Cross Canadian Ragweed & YouTube

Posted on September 17, 2006
Filed Under Geeeek Stuff

After seeing Cross Canadian Ragweed (CCR for short) at the House of Blues last month I was stoked to find out that they would be returning to Las Vegas so soon. Getting to see them play twice in a month was quite a treat. If there was a “bad” part about it it would be the fact that they were performing as part of the Double Down Throwdown which is a concert put on by the local country radio station. If you’ve never heard CCR, they are a southern rock band that doesn’t really fit in the “country” section, but seem to be labeled as country so that’s where you’ll find them in the record store. Well, the crowd was there to see a country show. We paid extra to get seats up front. We were in the 5th row. When they came on, we stood up and sang along. Nobody else in the entire “paid” floor section was standing. We sat for most of the show but stood during the final couple songs when they were playing 2 of our favorites.

They put on a great show. They sounded great and played a good selection of their songs. Though, I did lose a $5 bet when they failed to play the title track from their album Carney Man. One thing that happened during their show was pretty cool. They were just getting ready to play their final song of the night when a beer vendor walked up the aisle and was holding up a couple beers in each hand while standing right next to me. The singer noticed the guy holding up the beers and made a motion like “I’ll have one.” I pointed to the beer vendor and the singer nodded his head. I tapped the beer guy, bought a beer and went up and set the beer on the stage. The singer thanked me and continued on with the song. As soon as they were off the stage, we took off not waiting to see the remaining two acts.

Over the past several months, YouTube.com has just exploded. My introduction to it started off as per usual, somebody at the office sends me a link and says, “Hey, check out this video of some dude getting smacked in the nuts by a shovel.” Or, something equally as juvenile. I hadn’t really embraced all there is to find on YouTube until quite recently. Over the past week or two I have watched COUNTLESS videos by the Beastie Boys, Metallica, W.A.S.P., Motley Crue and, thanks to last night’s show, Cross Canadian Ragweed. The great part about it is that you can find rare recordings from shows or interviews and even a bunch of fan-based content that you’d have no way of ever seeing anywhere else. Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty of nut smacking videos to keep even the most hard-core 14 year old happy. But, for us old farts with a penchant for checking hidden classics, this place is a gold mine!

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