Janet's Smiles

Lionel Richie has been one of my favorites for a long time.  As he says in his act, he’s got a song for just about every emotion you can have.  I’ve listened to him when I was happy and when I was sad.  I’ve danced to his songs and cried to his songs.  This is from the time we saw him in 2013.  We saw him again in 2017 and Mariah Carey was his opening act.  I wasn’t impressed with her, but Lionel was great again. 

For the 2013 pictures I went with a set of papers called “Rugged” from Creative Memories with a couple of extras thrown in.  I liked the rough edges and the colors went well with the pictures.     

                                                                                       Driving in to the SAP Center we saw the moon.  You know how I am about that thing!  We had seats 10 rows back from the stage.  Almost the closest we’ve ever had at that venue.  We got some pretty decent chicken strips to share for dinner before the show.  Also, if you look closely you can see the blue gum in my mouth.  I should at least remember to chew white mint if I’m gonna open my mouth with that smile! 

Here’s the set list.  26 songs and he could have gone on longer!  He mixed in some Commodore songs with his own.

How about some “Dancing on the Ceiling?”

Well that’s the letter “R.”  Do you like Lionel?  Have a favorite song?  Mine is “Lady” which he actually sang with the Commodores.  Hopefully I’ll see you tomorrow!

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We are 3/4 of the way through the A to Z Challenge.  I’m hanging on by a thread…or in my case a glue stick.  “Q” is for Queen and I’m sorry I didn’t get to see them when Freddie Mercury was around but I have seen them twice with Adam Lambert and both shows were excellent.

The first time was in 2017 and then we saw them again last year during the big “Bohemian Rhapsody” explosion.  For the 2017 pictures I chose this paper from Paper Wishes called Paper Painting.  I love the rich colors in these paper collections.  This set even has some tags and embellishments to match.  Bonus, on the Paper Wishes site they give them away as a free download!  Very nice way to get some cool stash.

People may say that because Freddie Mercury has passed and John Deacon no longer tours that is is a cover band but that offends Brian May and Roger Taylor and is definitely not the case as far as I’m concerned.  Listen to Another One Bites the Dust from that night.

True, Adam Lambert is no Freddie Mercury and he straight up says as much but the joint was still rocking.  That’s “Q” for you.  No quitting here!

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“P” is for Petty, Tom Petty.  I am not sure why but of all of the musicians we have lost in the last few years, his death really hit me.  I cried, which is something I hardly ever do.  I was so sorry that I hadn’t gone to the concerts he did in our area right before he passed.  I thought they were too far away and wasn’t familiar with the venue but in retrospect, I should have made the effort.  He died a month and a half later.  At least we did get to see him twice.

The first time was at Oracle Arena in 2010.  Our eldest daughter came with us.  I was amazed at how many trucks it took to bring all the equipment in.

I used the “Say Cheese” stencil that I used with the Frampton pictures.

Here’s the setlist from that show and also a review that was in the paper.  I really love the picture of Tom with his arms outstretched and his back to the crowd.

This is “Running Down a Dream” from the second time we saw him, in San Jose in 2014.  My goal had been to scrapbook those pictures for this post but that’s not happening. 

I’m hoping to use tomorrow to get ahead a bit on the rest of the alphabet.  Oh who am I kidding?  10 days left of the A to Z Challenge.  Are we having fun yet?

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I’m really stretching it here using “One More Night” by Phil Collins for my “O.”  Phil is one of our favorite performers and although he has had some pretty big health issues, I was excited to see that he was touring.  In looking at some of the clips from his tour, I saw that he sat for the entire show and sang from his seat.  My husband was thinking that it would be a tame show and decided he didn’t want to go so our son, Jeff, went with me instead.  We had a blast.

I went with this pretty paper collection.

 Here are a few of the pictures I’m working with.  I’m excited to scrap the ones of Phil and his son, who is the drummer for the band now.  How cool is that!

In fact, he did do another tour which we didn’t see but it was called the “Still Not Dead Yet” tour – lol.  It was last year at the new Chase Center they built in San Francisco and from what I hear it was another great show.  Even more interesting, there was talk before the coronavirus hit that Phil was going to get back together with Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks and do some Genesis shows in Europe.  I’m sure those plans have been changed now and Peter Gabriel was not mentioned to be with them, a fact that disappoints my husband.  If they come around again, I may have to go with my son!

Here’s a bit of “You’ll Be In My Heart” from that night.

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“N” is for Nickelback.  Nickelback was the headliner when we saw Daughtry my letter “D” band.  I’ve used the same set of papers but will definitely have to add some more because I have A LOT of pictures.  I picked this DIY Shop set that I got from Michaels because it has a grungy look and that’s how I think of Nickelback.  

Here’s what I came up with for the first page.  It was called the “Feed the Machine” tour and the drums were set up to look like a huge machine.

I did catch a video of “Burn It To the Ground.”  It was their finale and they held nothing back.  The crowd was electric.  Enjoy. 

Again, once I get the actual pages put together I’ll do a follow up post.  For now I’m calling this one done and I can move on to “O.”  Coming along? 

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As I thought, I’ve hit a snag.  The good news is I have transcription work to do which means income.  The bad news is I have transcription work to do which means less playtime.  Fortunately I had drafted all the letters of the alphabet and some even have scrapbook pages that were done in the past so I will be able to share something for every day, it may not be the completed layouts.  I’m okay with that.   

For the letter “M” I’m using Steve Miller, who was another one of those happy surprises.  We’ve seen him twice now and both times even though he wasn’t the headliner, his performance was better than theirs (note:  It was Journey both times, not with Steve Perry though).

The first time we saw Steve Miller he was the middle act between Tower of Power and Journey.  I was only going to scrapbook the pictures from his set but since I’m getting behind anyway, I may just wait until I have time to do the whole show.  In any case, I chose this set of papers called Songbird from Paper Wishes.  I know I will have to add some papers from my other stash because there won’t be enough to do it all but I’m pretty sure I can find some that will coordinate.     

On this one I’ll probably use another stencil to fit them all in.  I like this paper because there are birds flying all around, even though they are not eagles.  Get it?  “Fly Like an Eagle?” 

Once I actually get the scrapbook pages done I’ll post an update because I’m sure you all want to see how they come out!  Hope everything is going well for you all in this crazy Covid time.  Stay safe out there.  Take a peek at some of the other A to Zers if you get a chance.  Don’t hate me because I can’t keep up completely! 

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“L” is for Lynyrd Skynyrd.  This is a band that I really didn’t pay much attention to when I was younger but actually like a lot of their songs.  We’ve seen them twice, both at the Mountain Winery – yes, we do go to other venues!  I scrapbooked the first time from July 2008 a while ago.  It was actually one of the first few shows we went to.

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Starting our third week of the A to Z and my “K” is for “Kiss on My List” by Hall and Oates.  I was really excited to see this concert because the songs of Hall and Oates remind me of my single days living in my own apartment.  My favorites are “Kiss on My List” and “Maneater.” 

Sadly, this show did not live up to my/our expectations.  In fact, it is one of the very few concerts we have actually left before the end, sort of.  We left our seats and went to stand on the upper walkway for the last song.

Perhaps because the experience was not as exciting as I would have liked, I didn’t take much time in the scrapbooking of it either.  These papers are already printed with spots for the pictures so all I had to do was fill them in. 

Would we see them again?  Maybe but for sure I wouldn’t spend a lot of money on tickets and I’d check the setlist carefully before buying them.  Thanks for coming along on my A to Z journey.  Hope you have had time to visit some of the other wonderful folks out there.  I’ve been reading some really interesting posts.  See you tomorrow.

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I’m using a song title for my letter again, J is for “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield.  We are at the Mountain Winery and although Springfield was the headliner, there were three other groups playing that night.  Tommy Tutone opened followed by Greg Kihn and then Loverboy.  Truthfully I think we went to see Loverboy but the whole show was a good one.  Because I’m already behind I’m just going to scrapbook the Rick Springfield pictures now.  The others will have to wait.

Paper Wishes papers.  It’s called “Charming.” Love the rich colors. 

And in the album it will look like this, almost, because I’ll fit the other bands in between these pages.

The paper on one of those pages is not from the original collection.  I added it to include some extra pictures.  Can you tell which one it is?

Here is “Jessie’s Girl” as we saw it. 

The “joint” was certainly jumping that night.  (Joint is the Stream of Consciousness prompt for today.  Thanks Linda!)

I have to admit that I don’t have the rest of the alphabet already finished.  I’m going to try and do as much as I can with our “free” day tomorrow but I’m not holding out much hope that I’m going to make it.  I’ll continue with the alphabet as planned but the scrapbooking is going to be hit and miss.  Oh well, such is life, right? 

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Chris Isaak is helping me fill the “I” spot in the A to Z Challenge.  We were looking for shows to help us keep our “Loyalty status” at the Mountain Winery and saw that he was going to be playing so we decided to take a chance.  We knew a few of his songs but weren’t really huge fans.  We were pleasantly surprised at the number of songs we actually did know and he is a very personable performer with lots of crowd interaction.  We didn’t realize he has been performing for over 30 years! 

In looking through my paper collection, I found this double sided set.  It is not from Paper Wishes so I’m pretty sure I got it at either Michaels or JoAnn’s.  It is K and Company brand.

We had great seats and I was able to get a lot of good pictures so this one has a lot of pages.  My favorite Chris Isaak song is “Wicked Games.” He sang it in the dark and it was so cool.  Here is “Baby Did A Bad, Bad Thing.”

I always thought that Chris Isaak was a country singer but actually they rocked it pretty good.  He has been singing a lot longer than I realized too and his band has been the same all through the years.  They looked like they were enjoying themselves too.

That’s it for “I.”  Hope to see you tomorrow for “J.”  No, it’s not Journey.  I did them in 2017.

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