As the band's manager, Si Bintzen offered those of us involved complimentary tickets for the Squatch & Friends concert at the Rose Bowl, so of course we simply HAD to attend. Si also arranged airline tickets to Los Angeles and hotel reservations in Pasadena for 8 persons. Besides Elaine and myself, Si and his wife and twin daughters, Doug Wielson and Peter Sinsley also wished to go. The kids had left for LA in their rock & roll bus a week before and had texted us a couple of times to let us know they were having fun and all was well. We called and told them we were coming to see their show, they said Hey Yay Cool. Saturday morning we collected Doug and Peter and drove to SeaTac Airport, where we met up with Si and his family, and by noon we were on the direct flight to the City of Angels. An hour and a half later two rental cars were waiting for us at LAX. Si needed one to zip around doing business with the concert arrangers, while we could drive directly to the Holiday Inn Express Hotel in Pasadena, quite close to the Rose Bowl. Si had arranged everything perfectly, just like a professional manager was supposed to do. None of us had been in LA for years, it was comforting to discover that the smog hadn't gotten worse although the freeway traffic had. At least we could find our way through the spaghetti sprawl of freeways to Pasadena and were established in our various hotel rooms by 4:30 in the afternoon. The concert was at 8 pm. The hotel was fine, just enough luxury without being unreasonably expensive; outdoor pool, fitness center, etc. Besides the concert we were planning on an extended weekend. Peter (at 22) was young enough to be considering Disneyland, Elaine wanted to do Universal Studios, Doug (who had lived in LA during his early years) only wanted to visit a few old friends, and I...well, I considered just hanging out by the pool; it had been very cold and rainy for too long. Not that it was any kind of hot summer day in November, but the California sky was still bluer than I'd seen in a while.
"The Rose Bowl is not necessarily the best venue in the country," Si had told us on the plane, "but it is one of the most important as far as musical creds go. Amateurs don't get to perform there, it is an ultimate confirmation of success and professionalism for any band to have the Bowl in their résumé." "Then you must be the best manager in the world", Elaine told Si, "because we all know that they really ARE just an amateur band with only one hit album! How did you swing this?" "I didn't, they called me. Squatch & Friends was invited by the Rose Bowl promoter, all I had to do was agree to it-- and make a good deal, of course. Which I did, heh heh." "So I guess Dad IS the best manager in the world," spake 13-year-old Cynthia. "And S&F IS the best band in the world anyway!" her twin sister Gloria loyally insisted. "Oh, by the way," Si warned us, "traffic and parking are traditionally horrible problems at the Bowl. Take a taxi-- do not drive or take a shuttle, and be prepared to walk a mile or two, so wear good shoes. Eat before you go, there's only junk food at high prices. Oh yeah, and the concert is already sold out, so go early: 72,000 people have to go through the admission gates."
Rose Bowl Stadium, open-air, potentially seats over 93,500+ guests for a football game, but much less for a concert since the stage was in the center of the bowl and could only face 2/3 of the seats. So we saw that a large section of seats were closed off when we arrived-- but still, it was a lot a lot of people coming to hear our kids play music. Si's warnings were accurate: traffic was dense, a trillion cars were parking on the grass of a golf course (at $40 per car) and we did have to walk quite a way, but it was a pleasant evening (still no rain!). We noticed all the gear up on stage seemed to be set up for a heavy rock band with light show-- stacked amps, fireworks launchers, smoke machines --which we knew S&F was not. They were an acoustic band in the "unplugged" category. Si explained that this concert would be more electric and that the promoters had supplied all equipment, the band needed only their own instruments. We knew that Miguel deSanto-- lead guitarist for Chrome Pie --would be jamming with them for this concert, but we had never heard any rehearsals with him. We found out later that all that had been done online, since Mike lives here in LA. The concert: I'm not sure that I can write an unbiased review of that evening's music. We were rooting for S&F, of course, and we were proud to see our kids up on stage and doing a professional concert, but we were almost more concerned about how all those other people were experiencing it. We knew all the songs by heart, except the new one Masnia sang (and wrote!), so we were more concerned that the audience might be bored by the same old stuff, rather than enjoying the concert ourselves. Elaine and I were both fretting that there wasn't more new material, although most of the audience was singing aong with the band. Actually, it seemed that we were the only ones being so critical. The sound itself was a notch up in power and our kids were all singing and playing really well. We could recognize Magga's Sha-haka-ma magic at work, the kids were very connected. Miguel's incredible electric guitar solos were an added dimension the band had never had before, as were Magga and Masnia doing squatch-gospel chorus in the backgrounds. We were relieved to hear that it did sound different than the Seattle Concert and the audience responded enthusiastically. If Si's twins, Cynthia and Gloria, were any example of how other girls their age reacted to this concert, it was clearly an absolute success for them-- they were singing, dancing, shouting, screaming, crying and laughing simultaneously; in an over-the-top mix of hysteria and entrancement. Elaine said, "I almost felt jealous I couldn't experience this on that level... although maybe I could once, way back when I was their age." After the show we got to go backstage to the "artists". That took a while in such a press of people trying to leave the stadium, but we were in cell-phone contact with them so that they knew we were coming. Then hugs and kisses, as if we hadn't seen them just last week, but everybody was euphoric that yet another concert had gone so well. Our family/company bus was parked there, serving as mobile home so we had a little party there, rather than trying to go out on the town against all the homebound traffic. We greeted Miguel deSanto-- called Mike off-stage --one of my guitar heroes. We'd met him before at the Seattle concert, when Chrome Pie had jammed with Adam's band. Mike had evidently become friends with the band, or maybe he was most interested in Melly or Lissandra (or both?), but for whatever reason he had offered to contribute his talent to this concert. But it seems his motivation had actually been artistic in nature: "I really liked the S&F album," he explained, "and every time I put in on the stereo I found myself playing guitar along with it. So I started developing a lead line, just for fun. Then it became a passion. So what you heard tonight was the result of months of practicing and designing. Hardly spontaneous." We all agreed that it had sounded inspired and complemented Adam's songs. The kids were going to be busy in the LA area for a couple of weeks, and we had our own tourist plans for the next few days, so we called it a night at 2am.
Here are some reviews on the concert, both from journalists and various fans.
A last minute change of plan was that Masnia and Peter decided they both really did want to see Disneyland rather than Universal Studios, so they borrowed the rental car and headed off to Anaheim together. The rest of us could easily fit into the tour bus and we could all meet back at the hotel that evening, no problem. Standing in the line for Universal Studios is an experience in itself, there's just so much going on: famous actors in costumes; robot Terminators, crazy clowns; free tickets being handed out to various TV shows, like rom-coms needing live audience participation. That Adam and Magga were standing in line with us didn't make anyone blink. Of course, the other tourists around us thought that they were fake Sasquatches. But some did remark about how good their costumes were. We discovered that we hadn't saved any money by choosing Universal Studios over Disneyland, but we reminded ourselves that we were rich and went for it anyway, although we did not take the VIP version at $299 each-- we could afford it but it became a matter of principle. We almost had trouble keeping Adam and Magga with us on the tour, the staff mistook them for employees in a couple of incredibly realistic Bigfoot suits, although none of them had ever seen that particular costume before. Then someone recognized Adam and they wanted to give him the VIP treatment, but he asked them not to. Magga could just barely squeeze into the seats of some of the rides, being only 7'3", but Adam is a foot taller and was too big to go on several rides. But we could all go together to experience Jurassic Park-- the ride, the Special Effects Stage, King Kong 360 3-D, the Simpsons, etc. We all enjoyed hearing the Blues Brothers act, studying just how stylized a concert could be. In fact we all had fun, laughed a lot. But the funniest part was when the day manager of Universal Studios tracked us down to offer Adam and Magga jobs walking around the theme park as Wild Sasquatches to entertain kids. The manager did have an idea who Adam Leroy Forest was-- that he'd been the Baby Bigfoot of Monroe-- but he had never heard of Squatch & Friends and thus had no idea that Adam was too rich to need a job like that. I informed him that Adam & Band had played a concert at the Rose Bowl the evening before, but that only got the manager more excited: "A Bigfoot Band? Great, you guys can play here!" Later, Adam said, "Funny thing; if I'd been offered that job last year I might have taken it-- it would at least have been a venue where I could hone the music. But instead I had to go get shot, join the Nokhontli and have a spirit vision."
The kids dropped us off at the hotel in Pasadena; they had an early appointment the next day and would be probably be busy for the next two weeks doing music videos. So we said good-byes for now. Peter and Masnia were not back yet by the time Elaine and I went to bed. Peter Sinsley was still a bit of a quandary to us. Not that we didn't trust him, he was clearly no longer our enemy and seemed to have become a nice young man, humble and contrite. Both his and father Felix's credentials for being in the fold of our Nokhonized society were impeccable: the collective vision of the kha-rat had chosen them. None of us knew why (nor did they), but it was like God Had Spoken, so we simply had to accept that. They wanted to be friends now, to help us, but we didn't really know what to DO with either of them. Peter's relationship with Adam and the girls was still awkward. He professed to respect the love between Adam and Melly (and the others) but he was clearly still in love with Melly, although trying to be a good sport about it. Trying to be "friends". The situation was complicated by the fact that Peter was included in our local kha-rat, so of course he got to have orgy sex with Melly along with everyone else. But she was not allowing that to happen between full moons, insisting on being faithful to Adam. So Peter was generally frustrated and confused-- I know I would be. Actually, all of us are confused about what being "faithful" means any more. If we can have sex with someone we feel affections for under a full moon, why not at some other time? Generally that's the way it is for a day or two after the kha-rat, before the Shyøma-smell vanishes entirely. We're all still sexually aroused and the ice HAS been broken. I usually... well, never mind, but we all overindulge a little. It's often much nicer than the frantic lust of a kha-rat. So for Peter to perhaps be spending the night with Masnia was something unprecedented, although we couldn't guess whether that was good or bad. Generally, Masnia was just as faithful to Adam as Melly (if you didn't count that she gladly serviced big fat old Dambaraggan frequently), even at a kha-rat Masnia would rather be selective about who she had sex with. But Peter called us in the morning, saying they were in Venice with Adam and the others. So their maybe hot affair turned out to be completely innocent: they had spent a fun day in Disneyland, like little kids, laughing and enjoying the rides, being friends. Since Masnia had to be with the band early the next morning, Peter drove her to Venice Beach and spent the night in the bus along with everyone else. He even went along to the studio appointment just to see, before returning the car to us. "Oh, they've got a lot of work ahead of them," was his comment.
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