We had been enduring the most tedious display of jam band audience
abuse from the Steve Miller band for about an hour and a half. We
heard solos from every member of the band and I still had not heard a
song that I recognized. I was starting to feel like this may have
been a waste of an evening. I was hanging out with my date, the two
sober members of our group, still trying to make sure the physical
contact and distance was more cordial than romantic when the band
left the stage without playing a single song I had ever heard. Boo.
The hillside started drunkenly cheering and chanting the band name
while they were off having a pee and a beverage. I honestly didn't
care if they came back out I was not really digging on the rambling
musical masturbation of the dude on the steel guitar. When they came
back out though the crowd knew that by the process of elimination
they would have to play the four songs everyone came to see. They
tuned up a little and then went into a pretty good version of “The
Joker”. Whaaa-Whuuu. That I could groove on and I started having
some more fun doing what passes for a concert dance at a seventies
band concert. Then they played “Take the Money and Run”, followed
by “Jet Airliner”. Everyone was on their feet jamming out and
loving it. It occurred to me that if this band wanted a captive
audience for their jamming had to hold us hostage with the promise of
their four good songs or people would just leave during the jam part.
The finally was a longish rendition of “Fly Like an Eagle” which
I have mentioned before I mush have absorbed enough second hand drugs
to find really deep an insightful. By the end of the show I was
actually really enjoying it and I was glad I came. I would never go
back but one time is a good amount of times to do something like
that. I never went out with my date again but we did hang out with
mutual friends a couple of times and we ran into each other again as
adults and she is doing really well.
