[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
You're listening to the Mistress of None podcast with Aaron Harks.
Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to the Mistress of None. This is Aaron Harks, and my guest today is Bob Belber. Bob, how are you?
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Good, thank you.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Good. Thank you so much for finding time to sit with me today.
You are a very busy man for very many reasons, but most importantly, you have just written and released a book. Just a little backstory for those of you that don't know Bob. You run the MVP Arena.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I've been the general manager of the MVP arena for almost 30 years.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: One of my peers was telling me earlier something about the. We just used the MVP arena in our crossword puzzle about the French Sinatra show.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: And he made a joke that his mom was there with him in utero, and I was like, oh, you should tell Bob that. He goes, I'm just kidding. And I was like, stop.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: But I wasn't there at the time. That was in 1990. January of 1990.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: He was the first concert to take place in the Arena.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm just. Guess I'm blown away that 1990 wasn't 30 years ago. Like, that's.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: No, it's. It was 35.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Wow. Okay, little. Little math check for me, but no, that was the first concert. What was your first concert with MVP? You remember?
[00:01:25] Speaker B: Wow. I started in 1994, so I can't remember what the first concert was at the Arena.
Could have been U2, could have been Phil Collins, Genesis. You know, there were a lot of great shows back then.
My first concert that I ever saw as a, you know, as a human was Charlie Daniels Band at Southampton College back in 1975, I think it was.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: That was your first concert? That was my first concert, interestingly enough. I was going to wait to bring this up, but my first concert. When you mentioned the other day that before MVP, you worked at the Starlight.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: My first concert was at the Starlight in 1986, and it was the Monkees with Weird Al Yankovic opening.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: So I have a funny story about the Monkeys.
So I was the general manager of the starlight for 10 years, and the Monkees played two shows that. That time that you went, there were two shows that took place.
It was supposed to be played. They were going to play at Saratoga. Herb Chesbrough was the manager of Saratoga at the time, and he had confirmed the show and had actually announced the show, and there was a falling out between Herb and David Fischoff, who managed the Monkeys at the time, as it related to Some kind of issue with merchandise. And the percentage that Herb wanted for Saratoga out of the share of merchandise sales was not what David Fischoff was willing to accept. And so David reached out to me and said, would you be willing to do two shows there instead of me playing Saratoga? And this is the merch deal that we need. And of course, I'm a little building 2,972 seats compared to Saratoga with 25,000. And for me to take away what at that time was a major act from Saratoga was a coup.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: And so I gave him the deal that he wanted, and we had two shows that sold out. And you went to one of them.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: That's amazing.
My mom won the tickets for me on the radio. I made her call. So I am partly responsible for winning those tickets. But at the time, I watched Nickelodeon on syndication.
I watched the Monkees show on Nickelodeon syndicated, and also was a huge nerd. So I was a massive Weird Al fan.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: And the fact that they were touring together. Yeah, like, who would ever.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: That was a great show.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Right. So that was my first concert. I was in little fat girl nerdy heaven.
But I didn't realize that I had been watching the Monkees syndicated. So when they came out on stage live, 30 years older than what I had seen on the TV, I was very confused.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And Mickey Dolan was, backstage, was just a really nice guy.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Oh, I believe that. I got to see him perform just a few years ago in Las Vegas, and he just seems like a total sweetheart.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Yep, he really was. And they all are, you know, for the most part. There's obviously some that aren't, but this book that I put out is. Is all about backstage crazy encounters that I've had with the likes of the Rolling Stones and Foo Fighters and Lil Wayne and Luther Vandross and Rodney Dangerfield, especially.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: That story is incredible. That was a lot of fun to listen to, especially as a comic.
As a comic and a musician, I've gotten to open for both. And I always have people asking me what they're like, what they're like. And comics are usually a little bit nicer than musicians, believe it or not, in my experience. But I can't imagine the experiences that you have been in working at a place of that magnitude for that many years.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's. It's wild. You know, there's times where. And I'm going to go back to the Starlight, you know, where I. I had actually talked to Willie Nelson's manager about the possibility of, you know, Meeting Willie prior to the show and. And so forth, and. And he wasn't meeting anybody. That. That day we sold out the show. It was a phenomenal show. And right at the end of the show, after it had just gotten over, I got a call on the radio saying that Willie wants to see me on his bus. And I was like, okay, did I do something wrong, you know, or what happened? You know, that would be a reason that he would ask me to go on. And so I knocked on the door of the bus and got up on the bus, and he's stand. He's sitting there at the table at the kitchen on his bus, and there's a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold on the table. And he said, sit down, son. So I sat down and. And he takes this giant swig out of this bottle, and he puts it down on the table and swings it over to me and says, go ahead, have a drink. So what are you gonna do? Say no to Willie Nelson?
So we ended up probably sharing that bottle six, seven times back and forth. And we had just the most incredible conversation about, you know, things with our two families. And, you know, he's just a genuinely nice man. And no, I. I wasn't smoking weed, because that's the question everybody has.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: No, I will say that there was a little bit of spoke on the bus, and people in the back of the bus might have been doing that, but it wasn't being done at that table at that time.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: Well, you heard it here.
That's. I think a lot of people like to hear the, you know, the scandalous stories. I honestly prefer hearing that artists that I love are genuinely nice people.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Yeah, they genuinely are. And case in point, like, you know, another scenario which took place actually at the arena at the time. I think it was the. It was the Times Union center, obviously, the MVP arena now is the name of it, but it was called Times Union center prior to that. It was a Pepsi arena, and then it opened originally as Knickerbocker arena. And. And I've been there all the way through and changed the names each time.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: And, you know, there are people that still call it.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: It's still called the Nick or the.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Pepsi or the Times Union to you. It takes a while for people to adapt, I know.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: And it's. It's hard to adapt to it. But now I think people are very into the whole MVP arena name. But going back to one, one day when Michael Buble was there, one of the requirements in his writer is you had to have A ping pong table backstage. And so we had arranged that there was a ping pong table down there. And I didn't think anything of it. You know, I walked down at around 4:30 in the afternoon after the sound check. And I'm listening to what sounded like ping pong, you know, play and table tennis play. And so I go around the corner and Michael Buble is playing ping pong with one of the crew members. And he was just finishing up and I'm walking by, I've got my tie on and stuff and he looks at me and he says, hey, you want to play a little ping pong? And so I said, sure. So I jump on, I start playing him. He kicked my ass.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: That's so, I love that. It's just beyond you just working with these people. Like, I mean, now you've, you've gotten to, you know, that'll happen. You get to, you know, drink whiskey with, with Willie Nelson. You get to play ping pong with Michael Blue Blay.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And, and it's all in this book. And so there are some other stories in there that are kind of wacky. Luther Vandross in, you know, the Starlight Days, that was wild. I get a call in the office at 4:00 saying that Luther Vandross came in for the 4:00 sound check and he's on fire, he's so pissed off. And his manager says to me, you got to come back to the star trailer. So I walk backstage and I go into the trailer and Luther's not there, but the manager is. And he proceeds to tell me that this hospitality worker, a young lady that was responsible for making sure all the catering and the store's dressing room was supposed to be the way it was. And apparently she had, she had been in the bathroom down the hall and Luther walked by and saw her filling a coffee pot with shower water and. Which. Yeah, which is not something you would ever expect, right?
[00:09:50] Speaker A: No.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: So come to find out. And of course Luther wanted her fired. Want, wanted her off the grounds because he was so upset about it and, and come to find out the reason that she was in there and it was wrong of her to do it, but. But she would normally be getting it from the sink water and instead, because he had a guy that had this big box in front of the sink and when she was about to fill the coffee pot, she couldn't get to the sink water. So she went in and she went to the bathroom and got the shower water, but in the box was a Toilet seat. And so this guy's job on the tour was to make sure that wherever Luther would be, where he may have to go, he would have to have a brand new toilet seat and replace the one that was there. And so the guy was taking the toilet seat out of the box and it took a long time. And so that's what ended up happening. So we ended up asking her to go home and with pay and, you know, told her not to ever do it again. Obviously, she wasn't fired, but those kind of things happen, you know, and how, how you deal with those things, you know, from our side, from being the operator and management.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: Venue is something that is sometimes comical. I mean, there's some stuff in the book that'll make your ribs hurt. You'll laugh so hard. Oh, I'm sure because of, you know, what you'll hear.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: Well, I mean, I, I was at the press conference the other day, so I got to hear the, the Rodney Dangerfield story, which I'm, I'm. I implore you to get this book just for that story again. As a comic, I. It was just such a great story, and you, you, you paint such a picture with your words. And it's. What's interesting for me, too, is there's, there's no bitterness in your storytelling.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Like, you're just presenting the facts and you seem, like, very jovial about it. I could see somebody else presenting the similar stories and being like, you know, like that guy. But, like, I like how you present them.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: I don't think that it's necessary to, you know, come across or be negative towards an artist for whatever reason or thing that they did. You know, I mean, you can explain what happened and, and just the facts that they were, were so damn funny.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: You know, you don't need to embellish on them, really.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: I mean, at the time, you might have been like, who the hell does Luther Vandross think he is?
[00:12:14] Speaker B: The, the Little Wayne, the Lil Wayne story was, Was incredible.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Do you want to share that now or do you want people to get the book for that one?
[00:12:21] Speaker B: I'll. I'll share it. Okay. Because I think I, I expand on it in the book a little bit more, but, but I thought it was fascinating, really. I mean, you've got an artist that's extremely popular.
Just sold out the Boston Garden the night before.
I was in Wilkes Barre when this all took place. Pennsylvania. Because I used to be a regional GM and I oversaw a number of buildings in the Northeast. And so I'm down there for a meeting with the client. And the night before, Lil Wayne was supposed to play in the Boston Garden sold out show. And he got to the venue prior to the show, and basically management of the Boston Garden said, well, you have to walk through that metal detector. And he and his girlfriend, who had arrived just before showtime, building's full of people, it sold out. And he refused to walk through the metal detector and said, no, I'm not doing that. Now, keep in mind, There were about 65 stagehands and other people in the backstage area watching that metal detector and would have watched him go through it.
And so that's why he wouldn't go through it. He felt disrespected and so forth. And at the end of the day, show got canceled. Very next day, he's got a show in Wilkes Barre. I'm down there for meetings and to be there for the show. And I really was down there understanding that he just canceled the show before on the night before. So more than likely there's going to be some issues. And so 9 o'clock in the morning, I'm in a conference room meeting with our client. Outside in the hall room is Lil Wayne's manager, production manager, and he's talked to our operations manager at that venue and he says, look, if you're looking to have Wayne go through that metal detector at the back door in Wilkes Barre, he's not going to do it and we're just going to stop the loading. And so our operations manager in Wilkes Barre is trained to say, everybody's got to go through the metal detector. And he said, oh, yeah, he's got to go through the metal detector. So then the production manager goes on his radio and calls all the rest of his crew members and says, all right, stop the bus. We're not going to be loading in. The show's not going to happen. So I bail out of the meeting that I'm in in the conference room, and I walk up to the production manager, introduce myself as the regional manager, and said, you know, maybe there's another way we can do this. And I said, how about if we have our head of security meet Lil Wayne and his girlfriend or whoever, he wants to bring it with him at a private entrance with a metal detecting wand where nobody's watching, nobody will even know. He came into the building and the guy said, he puts a phone call into Wayne and I can hear Wayne on the other end, and I'm so close to the guy, and he tells him what the idea was, and Wayne just yells out now there's a white mother effort that gets it.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: I mean, that was such a simple solution, honestly. But.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Yeah, but it, but it's things like that. A lot of. A lot of times those kinds of things come up and how you deal with those things can make the difference of whether a show happens or doesn't happen or, you know, and the public doesn't see any of this.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: No, they can't.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: They. No, they, they come in, they. They see a great show or maybe they don't see a great show like in Boston, and, you know, it gets canceled. They don't know until the next day usually that, you know, that got canceled what the reason was.
But all these types of things that I've experienced and, and there's a ton of them are in this book. And I've had friends of mine that have ordered the book and they received it like a week or two ago, and they've called me or texted me and they've said, you know, I started reading this book and it took me about two and a half hours, two to two and a half hours to read it.
But they couldn't put it down. Once they started reading was like a binge read. They had to keep going because there was so many one after another, stories that were interesting.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: That's definitely going to happen with me, and I'm looking forward to it.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Now, you might notice that the font on the book is big.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Yeah. So don't let it scare you that it's that many pages because.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: And the reason I did this is, I know in my case, I like to read when the font is bigger, and I think a lot of people feel that way. And many people that have bought the book have told me that. So it's very easy to read. I've got color photos of artists in various different locations in the book.
The Rolling Stone stories are fantastic. There's some pictures of Rolling Stones with Mayor Jennings and me when we were giving the keys to the city to the band.
And. And you know that that's to die for because I've got some history with, with Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones when I was a young child, really, you know, I was the son of a commercial fisherman, and so I saw a lot more of the Rolling Stones than probably most people because I actually saw him running around naked on a beach when I was. When I was 10 years old. Yeah.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: So when you say you saw more of them, like literally.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Yeah, literally. Probably more than they ever wanted to.
But it was 5:30 in the morning and we Were my father had a trawler and then we used to tow nets and there was a real deep area close to the beach in what's called Ditch Plains. And the Rolling Stones had rented a cottage right on the beach, you know, on the, just over the dunes. And we towed our nets right close to the beach because we're real deep trough trowel where a lot of fish were. And my father hands me the binoculars and says, you should take a look at this. So I look up there, I'm only 10 years old, I'm looking up there, I see like seven people that are running around, girls and guys naked. And, and I look at this one guy and sure as heck, so clear it was Mick Jagger. You know, I mean, there are no other. There's nobody else that looks like Mick Jagger. That's Mick Jagger.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: And. And then one of the guys actually saw how close the boat was to the beach and we ran out to the water and started throwing stones at us.
So, so that was in like 1967.
And dial forward to 2005. And so I'm backstage in the Rolling Stones dressing room on the night that the Rolling Stones are playing at the then Times Union center now MVP arena. And I'm standing next to Mick, Mick Jagger and the mayor and the rest of the band. And I look over to Mick and I said, you know, you're probably not going to believe this. And I started to tell about the story, he looks up at me and he says, yeah, you're right. I don't remember that.
Now keep in mind, that was the late 60s. My, my guess is they were probably doing some serious drugs back then.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: And if they were naked on the beach at 5:30 in the morning, they probably were still partying from the night before.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. So I wouldn't take that personal.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: No, I' I didn't, I didn't. But you know what? We did have a chance to talk while I was having this conversation with him, waiting for the photographer to get ready for the Keys to the City presentation. And we talked about Montauk, and it was great. I think he loved the fact that he could.
It wasn't just somebody saying, hey, how's the tour? Or how's, how's the show doing? Yeah, it, it was real for him because he loves Montauk.
He spent a lot of time there. And you know, we talked about Shaguan, which is a little bar on Main street in Montauk. And he actually came in several years later. I saw him on the beach when I was 10, but when I was 18, just barely, you know, young enough to. Or old enough to be in the bar. It's about midnight, and I had a tap on my right shoulder. I was with a friend of mine, and I looked to my right, and it's Mick Jagger, and. And he's looped. He says, hey, mate, you want to play a little pool? Because there was a pool table right behind, you know, the bar. And so we played a game of pool. And, you know, I ended up buying him a drink, and he went on and, you know, went over to his friends that he was in there with. But, you know, the history that I've had with him, albeit he probably has no recollection no memory of it, but then to actually have him at my venue performing and being with him in the backstage area was kind of cool. So all these kinds of things are in the book. You know, there's.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: The book is called Life with the Stars. And when did this come out?
[00:21:14] Speaker B: So it was published on March 8th, and it's available. The best way to get the book is to go to lifewiththestars.com because there's a whole lot of information about what's in the book. There's pictures.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: How did you manage to get that domain?
[00:21:31] Speaker B: Early on, when I started writing this, it took me three years to write this.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: And to put all the memories, you know, on paper. But I got the. I purchased the URL probably about two years ago, and I produced the website.
Probably was finished with it about a month ago.
And the website's kind of cool. It's got all kinds of different areas on it that relates to some of these stories. You know, there's a reference to Caitlin Clark and. And the whole NCAA woman's super regional that we had last year.
There are some photo highlights of her cutting down the nets.
There's a reference to Antonio Brown, the NFL superstar that attempted to be an owner of arena football team.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: And. And that was a wild and crazy summer and spring and summer of 2023. And it got nasty at the end.
I ended up having to get the FBI involved. Wow. At one point. At the end. And so all of that's in the book as well.
So there's so many different interesting things that people will, I think, really get into. Many, many people have probably seen some of these shows, and certainly, you know, the sports side of it, even with Caitlin Clark and the ncaa, you know, that made history around the globe.
That event, that game between Iowa and LSU had 12.3 million viewers, which was the largest for any female sports event ever.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: From Albany, New York.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: Well, thank you for bringing that to Albany right now. But when did you finish writing this book?
[00:23:25] Speaker B: I would say it was totally finished. Probably around January 30th or so of this year. Yeah.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: Okay. How many experiences have you had since then that you think are going to make the next book?
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Well, there's a lot of experiences that I had that I didn't include in here.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: So there'll be a part two.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: There could be. I'm. I'm thinking about it.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: There might have to be.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: You know, and part of that, honestly, is I've had people that have had events that they've either promoted or they've been associated with that didn't make the book, where they've said, well, how come my. How come my show didn't make the book? You know, there's a promoter by the name of Stu Green who's a good friend of mine with Magic City Promotions, and he's brought in the who and Cher and, you know, a bunch of other really good shows, and we've had some great encounters and, you know, with the artists and he and I, you know, backstage. And I didn't include it in the book, and it wasn't intentional for any reason. It's just didn't come to me at the time I was writing it.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: You know, there's some stuff with the Aurora games that I could have put in there, and my good friend George Hurst, who, you know, saved the day and made that event happen. I didn't put that in there. It might make the second run.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: I. I feel like you're already writing the second book. You know, I. I do that after I record anything in my life. I get done and I go, damn it, this is what I missed. But that's good. It means that you have more material, and I'm sure this is going to be wildly popular, and so the next one will be even more so. So this is fantastic.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: You know, I was. I was a little concerned about, you know, how's my company going to. That I work for. I work for ASM Global, which is the largest, largest facility management company in the world.
They manage over 350 stadiums, arenas, convention centers, theaters, and. And I've had a lot of different roles, and some of this in the book. I was a director of booking for the US With a company called smg. SMG is a subsidiary of ASM Global, but when I was the director of booking, I was routing shows into 75 arenas. And I think the best thing that I've ever done is, and I mentioned this, I think at the press conference that you attended was the Vince Gillen Immigrant Christmas show. And so I'm not going to bring that up or say what was totally involved in that, but that was the best thing I've done in my entire career.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: Oh, that's great.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: And, and you know, Vince Gill and Amy Grant even felt the same way. And this was a connection between troops that were in Iraq. We had just gone into Iraq on the, on the time period that we were hosting this 19 city tour and I actually routed the whole tour and I was in San Antonio and this date in mid December. And so the connectivity between attendees at the event and the troops that were in Iraq live on stage and what that, what that felt like for the families and for the people that were watching the show was just something you can't describe. I've never seen looking up and down chairs and aisles of people and I was there and I couldn't believe every single person in every chair was crying. It was the most incredible thing I've ever seen.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: That's wonderful. Well, that's great that you were able to help facilitate something like that.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And how I, and how that all came down and how the US Military allowed it and so forth is all in the book.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: Great. Now if you had the chance to interview or not to interview, to have somebody at the MVP arena that you could like have there and have an experience with, who would it be?
[00:27:12] Speaker B: Oh, I, I don't know. I mean, Paul McCartney probably.
I mean, Paul McCartney show. And first of all, his personality, it's just incredible. One of the nicest men ever.
That also is another great story in the book.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: But you already had.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Oh, you're talking about any others that.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: I have that you haven't had yet?
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Well, God rest his soul. I would have loved to have had Jimmy Buffett. He was, he was on the top of my list that I hadn't booked yet and unfortunately he passed.
That would have been a great show. But you know, I would have loved that.
I don't know, I mean, we never had had Madonna in, in our building. That's probably passed at this point, as far as popularity goes.
Not sure there's a, there's a number of them that are out there, you know.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Well, it sounds like you've had so many wonderful ones already. Like it would keep your wish list pretty short.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I think Coldplay would be great to have. We haven't never had Coldplay. Okay, that would be definitely on the list.
I think we've had just about everybody.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: That's great. No, that's. I mean, what better way to answer a question than to not be able to answer it? Because you've already had so many wonderful experiences.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: You know the Elton John and Billy Joel show, when they performed together on the Face to Face. In fact, that picture on the COVID Picture on the COVID Picture on the COVID was that night backstage and we gave them awards and so forth.
And actually that's my wife on the COVID in the picture as well with me and the mayor of Albany, Jerry Jennings. But it was just a great night to have those two pianos back to back and having both Billy and Elton on stage at the same time singing together. That was a classic, that was a phenomenal show.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: But on the night of Paul McCartney, some of the best part about that show wasn't even his show itself. It was before the doors opened and it was the public, it was the fans that actually gave everyone a show themselves. And what I mean by that is we put a grand piano in the main entrance prior to getting into the building and we encouraged people to play Beatles songs and anybody who could play the piano could jump on and they could sing along and so forth. And we didn't really know what to expect.
And so prior to the doors opening, there were people that were going on and off the piano and playing the piano, but there were three to 400 people that were all singing Beatles songs with the piano. And it, I mean, you can't describe the atmosphere. It was so cool. And the show hadn't even started yet.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Especially with the acoustics. In that area.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: Yeah, in that area. And at that time it had, at that time the atrium I'm talking about was not covered. And so it was open air, which actually made it even more vibrant, you know, because the sound wasn't echoing. It would, you know, the sound was moving. But the public was just fantastic on that, on that aspect. And. And it's like, it's ironic because only a couple of weeks ago I reached out to Barry Marshall and who is. He's getting an award at the Polestar Live conference in about two weeks out in la, which I'm going to. But Barry has been Paul's manager for 45 plus years and so I got to know him and so I reached out to him a couple weeks ago and I said, you know, I know he doesn't play the same building within five years of the last time he played but the last time he played was in 2014, so I'd love to see him come back to Albany. And. And then I reminded him of what we just got done talking about with the incredible atmosphere before the doors even opened. And he told me that he actually saw that he was here. He saw it, he loved it. And he said, send me the available dates for the building from November for November and December. And so we did that. We've given him some ticket scalings, and hopefully with a little bit of luck, we'll get a confirmed show for Paul McCartney in the fall.
[00:31:41] Speaker A: That would be wonderful. That would be fantastic for the area.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: It really would. It really would.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: That's amazing. Well, thank you so much. The. I can't. I cannot wait to read all of this. This is. I'm really. I'm so fascinated by it. And I love the way that you paint a picture. Honestly, it's going to be such a wonderful read. I'm gonna whiz right through it. You're gonna hear from me very soon, I'm sure. The book is called Life with the Stars. This has been Bob Belber. You can get
[email protected] Correct. Which I can't imagine. Like, we were trying to get metroland.com and it was like $14,000.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, you can go on Amazon as well, or you can go on Barnes and Noble, but, you know, there are 10,000 authors that are using the stripe platform, which is the processing platform on my website, and it's totally secure and safe and it's endorsed by multiple banks. Oh, yeah.
And the good thing about it is, unlike Amazon, where after the cost of printing and shipping, Amazon takes a huge cut, whereas this platform, and through the website, 100% after printing and shipping goes to the author.
So when I tell you that I still have about 900 bucks to sell just to cover costs.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, that's why I. Yeah, I don't even want to say Amazon. I think LifeWithTheStars.com is something that everybody can remember. And we'll make sure to tag it in the comments when we post this.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: No, that's great.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: And I can't wait to read this. And I can't wait for chapter two. And I can't wait to talk more with you about all of these fascinating stories.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Great. Awesome. Thanks you so much.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Bob. This is Aaron Harks with the Mistress of None. Thank you for tuning in, and we will see you soon. Bye.
You're listening to the Mistress of Nun podcast with Aaron Harks.
