No, not literally. Although she did talk about jogging/riding on the Cedar Valley Trail, so she is probably in better shape then me too. We went to see her in a makeup concert Saturday night in Cedar Rapids.
Whether you like her music or not, I really don't care. I have liked it from her first CD, and I do now also. I had been a bit down at first on her latest album, but I realized more recently that like many others out there now, you have to just ignore the over-played radio junk, and find the gems on the rest of the CD.
After the concert, I find that even more true. All of the songs she did from "Wildflowers" were awesome, as were all the rest that she did. Her first set before the encore was very long, which was refreshing. She ended up doing over 2 hours, and multiple songs from all of her albums except "Cmon Cmon" before the encore. This also included her new song featured in the opening for the movie Cars (which I mentioned that I saw today in my last post). Excellent song, and it fits the movie perfectly, although I really thought for sure that "Steve McQueen" would have been used -- I guess it was too obvious.
Having seen her 2 other times, this time was hands down my favorite. It helped that we had fantastic seats. It also helped that this was a very rocking, up-tempo show, which I prefer, and the song balance was nearly perfect. She ended the show with a rendition of "Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin that was freaking amazing. Between her and the guitar player, you would have thought that Page and Plant were onstage themselves, it was very cool.
The thing that impressed me the most this time though was her wide range of musical skills. She has pipes to go up against any other singer out there, I already knew that. I also knew that she played bass herself on her entire 3rd album, and she did often during the show. That alone just blows me away. However, she also played harmonica on several tracks, piano, lead guitar, and acoustic. Almost all while also singing like mad.
All of this just made me feel pathetic for not even being able to play the bass by itself well. I can write networking drivers, create protocols, and design whole computer platforms in my sleep (sometimes literally). Does anybody get excited by this when I tell them? Not really. When they find out that I play the bass (badly) though, they are always very interested. Sad. I know that this guy is interested in coding and playing bass though, so I'm not the only one with that mix at least. Need to find more time to practice...
Last note. If you play a synthesizer, you are not cool. Your instrument sucked in the 80s, and it still sucks today. Go home.
6 years ago
