This was a fantastic concert, and a fantastic place to have one. This town throws one hell of a party.
It’s difficult to separate the concert experience from the Bismarck experience. A friend and I drove from Wisconsin -- I was driving and he was reading the map, and he had it figured we would take I-94 into the city and then get off on the Bismarck Expressway, follow that to the 3rd Street exit, and from there find the Civic Center. The Expressway was under construction and looked like a two-lane road absolutely packed with traffic, heading off into a wheat field. Despite our suspicions, we took it. Eventually the construction ended and we discovered the Bismarck Expressway is actually a four-lane city street, with a 40 mph speed limit and traffic lights. This seemed extremely hilarious, but very convenient. The traffic engineers hadn’t seemed to ever hear of green arrows, so with every green light, one person got to turn left once it turned yellow, and everyone else had to sit there. Later we discovered that there were green arrows if you came from the other direction. That also seemed extremely hilarious. Maybe we were just hopelessly exhausted.
A coupla Wisconsin hayseeds can really get to feeling like total city slickers in a place like North Dakota.
Standing in line to get into the Civic Center, it was cool listening to how excited the people were that a band this big was appearing here. One guy was going on and on about it, so I told him I was from out of town and asked more info. He said Cher had been there and Tom Petty, and those were the biggest names to come through other than the Eagles so far. He was really glad there had been enough tickets sold so that the concert would happen.
Inside, I was wondering what the guys would think about how obviously undersold the place was. I would guess at least the top 10 rows all around the entire building, had nobody in them. I got to talking with another woman nearby, and she was real friendly. I mentioned coming there from Wisconsin and that I had seen them in Green Bay and Peoria. Before the concert started, she was horribly embarrassed because some people in the stands were trying to get the wave going. Fortunately, hardly anyone responded. “Only in Bismarck,” she said.
The lights went down and The Long Run started. Joe had on a red short-sleeved shirt over a black long-sleeved shirt, and red, white, and blue pants with an abstract design. Glenn was wearing a white shirt with vertical bright stripes, and jeans. Timothy wore sprayed-on jeans, and Don had on cargo pants.
Glenn said something like “Hello Bismarck! We’re the Eagles from Los Angeles! It took us nearly half a century to get here!”
The woman next to me was worried about how Bismarck would seem really “fuddy-duddy” to the band because everyone kept sitting down during songs. She kept fretting about how people weren’t standing and they seemed so mellow. I was assuring her that the setlist is designed that way, starting out mellow. She wanted to know if people stay sitting in other towns, and I said yes, usually for the first several songs. She said she personally could go totally nuts and I advised her to go right ahead.
She shouldn’t have been worried. The crowd kicked into high gear for Boys of Summer and never looked back. There was groaning about the break – the crowd was not ready for a break. I’d guess most people sat down for Tequila Sunrise and Love Will Keep Us Alive, but they were on their feet for Hole In The World. From BOS on, there was a ton of racket. Cheering, screaming, whistling, calling out individual names, etc. They just went totally berserk.
Joe’s intro to In The City included announcing the country is a mess and he’s running for president because that’s our only chance. He said some other stuff which I couldn’t hear due to the wild applause. Then he introduced the song with, “Here’s a song from the last century,” and with the opening chords, everyone is screaming. He did an absolutely wonderful job singing this, no problems whatsoever with the high range as was happening last year, and he went totally nuts with the guitar.
I wondered if they started curtailing the length of introductions to songs, because nobody could really hear them talk much anyway because everyone just kept yelling and screaming, and also because in the end the concert ran late and I figured there was a longer lag time between songs due to all the noise, and they would be aware of this. But I really have no idea. Timothy didn’t tell his story of going to concerts with his son. Glenn’s intro to Take It To The Limit was shorter than usual – he did say they wrote it for Randy Meisner, and that his wife calls it the credit card song. Before HITW, Don had to wait to be able even to say his line about the hole’s getting bigger -- if he wanted anyone to hear him. The crowd leaped to their feet for this song and some people were swaying back and forth.
Walk Away – no horns. I personally like it much better this way, where it sounds much more like the original. The intro to Steuart and to the backing band – Glenn shortened the Holland joke, though he still said something, but I couldn’t hear it! It was cool the crowd cheered that loudly for the backing band. Joe changed words several times on Life’s Been Good, doing the “my Mazerati goes . . . “and then inserting some long number like three million four hundred eighty-four thousand etc. It was said very fast and there’s no way you could get it exactly. He did “I lock the doors and say YO – wassup!” For “ain’t never been there, they tell me it’s nice,” Glenn moved to his mike and said skeptically, “Uh-huh!” Joe turned to the horn section to wait for them to call back “He’s cool!” in the appropriate place, but they ignored him, and he pretended to be frustrated. Helmet cam, the usual hilarity.
Hardly anyone sat for the intro to Funk 49, they were still completely pumped from the last couple songs. Joe was wild through the second set. Different, longer solos for F49 and LBG. On one of Don's songs, either Dirty Laundry or All She Wants To Do Is Dance, I forget which, Joe's just cranking, looking like he's saying "WOW WOW WOW" and his hair's flying all over, and the guy next to me says, "How does he DO that!" And Glenn did his wild dance for ASWTDIS, getting an appreciative crowd scream from that side of the room. By the way, he wore his pink and white checkerboard-type shirt during the second set.
Hotel California – something happened there I didn’t get, because Don started laughing at the beginning of the second verse. I didn’t know if he was laughing at the crowd drowning him out so totally for the first verse, or if he saw something in the audience, or if something got flubbed up, or what.
Glenn introduced the last encore by saying they would play a couple more songs, classics. Then he said in a low sort of teasing voice, "I've got seven women on my mind." And of course he got a big appreciative cheer from the entire room when he sang "I'm standing on a corner in Bismarck, North Dakota."
Afterward, the place looked like a tornado went through it. The chairs aren’t fastened down and people had folded chairs back up and laid them on other chairs to get them out of the way. There were cups absolutely everywhere, spilled beer and soda, I mean, it was a total mess! Bismarck sure throws one hell of a party. I was thinking of that ol’ saying, “You can see these people don’t get out much.” Although I was thinking it very affectionately, I figured I better not put it on-line because I don’t want it to sound insulting. Then, back at the motel, I was talking with a woman there and commented on how exuberant the crowd was, and she goes and says, “You can see we North Dakotans don’t get out much!”
Wednesday, June 2, 2004 at 5:20PM 
