Posted on 12/24/11

Glen Campbell In Concert - Nashville, TN - Ryman Auditorium - 11/30/2011
Written by James Downing
I have told the story here on Concert Blast about how my dad brought home a record player one day when I was about seven years old. That day changed my life forever and opened the world of music up to me. My mom was a big country music fan and would buy many records. She would sit in my bedroom with me and we would listen to many of them. Loretta Lynn, Bing Crosby, Donna Fargo and the list goes on and on. There was one album that she bought that I really liked and that was a Glen Campbell album. My favorite song off that album was called “Gentle On My Mind”. I soon discovered that this guy had his own tv show each week and I would watch it everytime it came on. As I grew up and started listening to rock and roll music, Glen Campbell’s music remained on my record player along side Alice Cooper, The Who, Kiss and all of the other bands that I listened to.
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Posted on 12/23/2011

Glen Campbell In Concert - Nashville, TN - Ryman Auditorium - 11/30/2011
It was the first of two farewell Nashville, TN concerts from Glen Campbell at the historic Ryman Auditorium. James Downing of Concert Blast wanted to be there to capture the end of his career and an important era in country music, so he purchased a ticket as soon as they went on sale and received an excellent seat to the November 30, 2011 show. A seat close enough to capture great photos of the lengendary performer.
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Posted on 12/18/2011

The Crowd - Nashville's Party Rock Band
On Friday December 9th 2011 something happened at a music club in Nashville, TN that members of the party rock band from the 80’s, The Crowd, thought would never happen… a reunion show!
Two members of the Concert Blast team, Mike Arnold and Tom Thompson, were part of the rock band that began performing cover songs at parties in the early 1980s, decided to write and record a few original songs, had those originals played on the radio and began thrilling crowds at the private parties, rock clubs, colleges, and music festivals. Now in 2011 the guys returned to a rock music club in Nashville, TN, Douglas Corner Café, to perform a reunion show to celebrate their first gig from 30 years ago. Also joining the reunion on stage was Tom’s twin brother and bassist of the band, Jim Thompson, the latest lead guitarist, Gary Conn, and the original lead guitarist, Dwayne Smith.
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Posted 2/27/2011
Written by Mike Arnold
Every year during the month of February, our country celebrates Black History Month. I have thought about all the black artists that has touched our musical lives and realized black artists have been a major part of creating rock and roll. Brian Hasbrook, Tom Thompson, James Downing and I decided to celebrate Black History Month by creating a Music Discussion audio podcast of some of our favorite black artists.
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Posted 2/18/2011
Written by Mike Arnold

While the concert-touring season has slowed down for the winter, I thought it would be nice to show our listening audiences what we went through in 2010. I created multiple videos of our experiences with a month by month journey of our adventures.
Here’s Part 6, the final chapter of our 2010 Concert Blast Posts. This video takes you through our experiences of October through December.
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POSTED 2/10/2011
Written by Mike Arnold
While the concert-touring season has slowed down for the winter, I thought it would be nice to show our listening audiences what we went through in 2010. I created multiple videos of our experiences with a month by month journey of our adventures.
Here’s Part 5 of our 2010 Concert Blast Posts. This video takes you through our experiences in Memphis, TN with REO Speedwagon and Pat Benatar, in Nashville, TN at the Bridgstone Arena with the Scorpions and Ratt, Paul McCartney, as well as Crosby, Stills, and Nash with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. There was the Heart Concert at the Ryman, the Michael Bolton concert at the Wildhorse Saloon as well Hard Rockers Cinderella also at the Wildhorse Saloon. We also covered the Americana Music Festival shows from the Cannery which was a lot of fun!
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CONCERT BLAST STAFF - Brian Hasbrook, Mike Arnold, Tom Thompson, James Downing
Concert Blast began with Mike Arnold, Brian Hasbrook, and Tom Thompson. Three guys who grew up together in the Nashville, TN area. These guys have attended hundreds (if not over a thousand) concerts.
Everytime the guys would get together with friends, they would all want to know about the shows they’ve seen and found themselves discussing these concerts for long periods of time.
Mike thought a music talk show would make a great radio show. After failing to convince radio stations/companies that this format could be good for radio, he gave up. A couple of years later, Mike was introduced to podcasting. He approached Brian and Tom about the idea of discussing concerts on a podcast and they said let’s do it! Concert Blast formed a family friendly podcast and the first podcast was uploaded in May of 2005.
Since our website began back in May of 2005 and have produced more than 200 audio shows with many blogs and posted photos.
We have been invited to cover many concerts and music festivals such as the Bonnaroo Music Festival (2006 – 2010), Memphis in May Beale Street Music Festival (2006 – 2011), CMA Music Festival (2007 – 2011) as well as many of the top Music Concerts (Paul McCartney, Aerosmith, Ringo Starr, Bob Seger, Billy Joel, Sheryl Crow, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Styx, Joan Jett, Night Ranger, and many more).
We usually feature Classic Rock acts, but we do not limit ourselves to it.
We were featured as one of the Top 5 Classic Rock podcasts from Classic Rock About.com.
http://classicrock.about.com/od/2005/tp/rock_myths.htm
In 2008 we were nominated as one of the People’s Choice Podcast Awards.

In 2009 James Downing joined the team as a blogger while Mike Arnold took time off to write his book on our Concert Blast Experiences.
In April 2010 Mike Arnold released his book:
“CONCERT BLAST EXPERIENCES Guest List-Backstage-VIP” and is back podcasting with Concert Blast.
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