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David Lindley and Hot Tuna at the Crest Theatre Sacramento
All the old hippies were out in throngs last night in Sacramento and heading over to the Crest Theatre to see David Lindley perform, followed by Hot Tuna. Always good for a few great Warren Zevon songs, Lindley also kissed and stroked his ostrich shoes on stage, which is what I guess one would expect. We had great seats, too, front and center. Jack Casady, one of the greatest bass players in the world, strolled on stage wearing a long scarf, which he dramatically flung off his shoulders and then paused for recognition, looking very San Franciscan and cool.
He wore a watch, though. Jorma had a watch on his wrist, too. Who do you know today who wears a watch?
The only problem with Hot Tuna at the Crest was it was past my bedtime by the time they got to any songs I remembered from my Jefferson Airplane days, and I was actually thinking about resting my head against my husband’s shoulder, but I knew what would happen. What would happen is I would fall sound asleep. You think a person can’t sleep through a concert? Ha. The last one I slept through was a few years ago at the The Fillmore when we went to see Richard Thompson, and I love Richard Thompson. This is the problem with getting older.
The only thing worse would be to fall asleep and drool or snore. Which I just did not feel was appropriate when a person is sitting in the front row of a show. Fortunately, during the Richard Thompson performance, I was in the balcony and even though I was probably snoring and drooling, nobody could notice because it was too dark and the music too loud. This is what happens when there is a table in front of me, it’s past my bedtime and I’m tired. Even though Hot Tuna at the Crest was entertaining, I started to slip down in my chair . . .
Which brings me to groan about what else I’m tired about. I’m tired of real estate agents who fall off the face of the earth. A seller called me a few days ago about listing his home. I looked it up in MLS and it was listed at “expired, pending.” He was not in contract. He had no offer. On top of this, the listing had expired in December. Our MLS can fine a Sacramento real estate agent for an expired pending listing. Until a listing is removed from MLS, a new listing cannot be entered.
I cannot understand how an agent would NOT notice a listing like this in MLS. I mother my listings daily and hover over them, checking status, showings, tweaking verbiage, switching out photographs, updating days on market with new MLS numbers. But then somebody else probably can’t figure out how I could fall asleep in the middle of a rock and roll show, especially Hot Tuna at the Crest. We all be different.
Van Morrison Belts it Out at Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium
Even though I had never met the musician, when I was a 15-year-old girl who felt she lived at the center of the universe, I was pretty much certain that Van Morrison was singing Brown-Eyed Girl for me. I used to hear it on the jukebox at a hippie hangout in Denver, back when I crashed wherever I could find a spot on the floor indoors somewhere. Of course, that all changed when Bob Dylan teamed up with Johnny Cash to perform Girl From the North Country — after I had been busted and forced to move back to Minneapolis, which then made Van Morrison a thing of the past.
Kids. So young, so innocent, believing we knew it all, and there was little left to learn. It’s not until we get older do we realize how little we do know. Mark Twain made an observation about that when he discovered how much his dad learned between his ages of 14 and 21.
There is a big market in marketing to baby boomers these days, especially music. Because we baby boomers have the bucks to blow $500 on a concert, and we’ll do it if we don’t have to stand. During a concert in Minneapolis some four decades past I rushed the front row seats, just like every other kid who came to see Jefferson Airplane. Didn’t matter which seat you were originally assigned to, when you’re a female with feminine ways, you could pretty much go wherever you wanted.
And I wanted to stand on the front row seats. It wasn’t enough to stand on the floor. My entire group was yelling, hooting, hollering, carrying on, jumping up and down like a bunch of kids, which we were. Grace Slick appeared, grabbed the mike, looked down at the row of squealing rockers before her and asked us how much we paid to get into the concert. How much, she yelled? I squeaked out the words: eight dollars. “Well, they ripped you off,” she shrieked.
But today, if you want seats near the front at any major concert, it’s highway robbery, and we’ll pay it. Some people want to return to their youth, if just for a few hours. A Van Morrison concert is not a return to anybody’s youth, although, there are boomers who will go to see him just because he was from back in the day.
He didn’t play Brown-Eyed Girl last night at the San Francisco Masonic Auditorium, but he did perform Into the Mystic. Although nothing from Astral Weeks. That album, an all-time favorite, was produced in 1968 and recorded over 2 days in New York. Another little known fact you might not know, Van Morrison wrote the song Gloria, G-L-O-R-I-A, THAT Gloria.
He mixes rock music with jazz, a lot of saxophone, and he’s become more progressive over the years, like any artist would do being dedicated to the craft. He’s performing again tonight in Nob Hill, so if you’re really dying to go and you haven’t thought about scoring tickets, you could probably pick up tickets from the scalpers hanging out on California Street.
