Break Out the Floor Speakers: Changing perspectives
Sometimes seeing a musician live can open your ears
“Don’t you EVER make fun of Ray Coniff! Not everything in life has to be high art. Sometimes it’s enough to make something beautiful to help people relax at the end of a hard day, and that man makes beautiful music.”
— Jeannie Cheatham
Sometimes just hearing a band or artist on record isn’t enough to do them justice as entertainers. Not every aspect of a live performance translates to vinyl (or digital).
And so it was with Kenny G and Steve & Eydie.
When my first wife and I first started dating, I was stringing for the old San Diego Evening Tribune. When the Humphrey’s by the Bay annual concert series schedule was released, all the good dates got snapped up by writers on staff: B.B. King, Judy Collins, Waylon Jennings.
But I saw nobody had offered to review the Kenny G show yet, and I knew that my new sweetheart liked Kenny G. So I put in for it — and while my editor looked at me kinda funny, he was glad to have someone to write up a sold-out show.
A few days before the show, my fiancé called to tell me she had a last-minute family engagement she just couldn’t get out of.
The prospect of going to see Kenny G just to see Kenny G was not a positive one.
But it was a job and there was a paycheck involved, and so I showed up at Humphrey’s gorgeous waterfront outdoor venue with as much of an open mind as a jazz purist could muster for a smooth-jazz star.
By about four songs into his set, I started to warm up to Kenny G.
I recognized that my initial reaction to his music was correct: This was not jazz in any way, shape or form. But it was pleasant, mellow instrumental R&B, and his fans — all of whom, unlike me, had shelled out some serious coin to be there — clearly adored him and were having a great time.
It wasn’t hard to see why.
Kenny G worked his butt off that night. It was a long set, to begin with. But he had either a very long pickup cable, or a wireless setup, because on at least a couple songs he left the stage and worked his way through the crowd, playing his soprano sax from the seats. He would pick a female fan and serenade her for a few bars, then move on to another.
They ate it up!
He gave them the encore they demanded, too.
A few years later, we were expecting our first child — but it was a challenging pregnancy that led to mandatory bed rest. I’d already bought a pair of tickets to see Sinatra as I’d never had the chance to see him live.
But when it was obvious my wife couldn’t join me, she suggested I invite my dad — who hates (or at least hated) Sinatra, but is nuts over his opening act, the husband-and-wife singing duo of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé.
Me, I didn’t really care for them. They’d always struck me as schmaltzy, Vegas crooners.
Like Kenny G, though, Steve & Eydie weren’t going to let you go home disappointed. They put on a high-energy, wholly engaged stage show. They each did some of their better known solo tunes, and then knocked out their famous duets as well.
Theirs had to be a tough act to follow (which speaks to Sinatra’s own sense of confidence, even late in life). But Sinatra was in good voice that night (it was hit or miss by that point of his career), the band was solid, and I was glad I got to see him in concert.
When the show was over, my Dad and I stayed in our seats waiting for the crowd to thin — why rush to go sit in the parking lot, after all?
From our seats, we could see a ways up the tunnel at the Sports Arena that the performers took to get to their dressing room. As Sinatra was making his way from the stage, a group of older women was waiting along the barricade, and we could hear them shouting, “We love you Frank — we were original bobby soxers!” Sinatra apparently heard them too, and stopped to chat with these longtime fans — women his own age. He smiled, chatted, signed programs, and posed for photos on their instamatics. After a few minutes, he thanked them, and headed back toward his dressing room.
My Dad took this in, then said, quietly, “He didn’t have to do that.”
On the drive home, Dad even allowed that maybe Sinatra wasn’t as bad as he’d thought.
Steve & Eydie were certainly better than I’d anticipated.
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You never know!