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captainsblogHow a country song killed Rick Jeanneret?
Stay with me here for this long strange trip. I tried explaining it to Eleanor and she thought it actually made sense, but then she’s lived with me a long time. I'll split some of the explainers under cuts so you can skip as needed.
It all started sometime earlier this week, when I heard an ad on the radio for a big upcoming concert at Highmark Stadium. That’s the current name of the Orchard Park home of the Bills. It opened 50 years ago and was one of the first sporting event venues in the country to sell “naming rights.“ Even living far away at the time on Long Island, I remember reading about it being controversial.
When the two big professional football leagues merged in 1970, the twelve teams coming into the NFL from the AFL had to replace or at least upgrade their stadiums, and the original Bills home in the city- officially "War Memorial Stadium" but known semi-affectionately as the "Rockpile," was definitely substandard and could not be renovated. Originally built for football as a WPA project in the 30s, it was retrofitted around 1960 to also allow baseball, back when Buffalo was chosen as one of eight original franchises in a third major league called the Continental League. It was mainly proposed to put another team in New York after the Dodgers and Giants left. Through the efforts of an attorney named William Shea, the lords of the National League bypassed this scheme and awarded an expansion NL franchise to his group, and the Continental League died before ever playing a game. Every other one of the original eight franchises eventually got a Major League team; Buffalo missed out then and on two later chances. Even the minor league Bisons abandoned the Rockpile in the middle of the 1970 season after the neighborhood just got too dangerous.
The Bills, meanwhile, dithered around about where to relocate. Millions were spent, lost, and sued over involving a project for a domed stadium in Lancaster. After that debacle, the county, not wanting to lose the team, offered to build a large football-only open air facility on county owned land south of the city. The loss of the baseball franchise was actually a blessing in disguise for the community, because Buffalo avoided the cookie-cutter multipurpose stadium craze of the 70s that resulted in shitty stadiums for watching baseball or football, virtually all of which have since been torn down. (The Bisons briefly returned to the Rockpile for the 80s with their new MLB-ready ballpark downtown opening toward the end of the decade.)
So the county went football-only, but it was a public project, meaning there were taxpayers at the table, and legislators were looking for every piece of loose change they could find in sofa cushions to pay for it. Somebody came up with the idea of selling "naming rights“ to a local corporation, and one of the bigger ones at the time (it still operates here), Rich Products, offered a then-significant amount of money to name the place “Coffee Rich Park” after its signature powdered creamer product. Taxpayer advocating legislators hated the idea, and wanted it just named "Erie County Stadium." The eventual compromise of “Rich Stadium“ would last for the entire original 30 year lease between the county and the team, but Bills owner Ralph Wilson hated it, so much that he refused to use it on any promotional materials for the team. For a time, tickets to games only referred to the venue's official street address of One Bills Drive.
When the lease ran out, so did the Rich name. For a time about a decade ago, it was generically either Buffalo Bills Stadium or Ralph Wilson Stadium, leading to the still prevalent nickname for the place of “the Ralph.“ After Ralph died and a local gagillionaire bought the team, he briefly sold the rights to another local company called New Era, which makes a lot of the official licensed (expensive) merchandise for the NFL and other professional leagues. When their revenue went to shit during COVID, they backed out of the deal and the local affiliate of the Blue Cross network, which had just merged with another one in Pittsburgh named Highmark, took over the name and the rights that remain to this day. They have also grabbed those rights for the new Josh Majal that is under construction in an adjacent parking lot and is scheduled to open in time for the 2026 NFL season.
Anyway. Highmark Stadium it remains. The old dump remains serviceable for now, and in addition to their ten scheduled Bills home Bills games a year, exhibition or regular season, plus however many home playoff games they can muster, the team rents out the field a few times a year to the biggest of the spring and summer concert tours. The Stones, U2, Sir Paul and the Boss are among recent visitors. Last week, though, I heard an ad for an April 2024 performance there by someone named Luke Combs. I didn't recognize the name, but the music under the ad sounded pretty twangy. Sure enough, I had read about him, as being one of the gooder guys in the current Nashville drawing of lines between the good ol boys like Jason Aldean and the more progressive likes of Jason Isbell. A few mornings ago, my regular morning music program announced that the Avett Brothers, definitely more an Americana band than country, would be opening for Combs at that Ralph show. My DJ friend Scott even played one of the country singer's biggest songs, a quite faithful cover of Tracy Chapman's 1988 breakthrough hit "Fast Car." Although Chapman has expressed appreciation for the tribute (and no doubt the ton of royalties), it's still not without some controversy over why any woman, much less a queer Black one, needs a white dude in a cowboy hat to break a song through Nashville's barriers.
That aside, it's a well done cover. I doubt I'll drop the major bank needed to hear a band I like and a guy I've heard once from a seat that might by then be in a different area code. Ticket prices haven't been announced yet and won't go on sale until next week, but I'd be shocked if Ticketmonster lets anybody in for under a Benjamin. I've only been to one show in that stadium in my life, and it was a bit less back then:
(Yes, that "Harvey" would be Harvey Weinstein, who started pimping concerts around here after his time at UB. If he'd stuck to that instead of acting as his own pimp, he might still be making movies....)
Remembering that Who show, and the others that have passed through that stadium over the last 50 years, did get me thinking the other morning: the current Bills stadium has this and two more seasons left before the new place is scheduled to be ready and the implosion explosives or wrecking balls will come to tear it down to replace the parking lost to Highmark II: Electrocardiogram Boogaloo. Who, if anyone, will get the honor of hosting the last concert in the joint before then?
There's a lot of precedent for such a show. I've never attended one but I'm aware of many and wound up Doin Ma Resurch on several others. This was my Facebook roundup of several of them, edited a bit but with the most significant one moved outside the cut because I'll have more to say about it.
The most meaningful of these venue-closing me, of course, was Billy Joel's (with Sir Paul dropping in) a few weeks before the Mets' final game at Shea Stadium. They've both been to OP before and it MIGHT work, but there might be something better.
Nassau Coliseum, where I've probably seen the second-most major sport games over the past 50 years, has had a checkered history of farewells. My beloved Nets were long gone, but the Islanders held on until 2015, then joining their former hoop tenants in a horrible-for-hockey arena in Brooklyn. Nausea County did a major renovation of the joint, significantly reducing capacity and adding amenities. The final concert before the reno was by Billy Joel. The Islanders eventually got their own new hockey barn built next to Belmont Park on the Queens-Nassau border, but they returned to the smaller Mausoleum from 2018 until COVID kicked out the fans in 2020. Their final game there was in the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs; The venue has been mostly closed since then, but the last performer they opened it for who I've actually heard of was Billy Strings back in November of 2022. I have friends who adore him, but I don't think he could handle filling 60,000 seats at the Ralph two years from now.
The original Yankee Stadium, majorly renovated in 1974-75 and finally torn down the same time Shea was, was never much for hosting concerts in its final years, Pink Floyd doing the last one in the mid-90s. The last big non-baseball event there was the Pope. Him, here? Makes sense. Somebody call his agent.
The Vet in Philly? Bon Jovi did the last show there. "Fuck no" to him closing Highmark. Hell, he tried to steal the Bills and move them to Toronto. He can wait and do the last concert at the Skydome while the roof caves in on those poachers.
Others closer to home? The last Buffalo Aud concert was AC/DC. Nah.
Rochester's Silver Stadium ended pretty badly in 2007, long after the Wings moved out a decade earlier and they finally tore it down, with Hawk Nelson and the Send, whoever the hell they were.
Billy Joel also closed the Rockpile in 1994 after the Bisons moved downtown, so that's three votes for the old man.
Plenty of Dead concerts at all of those, but I'd wonder if even any of their alumni will be left in 2026.
Local connections would always sell. The Goo Goo Dolls? A 10,000 Maniacs/Natalie Merchant double bill? Hell, Highmark might not be big enough for Farrow or Diyené or Danielle Ponder in three years.
Along with all those possibilities, though, my thoughts turned to one other superstar who checks the boxes: he gets the history, he's been to Orchard Park before, and he's closed a major football stadium before its demolition and upgrade. As I prophetically put it the other morning:
Giants Stadium, where Jimmy Hoffa is in the Meadowlands in New Jersey? Naturally Springsteen closed THAT place. I'd put the Boss in the conversation.
The original source of that conversation, though, is this legendary goal call from downtown Buffalo, by the legendarily long-time and recently retired voice of the Buffalo Sabres, Rick Jeanneret:
I posted that list of Final Show Options yesterday at about 8:30 a,m. Within an hour, I began seeing posts and, on the radio, hearing stories about that storied career because RJ's family had just announced his death the previous day at the age of 81.
Rick was an institution in hockey broadcasting, among his peers in the press box, with colleagues carrying other teams' broadcasts and national games, and even fans of other teams were posting tributes to him today. One of his signatures was Holy Mackarel, Roll the Highlight Reel! and these 16 minutes are just that (sorry about the ads and about the algorithm that flagged it for "adult content" if you're not logged into a Google account, no doubt for the middle minutes of hockey fights he narrated).
Years ago on a visit with
thanatos_kalos on a stop she made in Toronto, we visited the NHL Hall of Fame, and Rick was already there as an inductee contributor:
Now the goal is to get him on that other slab of metal kept oop there when- and it is when- this team finally secures it after a successful season and post-season:
So when a team wins the Stanley Cup who gets their name engraved? Each championship team is allowed to put up to 52 names on the cup that includes players, coaches, management and staff. The criteria is based on regular season games played, Stanley Cup Finals games, or active affiliation with the club. A team is allowed to petition for a name to be put on that falls outside of this criteria.
He belongs. Make it soo, eh?
RJ had a living memorial outside the arena, which is now becoming a shrine:
I'm still planning on the Bisons game tomorrow- they already had Friday scheduled as Sabres Night at the ballpark and another moment of silence came tonight, I'm told- but I think I will detour the three blocks after the game, to pay my respects, share with other fans, and even leave some cookies on top of the R, in honor of my most-often quoted call of his half century in the booth.
----
So thar's how I went from a country music song to possibly killing a guy with my brain. I don't know if this superpower is permanent, but just in case it is, let's try these words for the first and last time:
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
no subject
Date: 2023-08-20 12:11 pm (UTC)Silliness
Date: 2023-08-20 04:28 pm (UTC)I never did see the Clash, alas.
The last time I saw (something called) the Who was the 1989 "Kids Are Alright" tour, where the Who were magically replaced by what I still think of as the Keith Moon Memorial Orchestra. There were, if I recall, fifteen people on that stage -- five horns, three backup singers, a replacement drummer (Simon Phillips, who was actually excellent), Rabbit on keyboards, Steve Bolton on lead guitar, a percussionist (I forget her name), and the three then-surviving members of the 'Oo. Between the bad mix, the excess, and Pete Townshend playing only an acoustic guitar, I was sufficiently frustrated that I have never gone to another Who show.
Now, of course, they are actually playing with local orchestras.
I do kind of regret not going to see the revived Quadrophenia tour in the mid-'90s, but I'll stick with my memories of the band with Moonie. (Oakland Colisseum, October 1976. The Dead opened. It was a very weird combination.)