AC/DC.

The trip was fun, the show was great. I'll post the trip later. The show must go on first. The show we caught was at the St. Pete Times Forum, located, ironically, in Tampa. Not far, in fact, from the home of my brother. You got to learn more about his digs in the last- ghosted- post. I like his place. Just the right size for a single dad; the neighborhood has lots of trees, and it's close to a park.
The St. Pete Times Forum is the home of the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team. Pretty nice. You can buy beer from any of lots of vendors (but at $10 a cup, I didn't).


The Lads and their guest, Nick, get in the spirit (man those boys need haircuts!).

Aging boomers and their children were the main demographic at the show. With tickets starting at $100 a pop, the kids seemed to accept the father/son and father/daughter tandems.

The Answer, a group from Belfast, Ireland (or Northern Ireland. Whatever), opened. The Lads enjoyed them. Certainly they were loud. But really, The Answer wasn't the answer: AC/DC was. AC/DC's intro was an animated short film which was scary, loud and funny, setting up Rock and Roll Train from their new c.d., Black Ice (I didn't film it, but another dude at another venue did. If you want to see it, look here. They played most of their "greatest hits": Back in Black, Hell's Bells (with a giant AC/DC bell lowered to the stage), Thunderstruck, Shook Me All Night Long (most of the crowd sang the entire song with them), TnT ("oy, oy, oy"), Dirty Deeds (Done Dirt Cheap- from which I included a brief clip), together with Big Jack from their new c.d., and Rosie (with a giant inflated tawdry gal riding the train. Couldn't see it from our seats, but we got a couple of glimpses in the side video screen). The crowd ate it up. To my amazement, these old dudes brought a ton of energy to the show for two hours. Angus blistered the guitar solos, shook his bootie, and strip-teased to reveal his AC/DC undies (kinda like seeing Harrison Ford in the most recent Indiana Jones flick: you know he's in his 60's, but it's still fun), and lead singer Brian Johnson high-fived people on either side of the cat-walk (Not us, of course. The "cheap" $100 seats where the Lads and I resided were well out of reach), and sang it just as fresh as he did twenty years ago. After the show-in-chief, the crowd brought them back to a pyrotechnical "Highway to Hell" and "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)" (accompanied by really, really loud cannon shots). Here are some action pics:

Twin Tyler definitely dug it.

Here's a clip from the show:

My ears are still ringing, but it was a great show.