The Soundtrack of Half a Century

We often speak of the popular music of given eras as providing soundtracks for different generations. Each of us has that particular set of songs or musical artists who define the music of our adolescence. Sitting in Target Center in Minneapolis on May 4 I realized that, even for my cohort, the oldest group of Baby Boomers, that line is too limiting for Paul McCartney and the Beatles. They have provided, together and separately, a soundtrack for at least half a century.

Over the years a number of friends and acquaintances have been to McCartney concerts and reported that it was one of the most amazing concert experiences of their lives. When tickets for the Target Center concert popped up on my Facebook feed the last week of April, I jumped at them. The dream of my lifetime was to see the Beatles in concert. They stopped touring as the Beatles 50 years ago this summer. But here was Sir Paul. Why not?

Personally I was a little worried before the concert started. As the 8:00 starting time approached there were still about 20% of the seats empty. Has Paul lost his following? Are people leaving the Beatles behind. By the time the concert began, though, almost every seat was filled.My guess is that the security lines were too long.

In any case we waited. It was 45 minutes more of what I can only call the worst music experience in a live music setting.

No it wasn't an opening group. It was a techno-beat soundtrack mix of Beatles/McCartney music. It was too loud and far too techno. For a total of over 75 minutes I felt I was being pounded into submission by a relentless beat. (I have never taken the drug Ecstasy, but I think I understand why clubbers do.) I was actually worried that by the time McCartney took the stage I would be so beaten down that I wouldn't enjoy the show.

Yeah, right.

Not a chance.

Here are ten of my pictures from the concert along with some more thoughts. A link to my complete album on Flickr is at the bottom along with a link to the setlist online.

The first seven songs of the set:

A Hard Day's Night
Save Us
Can't Buy Me Love
Letting Go
Temporary Secretary (A real dud in my book. The only one.)
(A Foxy Lady snippet)
I've Got a Feeling
My Valentine (for his current wife, Nancy)

From City Pages review:

If death hung heavy in the air — and constant reminders of John Lennon, George Harrison, Linda McCartney, producer George Martin, and Prince made sure that it did — the mood was still celebratory. We're witnessing pages of rock history come to life, after all, and the knighted, mythic creature performing the songs still seems to believe in their power. The packed crowd of around 19,000 did, too.

Paul mentioned the late great Jimi Hendrix after the Foxy Lady riff and then said he was dedicating the concert to our own late, great Prince. He told of seeing Prince perform at a small cafe this past New Year's Eve. "We saw the new year in together and that was beautiful — God bless you Prince!"

Prince. Minneapolis.
Minneapolis. Prince.
It goes together.

Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
Here, There and Everywhere
Maybe I'm Amazed (for his late wife, Linda.)
We Can Work It Out

In Spite of All the Danger (The Quarrymen song)
You Won't See Me
Love Me Do (Dedicated to George Martin who died in March)
And I Love Her
Blackbird

The Quarrymen song went back to 1959 when it was Paul, John, and George and "two other guys" that he told us we wouldn't know. He said their nicknames, and everyone laughed. We didn't know them. It was a country-style, skiffle/rock-a-billy song. He even tried to wiggle and jiggle like Elvis. Applause and laughter!

He told a story of George Martin, the Beatles' superlative producer asking Paul to do the singing on "Love Me Do" so John could play the harmonica. Without George Martin, he said, there wouldn't have been the Beatles.

Then there was "Blackbird." He mentioned that they wrote it in solidarity with the people in Little Rock, Arkansas, who were standing up for civil rights. It was a beautiful rendition with appropriate video accompanying him.While singing he was lifted on a hydraulic stage section. A little over done.

Here Today
Queenie Eye
New Song
The Fool on the Hill
Lady Madonna
FourFiveSeconds
   (Rihanna and Kanye West and Paul McCartney cover)
Eleanor Rigby
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
Something

 He started "Here Today" by saying it was written to John Lennon. Sadly, he said, it was "a conversation we never had." He urged the audience to say what they needed to say to the people they cared about while they had the chance.

He started "Something," a George Harrison song, by playing it on the ukulele which he said was how George first played it for him. It continued into a guitar slashing of highest quality!

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Band on the Run
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Let It Be
Live and Let Die

To quote the City Pages reviewer:

Paul performing "Let It Be" at the piano is all any music fan could really ask for.

With "U.S.S.R." he told an anecdote about being in Russia and having Russian officials tell him about listening to the Beatles' music. It was one of a number of times that Paul truly made it a personal evening, befitting the tour's title, One on One

"Live and Let Die," the heavy-duty title rocker from the James Bond film, gave us all a start when the pyrotechnics started. Sure, it was over-the-top, but it fit!

Hey Jude

Even as a sing-along, this one still moves across the ages. Take a sad song, and make it better.

Encores:
Yesterday

In many ways the most moving moment of the show for this old Beatles' fan was the opening encore number- Paul's acoustic rendition of "Yesterday." It kept its power with the strings being added through the miracle of electronic keyboard. As Wikipedia reminds us, "Yesterday":

remains popular today with more than 2,200 cover versions and is one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music. "Yesterday" was voted the best song of the 20th century in a 1999 BBC Radio 2 poll of music experts and listeners and was also voted the No. 1 pop song of all time by MTV and Rolling Stone magazine the following year.

The song was released as my senior year in high school began in September 1965. Hearing Paul sing it in May 2016 was nothing short of a spiritual connection across this half-century. The lighting, as I looked at it, started at that small moment in time, the spot on the stage, in 1965 and spread out into today. I know the lights were pointing down, but the meaning of the lights seemed to me a metaphor for the song itself, rising from that spot into its place in popular music history.

Hi, Hi, Hi
Let's Go Crazy (Prince cover)

He followed that short cover with a statement in honor of Prince.

He's your guy.

Birthday
Golden Slumbers
Carry That Weight

The End

And in the end, the love you take

is equal to the love you make.

Okay- I was prepared to be disappointed. The techno-crap before the concert did not do justice to the evening. I tried to keep my expectations as low as possible even though in my mind I kept saying, "I'm going to see one of the Beatles. My God, really! The Beatles!" I never expected to see any of them in live concert. After seeing my personal idol Herb Alpert last fall I knew that the older group of my generation's music can still do their thing. Alpert was 80 at the time. McCartney turns 74 next month. John and George are gone. But a 73-year old McCartney? Does he still have it?

Well, expectations are meant to be lived up to more often than they are broken. The initial reality of seeing Paul there, in person, playing those songs gave way to the joy and celebration of these past 50 years of his music- my music- our music. He looked older and had a sense of maintaining his energy while letting it out as appropriate for what he does today. He sounded like he had a cold and had some difficulty making the full range of the older vocals. But, as the accomplished performer he is, he made that part of the awe of the show.

He can still do it. He can still make these songs real and alive. There were, at times, even signs of the old Beatles' smart-alack attitude as he yelled back and forth with fans in the audience or gave the audience that old, much younger, Paul McCartney grin. I am grateful, by the way, for the large projection screens that allowed everyone to see and react to him, in person, almost one on one. The Beatles started the use of patterns and psychedelic images in some of their videos, so that felt like a good way to add to the overall ambience of the show.

The show itself was about two hours and forty-five minutes- with no breaks! He started and never stopped. He played three dozen songs. Acoustic. Classic Rock. Beatles songs. The audience was with him from the word "Go!" While tending to be a lot of Boomers, the crowd covered at least three generations. Sir Paul himself predates the Boomers who are starting to turn 70 years old this year.

Seventy!

And right there, on the stage was one of our icons. It didn't make me feel younger- or older, actually. It was more of a celebration of our 50+ years together with the music. It reminded us of the innocence of our youth and young adulthood. It reminded us of the ups and downs of life with loss and death always hanging around. Yet in the end the loss and death do not win.

The music does.

And we are better for it.

Thanks, Paul. It was a joy being with you. One on one, with 19,000 of your closest friends.

Click below for complete album of my pictures.

Paul McCartney Pictures Album

May 4, 2016

Target Center

Setlist

Forty-Nine Years Apart

This is the back of the album cover for Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's 1966 recording, SRO. The picture was taken at the Allentown (PA) Fair the summer of 1966.

I am a tiny dot in that picture; an 18-year old, about-to-be-student at a college across the valley from the fair. It was my first real, big-time concert. I ahd been playing in a Tijuana Brass-style group for a couple years and had been a BIG fan of Alpert since he came out with that first hit- The Lonely Bull. It was a great experience.

Alpert's now 78 and I'm 67. Both of us are still playing trumpet. Without the TJB, has been making music for all these intervening 49 years; and I am still a big fan. He won a Grammy two years ago for his album, Steppin' Out. This October he will be in concert here in Rochester, MN, and I got my tickets this past week. He is playing some nice jazz along with his singer-wife Lani Hall.

Here's the official video of his recording, Chattanooga Choo-Choo from his most recent album




I'm psyched and I still have a couple months to go.

A Classic Melody

From the Rochester Community Band's Concert at Charter House
May 28

A fine band arrangement of Copland's Variations on a Shaker Melody

An Evening Spanning 40 (+) Years

Yes, I'm a couple years late for a 40th anniversary tour of Alice's Restaurant, but it's never too late (or early) to go to an Arlo Guthrie concert. It's been quite a few years since I was at one- it was back in Milwaukee a while ago. So when I saw that Arlo was going to be at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul on July 16 I had to go.



My wife doesn't quite get the allure of an Arlo concert.
(We've already seen him twice.
But that was a long time ago. So? And this from the person who watches reruns of her favorite TV shows over and over.
[Silence])

We went.

The Fitz (Garrison Keillor's home theater) is a wonderful place for a concert like this. Anywhere on the main floor is intimate and feels up-close and personal.

I was not disappointed.

The first bit of fun is naturally the crowd. A group that comes to see someone like Arlo has to be a little, well, different. Arlo has been around for over 40 years (which he loves to make fun of.) He goes back to an era that is better in memory than perhaps it was in person. He certainly gets into that in the concert, of course.

I talked a while with the guy in that picture on the right. This was his first time seeing Arlo in person. He made the T-shirt just for the concert. (Yes, like many of us he does listen to Alice's Restaurant every Thanksgiving. It's tradition. But not tonight. Not even a hint.

(By the way, if you don't know the reference on the shirt, it was the Group W Bench at the draft center "where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there.")

There were also those who were obviously hippies and former hippies, gray long-hairs and once gray and once long hair. Some of us even looked respectable. But you knew that under many of us was someone that would be surprised as we are that this is still going on, still attractive, still calling us from some depth of our past. There were probably a hundred different reasons for being there- memories, lost thoughts, or perhaps even fulfilled dreams.

There were younger ones, too. Some looked perplexed at why a parent would want them to be there. Some looked out of place; others could have come from the 60s themselves. There some with canes and walkers and wheelchairs. There was one who looked like an escapee from a Z Z Top concert.

But we were there for this 2 set solo show from someone as close to history as we can get.


Arlo Guthrie.


An almost magical name for many. Mystical. Arlo would probably cringe at that. But he represents something that hasn't died from those days. He represents the voice of hope and peace, the voice of protest and change, the voice of fun and grace. He has never beed the Big Star like Dylan, for example. But he has had something that Dylan never had- and never will. Personality and rapport with the audience. Dylan's a music god; Arlo is the musical everyman, one of us who appears as surprised as we would if we were there on stage after 40 years as he is.

In that may be nostalgia. It may also be way of getting in touch with our own past and aging melding together into who we are today. But it is also a moment that maybe, just maybe, the world is a place where we can still have fun while also doing what needs to be done.

Arlo is probably the consummate storyteller-songwriter. He blends them together so well we sat and waited for the stories with as much anticipation as the songs. If he hadn't stopped in the middle of This Land is Your Land we would have been just as disappointed as if he hadn't sung it. Likewise with the stories of remembering Leadbelly or searching for his grave in Lousiana or reminiscences of Woodstock along with modern stories of meeting Secret Service agents in an airport or his rambling about writing songs with a pen that catches them as they float by. I laughed more and deeper than I often do as his stories touched many funny places.

Then there's his still plaintive voice. When he sings his father's songs you can hear the echoes of that unmatched voice. But it is still Arlo's voice - charming, haunting, carrying over the audience with a sense of simpatico as they say in Spanish.

There's an aging to it, of course. It is edgier now, more down-to-earth than ever before. It has aged well. The late-teen young adult of Alice's Restaurant and others of the first 20-years is still there. That fun naive sound. But the world-smarts come through. He sings Leadbelly and we know he has grown into it.

He is singing for us, in our name and for our sake. He gets the smile, a grin at a personal joke or the pleasure of just being there singing for us. That only makes his voice more graceful.

A friend recently used the word grace to explain Arlo's popularity and presence. It was the word I had searched for over the years. It is the right word. I don't know how much of what Arlo shows is an act and how much is really him, the Arlo I would love to sit down and just spend time visiting with. (Arlo- if you are reading this, please note the request.)

I can go on for a long time about Arlo. He still represents to me what many of us in our generation still hope and pray for. But he does it with the humility of one who knows that it is more important to do the small things that work for peace than for the big things that only a few can do. He reminds us that doing good is not an option and that we can and should have fun while we do it.

And in the end, never take yourself too damn serious.

Arlo- thanks. Don't lose it. We still need you.

Here's a video from several months ago of the close of his concert from You Tube.



-----------------------------------------

Arlo Net.


[By the way- there are many videos on You Tube of Arlo- old and new- posted by Jackie, his wife of 40 years. Here's a LINK to her You Tube Channel.]

Almost Forgot This Movie

U2 3D is the concert movie of what may be the greatest rock and roll band under 60. (The Rolling Stones movie by Martin Scorcese comes out in April.) It is also done in 3-dimensions. My word for the movie et. al....

Remarkable!

My first reaction was to the 3D. It uses the polarized glasses, not the old red/blue style. Same concept, different system. You started with the glasses for a couple of previews, including the Neil Gaiman adaptation- Coraline. That's the first "Awesome, dude." Things flying off the screen at you is amazing.

But then it gets to the concert and the directors have done a truly excellent job of utilizing the 3D putting people in front and back of others, superimposing, cross-fading, close-ups, titles- all in 3-dimensions. It is at first unnerving to see something out of the "corner of your eye" and then realize it is actually "on the screen" even though it appears to be next to you. A hand goes up or someone stands in the on-screen crowd and you want to tell the person in front of you to sit down. Realistic? It was better than being there because you stood next to The Edge or Bono. Or you looked down as the drummer did his thing. The words on the screens behind the band were super-imposed in front of them.

It made me think back to the first time I put a set of headphones on and listened to stereo way back in 1967. The music came alive. Well, this is the next big step- the whole thing came alive.

And what life!

There is no doubt that this is a spiritual movie. A U2 concert is a spiritual experience. The concert is clearly planned, developed, lived with purpose and direction. There is more than the music. There is an atmosphere. Some of it is political; some of it could be labeled religious. The band's spiritual roots help take you to new places. It was a new fangled revival meeting.

After all these years of playing together, the band is a finely tuned instrument! They meld and merge and separate and make music as a whole. Bono may stand out in front but they need each other to do what happens on that stage. Seeing it up-close, personal, and in 3D made it very alive.

If you like rock and roll music (even if you don't like U2) you should see this for the experience of music in 3D.