On The Live Concert Venue... Christopher Cross, Ambrosia and John Ford Coley.

As you can see by this picture, a few friends and I went to a really intense soft rock concert last weekend.

We’re talking Christopher Cross, Ambrosia and John Ford Coley all on one stage! A triumvirate of barely rocking sounds cast against the even less rocking cement backdrop that is Dayton, Ohio’s Fraze Pavillion.

There is a nice little tree-lined pond outside the actual lawn and bleacher “concert-area”, as you can see in this picture:



That’s where they sell the beer and nachos. We spent a decent amount of time out there feeding the ducks old cigarette butts. I’m kidding.

Prices were reasonable. The weather was beautiful. The talent was of course, undeniable. Actually, my only gripe is that the crowd was, how do I say this, a little less than enthusiastic. They clearly left their soft rockin’ shoes at home. They sucked, in fact. Believe it or do, our other good friends from Dayton were yelled at and threatened by some of the concert-goers when they stood to dance to an especially heartwarming rendition of Ambrosia’s “Biggest Part of Me”. It didn’t take long to realize that Geriatric Law rules the Fraze. So, we made our way to the upper bleacher area where we could be a little more boisterous.

Oh yeah, before that we saw this guy with a really large mangina. Look for it in the video here:

At the end of the night I was triple-fisting Stellas while we waited in line to meet the musicians themselves! Some of the beer actually made it into my mouth, but you wouldn’t necessarily know that by looking at this next picture of Sean, Joshy and I sharing a laugh with the legendary John Ford Coley:


We also got to shake hands with Christopher Cross (kind of a dick) and Ambrosia founding member, Joe Puerta, among other people we didn’t recognize.

It was a nice, nice, very nice night that I will not soon forget.


For more soft rock reading, check out Doug Elliott’s excellent little blog over here on the recent VH1 soft rock special and remember: When you get caught between the moon and New York City the best that you can do is fall in love.