THE HISTORY:
OK, so in 1982 (when I was 7 years old), I discovered rock music. One of my favorite bands was Loverboy. I was really, really into them back then (so much so that I somehow convinced my parents to let my aunt take me to a Loverboy concert on Valentine's Day 1984--my first concert ever...I was only 8 1/2 years old then, too!). Over the years, my interest in Loverboy faded, although I always had a soft spot for their music, just because they were one of the first bands that I really took a liking to. So when I found out that the original band was gonna be playing a show in Buffalo (I live in Rochester, approx. 70 miles away...about an hour or so drive), I decided that I just *had* to go, if not out of respect for what they meant to me when I was young, but just out of curiousity to compare a 1998 Loverboy show to the show I saw in 1984.
So I went.
I must say that it was much much better than I had expected (really, I wasn't sure what to expect). The band played great (especially great when you consider that they played at 11 am on a Sunday morning! Ugh!) and seemed to be really enjoying themselves on stage. I also got to meet each member of the band, which was very cool but kinda strange (I worshipped these guys when I was like 8, and there I was meeting them...pretty surreal).
OK, so onto the photos from the show. They were taken by my brother Steve LaPlaca (I'm Dave, by the way) at the Loverboy show at the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Fieldhouse (adjacent to Rich Stadium--where the Buffalo Bills play football) in Buffalo, NY on November 22, 1998. They played there before that afternoon's Buffalo Bills game. So thanks to him for going with me and taking the photos.
Without any further delay, here they are:
And I felt bad that we couldn't get a better picture of him, due to the drums being in the way, so here's a photo of him from the tour program that I bought way back at the 1984 show:
