Wrigley Field – the Addison Recorder

A Family Affair: Foo Fighters Live at Wrigley Field

August 31, 2015 by Travis J. Cook Leave a Comment

There is a casual tendency to observe the entirety of human culture as one long progression towards an evolved singular form – a belief that early art influenced the next wave influenced the next and so on, each form building on what came before it and improving it, making it better in pursuit of the ultimate form. There are truths and fallacies to this, to be sure – musical techniques have come a long way since Gregorian chants, but to say that the ultimate evolution of music ends with, say, “Uptown Funk” is to oversimplify the position. Music grows and changes, but is never a “set form” – there is no textbook end-all-be-all summation that says that this is the pinnacle of musical achievement, that it does not and will never get better than this.

Anyway, that’s all moot, because while Dave Grohl may not be the pinnacle of rock and roll evolution, he’s really fucking good at rocking out.

Yours truly took in the Foo Fighters at Wrigley Field on Saturday night, August 29th, 2015. Standing in the field, buffeted by rain, spilled beer, and thousands upon thousands of fans with no clear concept of concert etiquette (SERIOUSLY, YOU CANNOT COME ANY FURTHER FORWARD, BACK UP ALREADY, FOH CRAZY LADY), some friends and I took in three opening acts before having our minds melted and reforged into explosive particles by Dave Grohl’s band for two and a half hours. To recount this on a song by song basis would trivialize the night – so here’s the setlist if you’re curious about which greatest hits were rolled out. (Spoiler alert – all of them) [Read more…]

Thoughts from the Dugout: A Day at Wrigley Field

April 16, 2015 by Travis J. Cook Leave a Comment

The baseball season is long and arduous. It’s often compared to a marathon, which credits the enormous physical toll that 162 games can exert upon the human body. The comparison, however, serves a slight discredit to the immediacy of the individual games themselves. Careers are made and broken on a nightly basis, and a lost or blown game here or there can have a monumental impact upon the postseason race in September. Think of it as something similar to the Butterfly Effect (not the movie), where a butterfly flapping its wings in April can blow the course of a season off pace when a monsoon takes out a pitcher’s elbow, or causes a game winning home run to die on the warning track. In a game of inches, that damn butterfly can wreak untold, and often unknown, havoc.

It’s also pretty damn fun.

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Thoughts from the Dugout: Let’s Play Two

January 26, 2015 by Travis J. Cook Leave a Comment

Image courtesy Getty Images

Ernie Banks passed away on Friday, January 23rd, 2015, eight days before his 84th birthday. He was a Chicago icon, a Hall of Fame shortstop who won two MVP awards while playing his entire career for the Chicago Cubs. He never made it to the postseason, but was widely regarded as “Mr. Cub”, a beloved figure in spite of his team’s mediocrity – or because of it. He was the first player in the modern era to be identified as an offensive force while playing shortstop, a position not known at the time for prolific offense.

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The E Street Flag Flies Over Wrigley

September 11, 2012 by Andrew Rostan Leave a Comment

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have, over the past few weeks, said a lot about the current, challenging state of America, the hard work and sacrifices we, the people, have to take upon ourselves, and the power of we, the people, in shaping our future. I’m not here to pick apart their speeches—this is not a site about politics. I bring this up because on the two days after Obama accepted the Democratic nomination, I saw these people, myself included, who together will be shaping America’s future. The entire cross-section of our citizenry, from paunchy guys in Bears T-shirts to kids with massive Afros to the most well-dressed men and women imaginable (entirely prepared to let themselves get soaked) to loud-voiced men trying to scalp not tickets but parking passes. They were all gathered around Addison, Clark, Sheffield, and Waveland those nights to watch Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on their Wrecking Ball tour.

One of my pet statements to friends regarding my love of music is that I choose my one concert a year based on which artists I need to see before they retire or die. I’ve been a fan of Bruce Springsteen since I was little and saw the “Dancing in the Dark” and “Glory Days” videos in heavy rotation on VH1, and my Uncle Richard, my dad’s twin brother, told me about seeing the E Street Band six times in the late seventies and early eighties. In March 2009, right before I let Los Angeles, I got to see them play the Los Angeles Sports Arena during the Working on a Dream tour, which would prove to be Clarence Clemons’s final tour before his death…a memory I will cherish until I die. That concert was probably the greatest I ever attended, a two and a half hour explosion of energy which concluded with a glorious rendition of their mammoth anthem “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight).” However, there was also a particular mood about that tour which only comparison allowed me to put my finger on. Working on a Dream was more a collection of songs than a full, structured album, and Springsteen felt the need to tightly structure his concerts around a grander, very liberal political message: the songs chosen for the setlist ran together to tell a very specific narrative of ordinary people, our rights, and our power, and it included a ridiculous monologue to that effect during the performance of the song “Working on a Dream.” Also, the E Street Band was a bit more subdued, probably to accommodate Clemons’s ill health; the Big Man only broke out his sax on about half the songs, and there was a sense that they were reining in their capabilities a bit. This wasn’t bad. It allowed for a glorious slow section in the middle of the concert when Bruce and Roy Bittan strung together “The Wrestler” and “Racing in the Streets,” and Clemons’s solos were choice and dynamic. But it was a different vibe from what one can hear on the Live 1975-1985 album and footage from other tours.
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