When it comes to musical taste, I suppose I would have to say mine is about as varied as they come. My playlist — which is a 300 CD carousel, not my phone — has a little bit of everything in it. There’s a ring of country fire section, a blues section, gospel, rock, Elvis has his own grouping of course, Jazz, beach music, zydeco, Frank Sinatra has his own section too, pop music, disco music, creepy lounge music from a bygone era that I really like a lot, and just a big mix of talented artists — and some not so talented “non artist.”
I like to play Jazz on Saturday mornings and a French Bistro mix on Sunday morning and pretend, I suppose, I’m at a French Bistro while I’m sipping my coffee. In the evenings we usually switch over to our “favorites” which is a mix of old and new like Journey, Fleetwood Mac, Nora Jones, John Legend, and, I suppose you could say, the beat goes on and on.
Unfortunately, other than Elvis and Frank, I’m not real good at matching the artist up with his or her work all the time, but if I like the way it sounds, I suppose that doesn’t really matter.
This past weekend started out with Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mack playing on CD, then on cell phone during the drive down, and then live on stage to a sold out crowd at the Smoothie King Arena in New Orleans. It was quite the show for old timers like wife, Danny, and myself. There was, however, a younger crowd, like my 26-year-old daughter, Rachel-Johanna, and one of her friends, Hannah, in the crowd as well.
Good music, you know, knows no age.
That’s a good thing, since all of the members of Fleetwood Mac are now in their 70s but you couldn’t really tell by their looks from where our seats were located anyway, and you sure couldn’t tell from the singing, guitar playing and drumming. It was a real good show and we had a really good time at the first concert we’ve been to in probably 20 years — or more.
Back at home Sunday afternoon, I powered up my playlist again and hit the Elvis mix button and began preparations for the 50th Anniversary Celebration of his ‘68 Comeback Special that night on NBC. If you didn’t see it, the two-hour long special was pretty good, but kind of weird at the same time.
Country crooner Blake Shelton hosted and he’s not one of the artists in my playlist, so I was less than impressed with his version of Elvis music. The same less than impressed feeling goes for several other guest performers who are also not in my playlist like Jennifer Lopez. Lopez sang pretty and did a lot of jiggling in her skin tight, glittery body suit, but some of us Elvis fans just don’t much care for anyone else taking liberty with the King’s work...nor his jiggling!
I would say we enjoyed Sunday night’s show, but will better enjoy popping the old DVD into the tube and taking a gander at the original sometime this week, or this weekend.
As a side note, the aging process and the attempts at altering the aging process have taken a toll on Priscilla Presley who made multiple appearances on the program Sunday night. Unlike Stevie Nicks’ appearance from our standpoint Saturday night, we could see Priscilla quite well in high definition on the wide screen television. Enough on that!
Once again, though, good music knows no age and we got a good dose into us between Saturday and Sunday. In fact, I think we might start taking in a few more concerts in our own old age.
