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The Night After the T.H.N.G.V.B.D....
Dec. 11th, 2024 09:37 pmIf you don't know what that stands for, Go Ask Alexander. Or read my last post.
My hope, when I fired that off at 6:44 last night, was that my first time ever hearing Indigo Girls live in concert would chase those blues away. Little did I know that I also had to chase away a yellow, which wound up being filed away, not under More Terrible Horrible, but under Life's Little Victories:
During all my foibles yesterday, I had Eleanor's car, and she mine. We switched back this morning and I saw that JARVIS's yellow-colored check engine light had come on. I asked her later if she'd seen it already while she was driving it, and she said, "Yeah, but you had enough to hear about for one day yesterday."
And this is among LLV's, why?
Because the week before, I got the car inspected and it passed the emissions test ðŸ˜
Now it's just something a little black tape can fix if it just doesn't go away on its own in the next 12½ months.
----
A few frustrations remained before the 7:30 showtime. Everything in Rochester, like here, almost always takes 20 minutes to get to, but when the 104 expressway turns back into ordinary West Ridge Road at the edge of Kodak Park, on this night traffic was slowed to a crawl, much of it crawling into the parking lots across from the evening's venue.
It's part of the onetime Kodak Park complex, which was once the employment and innovation hub of the entire region. The concert site is now known as "Kodak Center," and is not to be confused with the older and more classic "Kodak Hall" mainstage of the Eastman Theatre or the formerly named "Kodak Theatre" in LA where the Oscars are handed out. Back in my time in the future 585 it was known as the "Theater on the Ridge," and its 2,000-ish seat mainstage was the occasional home of graduations and some touring concert and theatrical productions. Originally, though, it was just Building 29 of the sprawling complex, Kodak Park being almost a city unto itself with its own fire department, railroads and employee-only federally chartered Savings and Loan. The stage and major seating were built in the 1960s, likely for major corporate gatherings and perhaps the tacky trade-show musicals that became comic material for Dave and then a documentary. I'd never been to anything in there in any of its incarnations, and the inside just exuded "1960s junior high school" architecture and signage-
Much of the building now celebrates the company's long history with film creation, development and its role in the motion picture industry- one which must come with a bittersweet taste to its patrons, likely counting among them many who were laid off by Kodak through its downsizing and bankruptcy, or at least their kids or grandkids.
----
Just as I'd never been inside this place before, I'd never seen this performer before. Yet we've known of and loved their music for decades. Emily Saliers and Amy Ray have been performing together as the Indigo Girls duo for almost four decades, and their albums have been staples of our collection for our time together for just short of that duration. Eleanor had seen them in early days with a longago friend, but they somehow had escaped my bucket list. Buffalo shows were typically sellouts before I even heard of them, and a few stops this summer were too close to other punches on my concert ticket (including one at Chautauqua two nights before I would see Maniacs there). I made a last-minute decision to see them finally, for a decent price producing a decent view and decent sound. At the top of the NO MATERIALS lift, I found a small lobby bar with a number of beer cans protruding. Given recent experiences, I said to the bartender, I'll be shocked if you have an NA beer.
Shocked, indeed.
----
Right as I cracked that open, the opener came out. I'd booked so late I didn't know if there'd even be one, but this turned out to be Lucy Wainwright Roche, mutual friend of at least two musician-types I am Facebook friends with myself. She was so engaging and funny in her half hour onstage, I want to give her a post of her own, but she quickly made close to 2,000 new friends on the spot.
I picked up her CD at the merch table, and asked if she might be coming out to sign, as opening acts often do. Probably not, her promo person said, she's going to be up with the band.
Sure enough, Emily and Amy arrived soon after, Lucy to Emily's left along with a remarkable violinist on Amy's right named Lyris Hung who's been touring with the Girls.
She got extended virtuoso solo moments in several of the duo's songs, as well as at least one she did entirely on her own while her bandmates just listened with us in pure rapture.
As for the main attraction, the two featured singers alternated lead vocals almost entirely, mixing hits going back to the 80s with some newer material. One thing became very clear about four bars into Emily's first lead vocal of the night: her voice is not what it used to be. (Amy's, on the other hand, is completely full of every chop she ever had, and she's had plenty.)
You can hear it in their pre-encore finale, the signature (and singalong) staple of their shows for probably more than our daughter Emily's lifetime,* "Closer to Fine."
We didn't care, because the words were still there. Not included in that clip is the verse that probably resonated with every human being who went through the Murkin Higher Edyoocation System:
And I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind
Got my paper and I was free
Among the callouts for song requests and general outpourings of love and affection from the crowd, one yeller nailed the night as well as anyone when she cried, Thank you for all your years of poetry!
The encores were "Share the Moon" from one of their more recent LPs, and the ending was the much expected and needed "Galileo" from their third studio album Rites of Passage. Perhaps the loudest cheer of the night came for Amy's line in the song "Let it Be Me" from that same album-
Well the world seems spent
And the president
Has no good idea
Of who the masses are
She didn't stop there, though, and they encouraged us not to, either:
Well I'm one of them
And I'm among friends
We're trying to see beyond
The fences in our own backyards
I've seen the kingdoms blow
Like ashes in the winds of change
But the power of truth
Is the fuel for the flame
So the darker the ages get
There's a stronger beacon yet
----
* I was thinking about our daughter during the show last night, particularly while listening to Emily Saliers. We did not name Our Em that after any particular relative or other direct inspiration, but we did love her and Amy’s music- Nomads Indians Saints was the first CD we ever bought and we still have it-so I quickly came to the thoroughly scientific conclusion that our daughter is at least 1/8th Indigo Girl;)
My hope, when I fired that off at 6:44 last night, was that my first time ever hearing Indigo Girls live in concert would chase those blues away. Little did I know that I also had to chase away a yellow, which wound up being filed away, not under More Terrible Horrible, but under Life's Little Victories:
During all my foibles yesterday, I had Eleanor's car, and she mine. We switched back this morning and I saw that JARVIS's yellow-colored check engine light had come on. I asked her later if she'd seen it already while she was driving it, and she said, "Yeah, but you had enough to hear about for one day yesterday."
And this is among LLV's, why?
Because the week before, I got the car inspected and it passed the emissions test ðŸ˜
Now it's just something a little black tape can fix if it just doesn't go away on its own in the next 12½ months.
----
A few frustrations remained before the 7:30 showtime. Everything in Rochester, like here, almost always takes 20 minutes to get to, but when the 104 expressway turns back into ordinary West Ridge Road at the edge of Kodak Park, on this night traffic was slowed to a crawl, much of it crawling into the parking lots across from the evening's venue.
It's part of the onetime Kodak Park complex, which was once the employment and innovation hub of the entire region. The concert site is now known as "Kodak Center," and is not to be confused with the older and more classic "Kodak Hall" mainstage of the Eastman Theatre or the formerly named "Kodak Theatre" in LA where the Oscars are handed out. Back in my time in the future 585 it was known as the "Theater on the Ridge," and its 2,000-ish seat mainstage was the occasional home of graduations and some touring concert and theatrical productions. Originally, though, it was just Building 29 of the sprawling complex, Kodak Park being almost a city unto itself with its own fire department, railroads and employee-only federally chartered Savings and Loan. The stage and major seating were built in the 1960s, likely for major corporate gatherings and perhaps the tacky trade-show musicals that became comic material for Dave and then a documentary. I'd never been to anything in there in any of its incarnations, and the inside just exuded "1960s junior high school" architecture and signage-
Much of the building now celebrates the company's long history with film creation, development and its role in the motion picture industry- one which must come with a bittersweet taste to its patrons, likely counting among them many who were laid off by Kodak through its downsizing and bankruptcy, or at least their kids or grandkids.
----
Just as I'd never been inside this place before, I'd never seen this performer before. Yet we've known of and loved their music for decades. Emily Saliers and Amy Ray have been performing together as the Indigo Girls duo for almost four decades, and their albums have been staples of our collection for our time together for just short of that duration. Eleanor had seen them in early days with a longago friend, but they somehow had escaped my bucket list. Buffalo shows were typically sellouts before I even heard of them, and a few stops this summer were too close to other punches on my concert ticket (including one at Chautauqua two nights before I would see Maniacs there). I made a last-minute decision to see them finally, for a decent price producing a decent view and decent sound. At the top of the NO MATERIALS lift, I found a small lobby bar with a number of beer cans protruding. Given recent experiences, I said to the bartender, I'll be shocked if you have an NA beer.
Shocked, indeed.
----
Right as I cracked that open, the opener came out. I'd booked so late I didn't know if there'd even be one, but this turned out to be Lucy Wainwright Roche, mutual friend of at least two musician-types I am Facebook friends with myself. She was so engaging and funny in her half hour onstage, I want to give her a post of her own, but she quickly made close to 2,000 new friends on the spot.
I picked up her CD at the merch table, and asked if she might be coming out to sign, as opening acts often do. Probably not, her promo person said, she's going to be up with the band.
Sure enough, Emily and Amy arrived soon after, Lucy to Emily's left along with a remarkable violinist on Amy's right named Lyris Hung who's been touring with the Girls.
She got extended virtuoso solo moments in several of the duo's songs, as well as at least one she did entirely on her own while her bandmates just listened with us in pure rapture.
As for the main attraction, the two featured singers alternated lead vocals almost entirely, mixing hits going back to the 80s with some newer material. One thing became very clear about four bars into Emily's first lead vocal of the night: her voice is not what it used to be. (Amy's, on the other hand, is completely full of every chop she ever had, and she's had plenty.)
You can hear it in their pre-encore finale, the signature (and singalong) staple of their shows for probably more than our daughter Emily's lifetime,* "Closer to Fine."
We didn't care, because the words were still there. Not included in that clip is the verse that probably resonated with every human being who went through the Murkin Higher Edyoocation System:
And I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind
Got my paper and I was free
Among the callouts for song requests and general outpourings of love and affection from the crowd, one yeller nailed the night as well as anyone when she cried, Thank you for all your years of poetry!
The encores were "Share the Moon" from one of their more recent LPs, and the ending was the much expected and needed "Galileo" from their third studio album Rites of Passage. Perhaps the loudest cheer of the night came for Amy's line in the song "Let it Be Me" from that same album-
Well the world seems spent
And the president
Has no good idea
Of who the masses are
She didn't stop there, though, and they encouraged us not to, either:
Well I'm one of them
And I'm among friends
We're trying to see beyond
The fences in our own backyards
I've seen the kingdoms blow
Like ashes in the winds of change
But the power of truth
Is the fuel for the flame
So the darker the ages get
There's a stronger beacon yet
----
* I was thinking about our daughter during the show last night, particularly while listening to Emily Saliers. We did not name Our Em that after any particular relative or other direct inspiration, but we did love her and Amy’s music- Nomads Indians Saints was the first CD we ever bought and we still have it-so I quickly came to the thoroughly scientific conclusion that our daughter is at least 1/8th Indigo Girl;)