My friend Adam called me up last week, he told me it would be his birthday on Tuesday (Happy Birthday, Adam) he asked me if I would like to go with him to the Peace Center in Greenville to see Lyle Lovett and his large band.
I have heard of Lyle Lovett and there is even one song I know and do like “If I had a boat” .
But pretty much I thought of him as some old SOB with bad hair that played country music with a twang and picked guitar.
It surprised me that it would be the type of music that Adam liked but it was his birthday and I have heard Lyle was rather iconic, I thought It might be best to go see the old geezer before he dies off.
So after work yesterday, Adam and I take off for Greenville. We had a wonderful dinner at smoke on the water. The shrimp and grits were very good. Then a brisk walk to the concert hall. The Peace Center is a special venue with outstanding acoustics. Our seats were up in the heavens above the nosebleed seats
We just got settled in when lights dimmed. Lyle comes out and with his guitar and sings a slow country ballad. Before it is over I am dreading this, the usher had warned us it was a two and a half hour show with no intermission. Two and a half hours of this and I would be dead or at least in a twang induced coma!
The lights dim before the next song the a spotlight highlights Lyle as he starts on a perkier number, soon more lights, more instruments, I am starting to like this a little better. Then the horns hit and WOW. The inner workings of my ear, the hammer, anvil and stirrup all came alive!
I felt like Moses on the mount. I have seen the sound gods. At one point I swear my soul left me, joined by angels levitating over the crowd!
Serendipity
- the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
“a fortunate stroke of serendipity”
I still have no clue what I witnessed was it rock? Swing? Spiritual? Big band? Old time variety show? A little of all the above! It was amazing, parts of my body started twitching, involuntary moving to the beat . The only sad part about this amazing venue with the stellar acoustics is auditorium seats, while very comfortable, this music had me wanting to dance. I danced in my seat the next two hours!
I loved those horns. It made me thing of Jack Kerouac in his book “on the road” where describes this music scene
one night in San Francisco, this episode: “Boom, kick, that drummer was kicking his drums down the cellar, and rolling the beat upstairs with his murderous sticks, -boom! The pianist was only pounding the keys with spreadeagled fingers, chords, at intervals when the great tenorman was drawing breath for another blast – Chinese chords, shuddering the piano in every timber, chink and wire, boing! The tenorman jumped down from the platform and stood in the crowd, blowing around; his hat was over his eyes, and somebody pushed it back for him. He just hauled back and stamped his foot and blew down a hoarse, laughing blast, and drew breath, and raised the horn, and blew high, wide, and screaming in the air.
Dean was directly in front of him, with his face lowered to the bell of the horn, clapping his hands, pouring sweat on the man’s keys, and the man noticed and laughed in his horn a long, quivering, crazy laugh, and everybody else laughed and they rocked and rocked, and finally, the tenorman decided to blow his top and crouched down and held a note in high C for a long time as everything else crashed along and the cries increased and I thought the cops would come swarming from the nearest precinct.
chasingperi 