Brent’s Blog

Saying that Bethany and I had a busy weekend would be a complete understatement. We started out on Friday night with the Bon Jovi concert at XCel. I’ve never seen so many middle-aged women fawn over an aging musician.

Whenever I go to the concerts of 80s musicians, I’m always concerned that they’ll either do too much of their new music or too much of their old. Bon Jovi had the perfect balance. This was their Have a nice day tour, so much of the first half of their show was dominated by songs off that album, which makes sense. He also appealed to the aging 80’s rocker girl crowd during the encores by playing all of his early hits off of his Slippery When Wet album that made him a superstar. The best song out of that set was no doubt Never Say Goodbye, which is an epic monster ballad to start with. He made it 10x better by playing it on the acoustic guitar for the first verse. You could see all of the women’s eyes in the Xcel Center glass over as they swayed to that piece and Bon Jovi’s self-proclaimed national anthem: Wanted: Dead or Alive. 

On Sunday night, we saw Arturo Sandoval, the great Cuban trumpet player, at the Dakota Bar and Grill in downtown Minneapolis. The last time I saw him was in 2001, when he played a big band show at Bethel College with JazzMN . He is just as good now as he was then. With his blindingly fast fingering and tonguing, he tore it up on Trumpet, piano, percussion, and scatting in an almost surreal display of talent. Bethany recorded a short video of the performance, which I’ll have to post here when we get it off her camera….astounding.