Tag Archives: Bronx Wanderers

Posted in Music

An Amazing Musical Weekend

By Comments:6 Comments

     by Bob Sparrow

“On a dark desert highway”

     Last Saturday evening we had the pleasure of seeing the final performance of the Eagles at the Sphere in Las Vegas – it was way past awesome! The sound system alone is incredible, featuring 167,000 speakers! Seeing your favorite band of all time is one thing, seeing it in a $2.3 billion highest-tech venue in the world is definitely quite another. To make the experience even better, the Sphere has haptic seats, so when there was a thunderstorm surrounding you on screen, your seat would vibrate. The songs, featuring their tight harmonies, were all familiar, the surroundings, featuring beautiful land and seascapes of all types, were mind-blowing!

    

We were told by friends who just saw the previous night’s show that the Eagles would suggest to the audience to see ‘The Third Encore’ after the show, which is a room of Eagle memorabilia, connected to the adjoining Venetian Hotel. We were told to go before the show to avoid the crowds. We did and got to see what the Hotel California looked like and we were going to check in, but we knew we could never leave!

With Debbie & Clint Shafer

An added surprise at this event, was that as we were traversing the escalator to our seats, which were in the middle of the of the 18,600-seat Sphere and were all full; I no sooner got the words out of my mouth that we’d probably see someone we know, than we ran into neighbors from our ‘hood, Clint and Debbie Shafer. They live about a seven-iron from us. I had to throw the golf analogy in since it was the week of the Masters.

  The April 11, 2026 show was their final performance of the Eagles’ 58-show residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas. It concludes their “Long Goodbye” tour run at the venue, which was extended to include April dates after previous “final” announcements. The band has one other show on the books at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on May 2, maybe their last ever.

Sphere backdrop for Eagles concert

         Don Henley, one of the two founders of the group in 1971, is the only remaining original band member, but all the current members are incredible. Guitar player, Deacon Frye, who has an incredible voice, is the son of the other founding member of the Eagles, Glen Frye, who passed away 2016. Rocker Joe Walsh joined the Eagles in 1975. Timothy B. Schmit replaced original bass player, Randy Meisner in 1977, and Vince Gill, who was already an established country singer and song writer, joined the band in 2017, he sings most the songs that Glen Frye sang. Gill has a great voice and is a very accomplished guitar player.

A very, very memorable experience!

     To cap our musical weekend off, on Sunday night we saw the rock band, the Bronx Wanderers at the South Point Resort. I’ve written about them before here, as this was our fourth time seeing them. They are a great band that includes a father and his two sons. They do songs from the 60s, 70s and 80s and do a killer job on Bohemian Rapsody.

     The rest of the week in Vegas, through Thursday, was dedicated to our Yorba Linda annual golf outing – always fun!

     Caution: If you get a call or text from me this week, ignore it, it’s probably me asking for money, as I’ve never had to be in Vegas for six days straight!   

Posted in travel

An Offer I Couldn’t Refuse

By Comments:8 Comments

by Bob Sparrow

Susan, Dennis, Linda and ‘what’s his name’

I spent most of last week in Las Vegas, so this week’s blog won’t give you the typical erudite, cogent presentation on a thought-provoking topic that you’ve come to expect . . . elsewhere!  Linda and I met Dennis & Susan Nespor in the real ‘city that doesn’t sleep’ for some fun and games.  Although we had a lot of fun, we didn’t win at too many games; except for Susan who finished the week with a nice ‘one armed bandit’ win.  Fortunately, I wasn’t in the typically generous mood that comes over me in Vegas, but neither was Vegas.

We had seen it advertised many times, but just never pulled the trigger on going to ‘The Mob Museum’.  But this time we did, so we drove downtown to an old court house building, two blocks off of Freemont Street, the main drag of ‘downtown’ Vegas, for a tour.

Electric chair in Mob Museum

I have to say that I’m not a big fan of The Mob, the Mafia, the Sopranos, etc.  I know, I’m in the minority on that one, although I did enjoy the Godfather books, so I was sort of looking forward to the tour, and everyone else wanted to see it, so I couldn’t refuse.  As it turned out, it was fantastic!

The museum takes up three floors and a basement of this old federal building.  We had an option of three additional paid events during our self-guided tour:

  • Firearm Training
  • Crime Lab
  • Distillery Tour & Tasting

Freemont Street

A bit hung over from being ‘over-served’ the night before, we did not trust ourselves to handle any firearms, so we passed on the first one, but did the other two.  In the Crime Lab we analyzed our own fingerprints to see what criminal had similar fingerprints.  We also analyzed bullet marking to see if we could match them to the right pistol.  We also got to analyze an image of a cadaver that that seemingly had been beaten and had some serious wounds on his body.  Based on the wounds, we had to figure out how he died.  We concluded that we didn’t want to be forensic pathologists.  Without a doubt our favorite tour was the Distillery Tour & Tasting; It may have been the ‘tasting’ that got us hooked.  While we took our seats inside a working distillery in the basement, we were told of the Mobs activities during Prohibition, and getting samples of three types of ‘moonshine’ that was typical of the beverages that were distilled by the mob.  The moonshine wasn’t bad, but it was a little strong!

After the tour, we walked the two blocks to Freemont Street and walked down the middle for a block or two, which was just enough to let us know that it was time to go back to our hotel.

Speaking of our hotel, we have consistently stayed at South Point, which is at the way south of the strip and we love.  It is several steps above of the hotels downtown, but not as big, glitzy or expensive as the hotels on the strip.  It has seven great restaurants, over 120 bowling lanes, movie theaters and a huge arena that features everything from full on rodeos to college basketball tournaments.  And of course has every game of chance that you want.  But, another great advantage of South Point is that it has our favorite act, the Bronx Wanderers, performs there many times during the year in an awesome, intimate theater that doesn’t have a bad seat.  They are a band made up of a father, his two sons and two other members who were the son’s friends growing up in New York.  They play music for every generation, but it is particularly entertaining for those who have experienced and enjoy the long history of rock & roll.  Linda and I saw them for the third time last week and I know Dennis and Sue really enjoyed their first exposure.  They are awesome, if you get a chance, spend the whopping $45 a ticket!!  You won’t be disappointed.