Check out this video from West Palm Beach with Jane’s playing “Ted, Just Admit It”

• Aerosmith / ZZ Top – Aerosmith has finally reformed after a few years of dealing with different health issues with various band members.  They will  open each venue with contest winners playing Guitar Hero : Aerosmith.  Aerosmith knows how to deliver live and have classics to back it up. ZZ Top is one of those bands that I happen to miss each time they’re around, but are immensely influential.  Hell, even Jimi Hendrix thought Billy Gibbons was a bad ass guitar player.  As a guitarist, you must own the Tres Hombres and Fandango! albums.  Eddie Van Halen even copped some Billy Gibbons licks and Zakk Wylde learned his pinch harmonic technique from these long bearded gentlemen.  What’s even more stunning is Dusty Hill (bassist/vocalist) does pinch harmonics on his bass.

• AC/DC – These guys have been playing for some 35 years.  What’s even more stunning is that their latest album Black Ice is one of their best.  This could very well be their last tour.  Lots of bands try to sound like AC/DC, but there is only one.  Watch Angus Young bring out his devil horns and do his mooning to his audience.  No wonder Beavis and Butthead love these guys.

Check out Angus playing some bad ass licks:

• U2 – Ok these guys are getting worse every year.  Their latest album No Line On The Horizon is their worst in 20 years, but their stuff in the 80’s and early 90’s is classic.  With a million bands trying to sound like these guys as well (uhmm coldplay), you might as well get it from where it came from.  This tour is a bit different from the previous ones in that its not as stripped down.  There will be a 360° view of the stage (as if Bono’s face was not enough) plus some kind of state of the art visual and sound system. Check it out here.  I just pray they don’t play anything off their new horrible album (especially that piece of crap ‘Get On Your Boots’ cause thats what I’ll do.  Get on my boots and walk out a shitty show.).  Tickets to the Pasadena Rose Bowl show are already sold out and they’re fetching $300 on ebay currently.

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• Def Leppard / Poison – Opening act for this tour will be Cheap Trick.  Now Cheap Trick is a kick ass band.  They’re lead singer sings in perfect key and Rick Nielsen is an underrated guitarist.  Plus their first album is a classic.  I’m hoping they play “He’s a whore” and point at Bret Michaels bandana extension wearing head.  When Poison takes the stage you can enjoy a beer break or something.  They don’t have a lot of great songs to play except for a handful of tracks (except for the “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn”, “Something To Belive In”,  “Nothin’ but a Good Time” and maybe 2 or 3 more songs) .  C.C. Deville is a good guitarist, but Poison were never great songwriters.  Def Leppard on the other hand have nothing but classics in the 80’s.  However, once Steve Clark (guitarist) passed away to pain-killers and alcohol, the band failed to add anyone comparable.  Steve had this unique sense of melody that they needed.  He was a sloppy player like Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), but his melody is unmatched by anyone to this day.  The other guitarist (Phil Collen) upped his playing when Steve was around.  Their two big albums Pyromania and Hysteria have not a single bad note on them.  They’re as perfect as albums go and this was way before Pro-Tools and this could be part of the reason it took them nearly 3 years to record Hysteria.
• Depeche Mode – These guys have a mediocre new album Sounds of the Universe, but they have a great backlog of tracks.  They haven’t really done dramatic changes like U2, but we wouldn’t need to hear that either.  This new album has some tracks by lead singer Dave Gahan which could be the direction they may be heading towards with the next few runs.  For now “Enjoy the Silence”.

Check out this great video of “Enjoy The Silence” :

• Michael Jackson – Yes, I know he looks like the elephant man now, but he has plenty of classics and a great voice.  Michael is still one of the greatest performers of all time.  He is getting older and slower with his dance moves, but his voice hasn’t changed much.  It would be great if he could play something from his early days like “Ben”.  Unfortunately he’s only playing London, England at the O2 Arena in 2009 and 2010.