We went to see Front 242 last night here in Dallas, at the Granada Theater.

First a little bragging. My amazing wife got us front row balcony seats. We could sit for the whole show and no one could stand in front of us. The balcony at the Granada is a fantastic place to see a show.

This was to be the band’s last live tour. The guys are getting up there. They are a little older than me, and they’ve been doing this since about 1983. They’ve earned a rest.

We’ve seen them once before, same venue, 2017.

The show as great. I love the imagery Front 242 uses on the screen. Just amazing. The crowd was generally older and cool. Not the kind of crowd you encounter so often these days where people are standing in groups talking while the band plays.

We needed this.

Last night we went to see Johnny Marr and his band perform at the Majestic Theater, in Dallas.

The Majestic is a great venue. There’s not a bad seat in the house, and it’s a classic-looking oldschool performance hall.

  Johnny Marr, September 30 2024 Dallas, Majestic Theater.

The sound was great. Johnny and his bad were great as well. My wife was lucky enough to see the Smiths play Dallas at the Bronco Bowl back in the late 1980s. This is the closest I will come. Yes, we have seen Morrissey a couple of times, but frankly I don’t like his solo material, and he’s annoying. Johnny Marr played three or four Smiths songs, and his versions of the songs are all really good. Obviously the guitar sounds similar, but the rest of the band is very different.

A fantastic show.

The opening band, James, is not really my thing. Kinda hippy stuff. A lot of the crowd really liked them though, so it’s fine.

So at risk of repeating myself, probably my favorite things to do is listen to music with my wife and going to see shows with her. The Smiths are certainly one of her top 5 bands, and are high on my list as well. She saw them many years ago, before we started dating. Being there with her to hear Johnny Marr play some of those songs meant a lot to me. It’s times like that when we feel like we are in our early 20s again. I wish I could have shared that Smiths show with her, so this was a big deal.

Johnny Marr, September 30 2024 Dallas, Majestic Theater.

We went to see Echo and the Bunnymen last night in Dallas.

It was awesome.

Going to shows with my wife is one of my great joys in life. That she and I share so many musical preferences is one of the others. While we stood there “on the floor” of this show next to our friend John and Tina, with all the other middle-aged fans, my feet did hurt, but other than that I felt like we were in our early 20s again. I always feel like that with her at shows.

I’m working on getting the Cure albums on vinyl. I don’t just “collect everything”, and I’m not one of those music collectors who cares a lot about having a particular pressing of an album or whatever. I just want it to sound good. I realize a lot of these newly minted LPs probably come from digital recordings, but hopefully a few I’m getting a few good ones.

Some guys are car guys. They love cars. They’ve always wanted a cool car. I was never that guy. From the time I was in about 5th grade I just wanted a good stereo. That’s it. Other than skateboards and root beer, my stereo is my one indulgence. When I went to college my roommate had a great stereo. Man, that was nice. And when I graduated, my mom and dad got me one, and that’s all I wanted. This is a different stereo (below), but man I love having it.