A couple of notable moments, including a few firsts in my life, occurred at last night’s Rick Springfield concert at the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, WA. Before the concert, we picked up Springfield’s Written in Rock 2-CD set retrospective of his career to date. We paid $18.99 at a local record store, but I see it for $24.98 on Amazon [affiliate].

The 2-CD set includes a full 42 songs with a couple of covers of Beatles songs (”Eleanor Rigby” and “For No One”) and extensive liner notes by Rick himself discussing how each track came to be created. For example, on Jessie’s Girl is that the song was originally written about his friend’s hot girlfriend that Rick knew he would never have, was titled Randy’s Girl, and included a long guitar solo that was shortened to be more pop chart friendly. I like when artists provide this background with CDs. Lots of pictures too.

I think my favorite parts were when Springfield came out into the audience while performing — literally. Of the numerous live concerts I’ve seen over the years, I’ve only seen one other artist do this, Air Supply. The guitarist from Armored Saint did one of those jump into the crowd things and they didn’t catch him. Ouch, that has to hurt. Springfield came out into the crowd during the song, “Don’t talk to Strangers” and then again during “Human Touch” and a cover of The Who’s “My Generation.” He also covered “Red House” in the setlist.

Springfield pointed the microphone to the crowd and had some of them, including one of the security guards, sing the words: “Don’t talk to strangers.” Nice touch!

My fellow rocker friend Matt Wardlaw stopped by yesterday in the comments to tell me that Rick Springfield puts on a good show. With that kind of endorsement, I figured it would be a good time — and it was. A new reader, Mufi, tells me how she got box seats to see Metallica and confirms that marriage does involve sacrifices.

Last night’s show was no sacrifice. I was entertained.

Mufi also points out that Springfield has a new CD of Christmas songs out. He played one of his original Christmas songs. I don’t know about Christmas rock records, although I kind of liked Twisted Sister Twisted Christmas CD.

In 2008 Springfield has a new CD coming out with a song called “Who Killed Rock” that he opened with last night. I was kind of surprised how much Rick’s guitarist wailed. The guy could really play well. Kind of reminded me of David Lee Roth’s guitarist. Springfield is good on the fretboard too, although during his solo he muffed a few notes and the guitar was noticeably out of tune.

As expected, Springfield played his several hits: “Affair of the Heart,” “I’ve Done Everything For You,” “State of the Heart,” and of course his #1 song “Jessie’s Girl” which was the last song before the encore which included two more songs. One, I wasn’t familiar with (”Wasted” ?) and the final song “Love is alright” concluded the performance.

The mix was decent, although at times I had a hard time hearing Springfield’s vocals. My wife pointed out that he seemed to yell a little too much instead of singing. And he forgot the words to a couple songs, saying “shit” into the microphone at one point instead of the actual lyrics. I’d kind of expect this from one of the first few shows, but according to his tour page, he’s put on dozens of shows before this one. Maybe the songs he muffed the words weren’t played at most of these shows? In my experience, it’s not that uncommon for artists to forget words here and there on live shows.

I was surprised how animated Springfield was on stage. He threw his guitar way up in the air and caught it one-handed, he took roses and other flowers from the crowd and strummed his guitar with them, severing the flowers and having petals fly everywhere. Matt was right, Springfield puts on a good show. We had decent seats, sort of near the back, at $35 a ticket (pictured), near the fire exit on the left side of the stage.

No pictures were allowed to be taken at the venue, which I saw being broken by several fans. At one point, Springfield took a cell phone from one of the female fans and called “mom” telling her that he was Rick Springfield and that he had a “condom.” The crowd roared. Now that’s interacting with the fans.

When the concert was over we hung around the casino for 30 minutes or so, letting the crowd dissipate, playing one of the video keno machines. After her and I lost $100, my wife won it back by hitting 4 out of 4. Then something strange happened: we went to cash the EZ Ticket out and were told the computers were “all down.” The workers were milling around in a state of confusion and concern, wondering aloud: “the IT guys better get on this.”

Since we couldn’t put the ticket in any of the machines in the back of the casino, we moved forward to the front half of the casino and came upon this Chain Reaction $1 slot machine along the side of the machine. I stuck the $100 ticket in it and was immediately credited with 100 credits. I planned to only play it a few spins and on the fourth spin came up one Chain Reaction symbol and two red 7’s in the middle: $300! Spun it a couple more times and then hit the cash out button. Now we had a ticket for $394. Took that to the main cage where long lines of people were cashing in tickets. We had no problem waiting to make over $300! Thanks Emerald Queen Casino for paying us to go see Rick Springfield — and then some. First time I can remember ever being paid to go see a concert. Nice.

Summary and grade
Overall, the concert was a solid, satisfying experience. Musically I wasn’t as enthralled as at some other concerts, but that’s a matter of personal taste. I’d probably pay to see Springfield again someday — and would definitely be willing to get paid to go see him thanks to gambling winnings (that likely won’t happen again) — which is a considerable improvement from yesterday’s post where I was reluctant to attend. Glad my wife wanted to go, a lot of fun. Grade: B.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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