B-more Rocco-like

Welcome to B-more and Rocco Deluca!

Wow! What a night we had on Saturday!

We headed down to Maryland to see Rocco Deluca and the Burden play at Fletcher's Bar on South Bond Street in Baltimore -- their last concert on a national tour. (Cool area of the city...and the best part was we found parking for $3!! Yeah, Baby! ) The concert wasn't until 8 p.m. so we decided to have dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe down along the Inner Harbor. Great place!! And excellent food!!

Then we headed over to the venue around 6:30, and each sat enjoying a Yuengling's, Newcastle Brown Ale, and Woodpecker Cider, respectively, until it was time to head up to the room where the band would play....at 11(!!).

What we weren't told -- and there was a good reason for that since no one would have come until after -- is that a local rock band called OFM was "opening" for RDB. Let me think of a word to describe said band....hmmmm.....AWFUL? No, that's too strong. They tried....at little too hard (though some of their stuff is very catchy on their website) to be like RDB? But they added their own "zing," bouncing around the stage, playing their instruments in the air, banging on trashcans, eating the mics, and, basically, screeching song lyrics that no one could understand... The drummer actually resembled "Animal" from the Muppet Show, complete with the huge, round crazed-looking eyes, fluffy hair, and open mouth. After they finally deafened us with their noise music for 45 minutes (an aside to the soundboard people: those sliders go up and DOWN -- does wonders for the music), we waited for the stage to be reset with RDB's stuff. By the time all was said and done, we'd been standing for over 3 hours and waiting for nearly 5. I kept reminding myself of how good Rocco and his group were in Atlanta...and how worth the wait....

And they were! They played new stuff and "old" stuff and rocked the house.

Afterwards, we were going to leave, but I noticed that the room had cleared out, and we were told that the band was going to come out. I asked if we could stay around and get a photo and autograph on my CD insert. Stuart agreed, and we sat in the room and waited. It wasn't long. Rocco came out and happily agreed to a photo with us. He chatted to Stuart about England. I talked to Ryan (the drummer), and it was like they were "old buddies" of ours. (Yeh, right! LOL!) I told Rocco that our daughter Emily is a big fan, and he smiled. We missed saying hi to Greg (the master percussionist) and Dave (the bass player), but perhaps another time?

Tired but exhilarated, we arrived back in W. City around 3 a.m.

It was definitely worth the wait...we're still humming.

Cheers, Rocco!