This weekend proved to me once again that I am getting too old to party like a rock star two nights in a row. [All photos by Nicole Kibert.]
The self-abuse began this past Friday night, when I set out to, and I quote myself here, "get Lucero drunk." [Frontman Ben Nichols pictured at left.] I am happy to report that my mission was a complete success. The trade off, though, is that my recollection of the show is slightly hazy. A lot of the reviews I read leading up to Lucero's Tampa show were about the crowd, that the frat boy concentration levels were reportedly getting dangerously high. I didn't really notice it being a problem here, though my only complaint about the show was the crowd — a completely expected complaint all things considered. See, as a band's popularity and attending crowds grow, the devotion level of the crowd begins to get diluted. While there was no shortage of people at Czar who where there to be seen rather than to see Lucero, they didn't hurt the quality of what was happening on the stage, so let's talk about that … and the horns.
This article appears in Nov 18-24, 2009.