I went to see Jackson Browne at Cain Park this past week. Jackson’s been such a big part of my musical makeup and yet I’d only seen him one time, a couple of years ago at the Tower City Amphitheater. On the one hand, I knocked an item off of my bucket list, getting to see Jackson play with David Lindley. But on the other, it seemed criminal that my one and only time seeing Jackson happened at such a plastic venue like TCA.

Putting the “plastic venue” to the side, it was a pretty good night and if I were never to get the chance to see Jackson again, I would at least be secure knowing that I’d finally managed to catch a JB show and one with Lindley on board no less. Not bad.

But when he announced a tour stop this year at Cain Park (God, how I love this venue), I knew I’d have to find a way to go and check it out. And thanks to my lovely better half Annie, I was able to do just that. When you’re lucky enough to experience a night of music from Jackson Browne, out on the lawn under the stars, it really doesn’t get much better than that.

A show which was supposed to be acoustic ended up being fairly electric, because as the tour dates drew closer, Jackson decided that he wanted to bring some friends along to play with him. I was a touch bummed that I wouldn’t be getting the chance to finally see a JB acoustic show, but as soon as he started playing, I was all good with it.

By the time he hit “Call It A Loan” with song #3, I was really okay with it, but it all really came together when he hit this moment in the setlist.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgWYangWAr0″]

Jackson still has the mojo. It was the final night of the current tour, so he was feeling fairly loose and veered away from the setlist for an eclectic set that featured songs from the first album heavily in the mix, among others. You can see the entire setlist from the night here.

Now, I’m going to take this post and drive it straight into the brick wall, to get to the original topic I had in mind when I first opened up my blogging dashboard.

Mike Reno and Loverboy.

One of my latest interviews for Ultimate Classic Rock found me talking with Reno about the latest Loverboy album. I talked with Mike one time about 15 years ago when they were promoting their VI album release. He’s a good dude and someone who will talk about anything. Our conversation must have been alright, because his mom left a comment in the comments section to give her thumbs up on the chat. It doesn’t get any better than that.

We didn’t have MTV in my house when I was growing up until the late ’80s. As a result, I missed out on seeing quite a few videos when they originally first aired. Videos like “Lovin’ Every Minute Of It” by Loverboy.

Watching this video now, you really have to miss the creative storylines that were all over music videos during the ’80s. I’m sure there might have been an edited version of this video which stripped out the first minute of silliness, but if someone can step up and tell me that it aired this way every single time it was on MTV?

I’d say “hell yeah” to that.

It’s probably a good thing that we didn’t have MTV in our house, because if we had, I doubt that I would have read half of the books that I read as a result growing up (I would come home from the library with 10-15 books each week) or any other wholesome example you can think of, which probably would have been replaced by sitting in front of MTV, all day long.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bohVV_KlSHw”]

But maybe that would have been just fine….