Dick Dale lives!

On Sunday, Craig, Eric, and I all headed to Times Square (yuck) to see the fantabulous Dick Dale* perform. If you don't know who Dick Dale is, he's a surf guitarist. Most people know him as the guy who performed the Pulp Fiction theme music, Misirlou (go to the one marked "April 16" and press listen). Sadly, the concert was called "Pulp Fiction Guitar Legend Dick Dale," because you know he's never done anything else, especially in the 40 or so years since he did that song (and no it wasn't written specifically for the movie).

Quentin Tarantino aside, I was totally super stoked to see Mr. Dale. His music makes me wanna grab my surfboard and head back out to Cali. But not really. I do enjoy it though.

First, to describe the venue. I already mentioned it was in Times Square. It was at the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill. This is a place you arrive at several hours early for the show you already paid money for, so you can sit at a table and eat expensive food and drink expensive drinks while you wait for the show to start. And yes, I ordered $24 mac & cheese. To be fair, there were only 3 things on the menu that us veggos could eat, and the other 2 were potatoes (baked or fried). It was damn tasty mac & cheese though. Maybe not worth that much money, especially since it was so rich that I couldn't even finish it with Craig AND Eric's help. There was a sign on the table (which I stole and brought home) that said "club policy: $10 minimum per person per set." Well that's an easy minimum to make; the only thing that wouldn't cover it were the $7 beers.

The people at the table next to us had a few too many of those $7 beers. At one point, one of them spilled his beer all over the 14 year old kid that was forced to sit at the table even though he was not of that party. A few minutes later, Drunk Guy #2 spilled beer all over the kid's dad. Very classy. Eventually they left their beer-soaked tablemates and headed for the open area in front of the stage. (By "open area" I mean there were no tables - but there were tons of people.)

Since free water** came with our expensive drinks, I was a frequenter of the bathroom. This was the first time in my life I've encountered a bathroom attendant. I know various stand-up comedians have talked about this, but why should I "tip" a dollar to someone for pulling out paper towels and forcing them upon me? They weren't special paper towels. They were the ones from the dispenser that I would have preferred to get myself. I was informed that the guys' attendant put the soap directly into their hands, then gave them a paper towel, and that is also weird. But at least he's doing something. The chick was not doing anything that warranted my dollars, especially since I was in there about 8 times throughout the night. That would have been $30 for the ticket, $24 for the meal, $7 per beer, $13 per specialty cocktail, and $8 to get rid of the beer and cocktails. I'm not made of money.

Now to describe the actual show.

The opening band was called Children of the Unicorn. They are a mock-70s hair band, with killer song names like "Icicle Dagger" and "Night Shark (the Shark in the Night)". The first song was pretty funny, but by the second song I was way over them. The novelty wore off quick. Especially since their music was not anywhere near the genre of Dick Dale, who we had all paid to see.

But then finally Dick Dale came out. The drummer and bassist (Sammy and Brian, apparently) came out first, and DD started playing guitar offstage. It had that excitement and suspense that you can only get at a live concert... and then he walked out, already playing his guitar! Now DD is a man that has been playing guitar since before most people were born, and has been performing on stage for 51 years (a fact he reminded us of multiple times throughout the night). And he acted like a guy that's been performing for 51 years. Besides the guitar virtuosity, he also played drums (including the bass guitar via drumstick), a trumpet, and a harmonica. There was a bit more chatting up the audience than I would have liked, but it was still a good time. Most of the songs he played were covers of old standards like "Fever" and "House of the Rising Sun" and a bunch of other things that even non-DD fans know. But he put his special surf-twist on all of them, and we were a-rockin'.

After the show was over, DD was sticking around to do a signing. I wanted to stick around too, but I had nothing to sign except for the table thing that I stole. They were charging $5 for just stickers, so compounded with the food and bathroom costs, I could not afford anything.

The moral is, definitely go see Dick Dale if you get a chance. Just don't go see him at a touristy expensive venue.





* Did you check out his very high tech website?

** At one point the busboy took away my water glass even though I was clearly still using it. But the waitress brought me another one.