"The Birth of the Blues"

What a fabulous and fun song. A keeper. And it reminds me of playing the saxophone, bluesey all over, which I haven't done in years. I always wanted the sax solo, but I didn't have enough senority in my saxophone playing to get it. My main instrument was the clarinet, which I stopped in tenth grade when my braces made it too painful to play. I wish I had kept up with both.

Thinking a lot about live music tonight, having just come back from a Dar Williams concert. Girlyman opened for them, and they were great, wonderful harmonies, and some of the best covers that I've heard, though Dar held her own with the Pink Floyd. Dar has a great stage presense, and I was watching that carefully, along with all the real and imagined details of what it might be like to perform like this. But also thinking that when I sing in my living room, alone, I can acheive some not-so-faint whisper of the same high. Maybe heaven is also having all the time I want to play and sing, alone and with others. If it is heaven, I'd like to get some really tight harmonies happening, exactly in tune, the kind that give you chills to hear them.

I know I've said it before, but there's just something magical and totally attractive in a visceral make-me-cry way about live music. This venue wasn't conducive to dancing along, but that's all it would have taken to make it heaven for me. Every great live band that I've heard still lives on in my head, I remember where they played and how it moved me. Ah, did it move me (and if it didn't, I get to not remember it). The hope is always, then, that the CD doesn't suck, since that's all I'll have to go on until the next time I hear them live. Which will probably be years, since I don't get out much. But my plan for my old age, somehow supported by my wages at Starbucks, is to eat out often, and hear lots of live music. Meanwhile, always looking to play more, sing more. Although I'm not able to expand my lost-in-song time very often, it is happening these days, with startling regularity. Amazing.