Concert High Harmony...

 

All my adult life, I’ve avoided crowds. It’s as if Covid 19 has always a thing. Large groups freaked me out. Huge gingivitis and methane scented gatherings of bodies packed way too tightly.

I don’t like to be touched by strangers or savor the air that was in their colon only moments before. If jostled too aggressively, I react in kind.

Don’t push.

Three artists drew me out though, three concerts in 50 years, Gordon Lightfoot, Eric Clapton, and Jackson Browne. They were almost three too many, but all were memorable.

The Gordon Lightfoot concert almost doesn’t count though. I needed a place to take Carla on our first date. That was at Wolf Trap Farm Park in Northern Virginia, lying on a grassy hill that sloped down to the stage. Lightfoot was drunk, his performance something of a shit show. I didn’t care. Carla and I were on a blanket. She wore white cotton slacks with an elastic waistband. Oblivious to Lightfoot’s sputtering, my greatest memory after four decades, is the smell of her long auburn hair.

I saw Clapton at the Capital Center arena in Landover, Md. He was deep in his “I Shot the Sheriff” cocaine/reggae days. Yvonne Elliman sang her balls off. Paranoia and claustrophobia had me ready to go postal in that packed crowd. The music so loud it physically hurt my ears. Fools in the balcony seats lobbing cherry bombs out over the packed bodies making lazy arcs like flying sparklers, exploding overhead like incoming mortar rounds. That shit infuriated me. Claustrophobia was replaced with rage. I wanted to hunt the perps down and kill them. A tactical knife always a close companion, I fantasized that in the din of the chaos it could be a perfect murder. Several well-placed kidney and neck thrusts and no more cherry bombs. People were focused on the stage. No problem.

Of course, that never happened, but a small level of regret for a missed opportunity, still lingers.

I love Clapton and his music but that shit was way over the top for me.

Never again.

Not, at least, until Jackson Browne came to Meriweather Post Pavilion in 1977 on his “Running on Empty” tour. That one was epic for all the right reasons. Many of the usual suspects: Craig Doerge, Danny Kortchmar, Russ Kunkel, Leland Sklar, and the amazing David Lindley.

Great music that I already knew by heart, a mellow crowd. It’s where Jackson recorded his version of the great Maurice Williams tune, “Stay”.

The funny thing about that one was the high chorus:

“Oh, won't you stay

Just a little bit longer

Please let me hear

You say that you will”

When that lone voice soared out over the crowd, cutting through the din like a laser, we all assumed it to be Jackson’s blond powerhouse singer, Rosemary Butler. But it dawned on everyone at the same time when the amazing David Lindley stepped out front and center, that he was doing the honors. This little gnome of a man with a brown river of hair as long as he was short.

Killing it.

Recognition caused me to point and yell out: “It’s David Lindley! Hooray for David!”

It reminded me of a “Little Rascals” scene where Darla got sick while playing Juliet to Alfalfa’s Romeo. Backstage, Spanky told Buckwheat that he would have to stand in for her on the balcony scene. When Alfalfa implored: “Juliet, my Juliet… wherefore art thou?”, there was a short pause of expectation, waiting for Darla to appear. When Buckwheat popped up on the balcony, grinning with a loud “Here I is!”, the silence of another pause of recognition was broken by the crowd of kids going nuts: “Look! It’s Buckwheat! Hooray for Buckwheat!”

That concert was memorable, with David Lindley’s vocal being the high point.

Literally.

I wrote a note to David a few years later, comparing his entrance and the crowd reaction to that of Buckwheat’s, many years before. E-mailed it to him and forgot about it. Days later I got a note from David’s wife. She told me that most of the band had been gathered around her big wooden kitchen table when she read my story to them. Most of the crew being my age, they too loved the Little Rascals, and Buckwheat, everyone loves Buckwheat.

And my story, they loved my story, “a lot” she said. I wish I had been there to read it to them myself. I'm always up for coffee and scrambled eggs.

Ms Lindley admitted that everyone loves the Amazing David too, a real-life version of the Adams Family “Cousin it” singing and playing incredibly beautiful high harmony to Jackson’s musical comfort food.

That concert and the entire body of work from Jackson Browne and the Amazing David lindley, always a very filling and satisfying meal.