Price & all taxes incl.” plus .71 tax. General Admission. Appears to have been the 10th Anniversary of Ticketmaster also, ugh.
An online search tells me there was no opening act on this primarily club tour, and I don’t remember any. Also some photos of Cabo Wabo Tequila ads and costs – prices have doubled 22 years later. One flyer of which I took with me to the show and was lucky enough to get autographed while being an upfront fanatic \w/. Flyers are generally not safe in my presence lol.
Aerosmith with the Afghan Wigs on 4-17-1999 on their Nine Lives tour at the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville, South Carolina. Cost $27.50. Section 222, Row B, Seat 6. Cellar Door Presents. Opening band info from setlist.fm.
I remember we wanted to get away so we took a road trip from Florida to South Carolina to meet some friends for this show.
ABOVE: Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas on 5-9-1999 at the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Cost 25.00 with a $5 Convenience Charge. General Admission. House of Blues Presents.
Another road trip and show with some SHML’ers (Sammy Hagar Mailing List – an ancient form of social media) and a photo of the banner that would be thrown up to Sammy at some point during the show. Another ancient band ritual: throw up things for the artist to wear – whether a local sports team hat/jersey or a flag or a banner, and Sammy would always oblige with some banner-wearing (which you can see below in the VH-Sammy Las Vegas pics).
ABOVE: St. Pete Times (now known as the Tampa Bay Times) article on local saxophone artist Mindi Abair, whose parents were my parents’ neighbors from 1985-1992-ish. Mindi attended Northside Christian School in St. Petersburg and followed her dad’s musical footsteps from there to Berkeley School of Music to a grammy nomination and many cool tours, like this one with the Backstreet Boys. While I never knew Mindi (I lived in Los Angeles for many of those years), her parents are genuinely lovely people.
2000 – Just one stub…
Red Hot Chili Peppers with the Foo Fighters on 6-15-2000 at TD Waterhouse Centre in Orlando, Florida. Cost $25.00 plus $4.50 Convenience Charge. Section 217, Row G, Seats 1 and 2. MTV Presents.
Good show but what I remember most is going with Grant and my childhood friend Jennifer and we were all chatting away happily on the way home completely forgetful of the fact that we needed gas asap and then running out of it on I-4, of all roads.
2001 – Not much to see here either but…
ABOVE: 2001 postcard from a friend visiting the Cabo Wabo Cantina in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, back when people used to send those sort of things in the mail.
A Florida Orchestra program dated April, 2001 featuring legendary conductor Doc Severnsen, autographed to my son Adrian. Doc was the Grammy-winning Music Director of The Tonight Show.
We collected an interesting set of autographs for the kid – you can check them out on my post Adrian’s Autographs 1989-1993.
2002 – Concerts pick up just a little…
ABOVE: Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth on 6-7-2002 at UMB Bank Pavillion in St. Louis, Missouri. Cost $25.50 for a Lawn Seat. Radio station KSHE95 Welcomes and a Budweiser Concert Series show. Also shown: a KSHE95 Sammy Hagar REDFEST bumper sticker with a UPS ad on the back.
One of our SHML friends gave us passes to be onstage during the show and a photo of the event instructions and wristband are shown. Sammy had recently started a trend of having a specific number of fans on stage on little bleachers behind the drummer, and called the area ‘The Cabo Wabo Cantina.’ It was a very cool way to see a show! Note the NO PHOTOGRAPHY/NO CELL PHONES (although cell phones were pretty much used by a large percentage of the population at that point, the camera wasn’t a regular option then). And then after that incredible concert experience we had to go back out to our Lawn Seats to watch David Lee Roth…probably better that way lol. Sammy and David were alternating opening/closing shows each night.
Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth on ‘The Tour You Have Waited For’ (I don’t think any of us were expecting that tour lol) on 8-1-2002 at the Ice Palace Arena in Tampa, Florida. Cost $55.00 plus $9.25 T and $3.48 tax. Floor Row 14, Seat 13. A Clear Channel Event.
Default with Injected and Trik Turner on 8-10-2002 at Jannus Landing in St. Petersburg, Florida. Cost 15.00. A Clear Channel Event.
I recall Grant and I really got into Default’s 2001 album Fallout, and how my favorite cousins Shawn (RIP) and Sherrie came with us to this show while they were in town visiting. I do not recall either of the opening bands – as is often the case, the opening band info was located on setlist.fm.
2003 – No stubs, no nothing to show for this year…
2004 – A few great shows…more Sammy and Sammy with Van Halen
ABOVE: Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas (my personal favorite iteration of Sammy’s many projects) on 1-30-2004 at the Super Bash/Super Bowl event in Houston, Texas. Cost $20.00 plus $4.12 Convenience Charge. Coors Light Presents.
There were many bands over the two-day event as shown, but the only other ones we saw were Jerry Cantrell and The Fabulous Thunderbirds. Some photos of the show with special guest Toby Keith.
Kid Rock and Twisted Brown Trucker on his Rock N’ Roll Pain Train tour (I loved that album back then) on 4-10-2004 at the USF Sun Dome in Tampa, Florida. Comped ticket. I have no memory of how I got a free ticket. CC.com promoter – I’m guessing Clear Channel.
ABOVE and BELOW: Van Halen (with Sammy Hagar) with Shinedown on 8-6-2004 and 8-7-2004 at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. The tickets for the show on the 6th were gifted to me by a baseball acquaintance and appear to have been $262.50 each which possibly included a $31.25 fee…I can’t tell but it looks like he actually bought $525 worth of tickets and I only recall two. Section 112, Row Q, Seat 10. The tickets I bought myself for the second show on the 7th were $89.25 with a $9.25 fee for Section 222, Row A, Seats 8 and 9. Clear Channel Presents.
The ticket clearly says ‘NO CAMERAS OR RECORDING DEVICES’ but we tried to get one in both nights – it worked one night but we got busted on the other and had to check the camera at the desk until after the show. I’m pretty sure the photos shown were taken by Grant on his nice little Sony digital camera with a great zoom lens, but it’s possible the really good photos were taken by a friend, in which case I’ll come back and update the photo credit. Cell phone cameras were just taking hold around this time but they weren’t good, and I don’t think we had one.
MERCHANDISE – A great photo of the merch booth, the prices, and the cool VH-branded bag my purchase came in. My pink VH shirt was $35.00. Man, I want one of each of those things now, especially the coat.
Van Halen (with Sammy Hagar) with Laidlaw on 9-9-2004 at the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, Florida. Cost $86.75 plus $12.70 fee. Section 130, Row H, Seat 16. A Fantasma Event. Opening band from setlist.fm.
Not sure why I decided to “cut” this “stub” this way but you’ll see a few more like this in the coming years.
A Glenn Miller Christmas on 12-20-2004 at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Florida. Cost $15.00. Row Y, Seat 73.
Went with the ex-father-in-law who could whistle this type of music beatifically. I can still hear him uproariously vibrato-ing along with The Lawrence Welk Show on the television. RIP, Ed.
‘One of these things is not like the other’ …but Grant went to this NFL football game so it ended up in the stub pile. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. the New Orleans Saints on 12-19-2004 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. Cost $240.00.
In later years I would see a few shows here: U2, AC/DC, Metallica. I also camped out for tickets at the old stadium in the ’80s high school years (The Rolling Stones and The Who).
Random related and undated stuff…
A picture of Sammy Hagar by SHML’er Kat Ferrari of KIS Photography inserted into a Christmas card frame; a random Happy Birthday Sammy banner signed by a bunch of SHML people that I THINK was hanging at the Cabo Wabo Cantina in the early 2000s, and a Cabo Wabo Cantina wristband which I’m not sure from whence it came…I don’t think it was from my 1998 visit to the actual Cabo Wabo Cantina in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, but it could be that or from any of the shows above or my 2005 visit to the Cabo Wabo Cantina in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. And my autographed copy of Sammy’s 1997 Marching to Mars CD cover…one of the last CDs I own (actually I only have the cover lol). Old school album/tape/CD packaging was so creatively enjoyable. And I think I got this autographed in 2004 which is how it ended up in this group.
For more Van Halen and Sammy stuff, see my post The Chronicles of a Van Halen and Sammy Hagar Fan 1979-2015.
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