Last Wednesday I went to see Living Colour in Bloomington. It was an okay show. I mean, the band was great, but the Castle Theater removed all the seats and just had a few rows of barstools and tables. I was expecting to plop my butt down and sit for the night. Instead I felt like I was at a bar, which was not any type of experience I wanted.

I also didn’t know that a local band would be playing for over an hour before LC took the stage. So it was already 9:30 when LC started playing. Being a weeknight I really didn’t feel like staying out too late so I left after 4 or 5 songs. I didn’t get to see them play “Type” or “Cult of Personality” but they did play “Leave It Alone”, which was pretty cool. I remember the tabs for that being in an old Guitar for the Practicing Musician magazine about 30 years ago. It was super cool to see Vernon Reid up there playing about 20 feet away from me. The rest of the band sounded great. For a moment I felt like I was 15 again, shooting hoops at my friend’s house, then going inside to listen to Living Colour and watch In Living Color on TV (starring Jim Carrey).

I should have listened to more LC songs on the way up to the show but I was (and still am) enamored with Ween. My god, I listened again to Quebec and La Cucaracha albums again and there are some songs on there that are just genius. They sound just like a older, more mature Ween should sound like. I’m really itching to see them in concert again.

Saturday the wife and I headed out to Kansas City, by ourselves. We stopped at her grandmother’s house along the way, to fix a chair. Then we got on the highway and begin our trek. Once again, I love driving our Tesla. The only downside of long trips was range anxiety, and that is being alleviated more and more with the continued construction of charging stations. Heck even Springfield has two new stations, and I very rarely have to charge there anyway. But just having the car with it’s acceleration, comfort, navigation and space, it’s easy to drive.

We didn’t have to charge until we hit Columbia Missouri, which is the furthest I’d ever went in a Tesla on one charge. The navigation led us to a supercharger on the east side of town but there weren’t any restaurants around so we headed in town to the SC by HyVee. The food at HyVee was ok but I did a double take at all the middle age white guys working there. I remarked to the wife that they must pay pretty well, because a middle age white guy like me, all we need to do is shave, put on a long sleeve shirt, and we can pretty much get a decent job anywhere. Maybe it had something to do with Columbia having the University of Missouri in town. College towns (at least with D1 schools) tend to be more liberal, so maybe the town has a higher minimum wage or something like that. I know that Lawrence Kansas was a pretty cool college town. It was the only thing good in Kansas when I lived there, like some cultural oasis. Not that I’m big on liberal-leaning towns but I do like to have my options wafered. It’s like on a cold night, in the middle of the winter. It’s cold outside, right? But the inside of the house is warm; we have the heat on. But our bedroom is cold; we have the fans on. But then I have blankets on me to keep me warm. It’s like that with political philosophies – I like to live in a country that has a strong national defense and encourages wealth-building and prosperity, but also has neo-liberal markets that mean an individual can choose who/what to invest in, and even which other countries to do business with. We don’t have economic edicts doled out to us by an all-encompassing government. We as individuals are free to make our own choices. So within this country I like (for the time being) living in a liberal state. Then within this liberal state I like living in a conservative part of the state. And then we have some liberal friends and some conservative friends around us. That’s really all there is to my type of libertarianism – Economically conservative, socially liberal. I like to have all this different wafers to exist in because I believe they all keep other in check, more or less. It’s why I like gridlock in our national government; it keeps politicians from really doing anything. If I feel like things start to get out of balance then I’ll vote the other way to right the ship. But that’s also the mindset of where I’m at as a middle age white dude – I don’t want things to change. I feel like I’ve payed my dues, worked my share of crappy jobs, been god-smacked around enough and have learned from my mistakes that, hey, I’m comfortable now. Don’t change anything! This is wrong, of course, as plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same) and also “constant change is here to stay” (and other stuff that Rush said in their songs). I’m hoping that nothing changes and then I can retire, and then….the sweet embrace of the grave lol.

So after eating chicken tenders and pondering the philosophy of our country, we headed back out on the road. We made it to our Holiday Inn Express in Independence MO. I don’t know why I chose to stay in the cheapest name-brand hotel I could find. But that is still my default, to be cheap. We could have afforded to stay in somewhere fancier, but really, how many non-sleeping hours does a person spend in a hotel? As long as the hotel is clean and in a decent neighborhood I’m happy.

I wanted to charge the car some more, just because. The SC next to the hotel was packed and I actually had to wait 15 minutes for a spot to open up. I don’t know if this was due to traffic (there was the concert plus an air show this weekend) or if it’s because there were only six stalls. But I finally got in and started charging then joined the wife in the Bass Pro Shop nearby. Also, by this time is was over 100 degrees out. I was roasting.

Since it was getting close to concert time we had to get something fairly quick to eat, so we put in the mobile order for Chik-Fil-A. I love mobile ordering. Anything to not have to talk to a strange human lol. I’m sure there’s already a good science-fiction story for this, but I imagine that one day a human could live a whole fruitful life on Earth, cradle to grave, and not really be sure if they ever interacted with another living person their whole life. Would it be sad if he didn’t have this interaction but he never knew the difference?

While eating/driving we headed to the clusterf*k that was Arrowhead Stadium parking. We waited in traffic for an hour before we saw the stadium. After we got on the grounds it wasn’t too bad, with people directing us where to go. But there really should have been some police before that to guide people.

The actual layout inside Arrowhead was pretty good. It was easy to get around and to get in line for drinks. Then we made it to our seats which were thankfully in the shade. We had pretty good seats in the lower bowl, not far from the stage. Stevie Nicks came out and sang all her hits. She was awesome. I mean, she has an awesome presence on stage. I think it’s just knowing who she is and what she’s been through, she can still sing and perform. She’s far and away the most successful solo artist out of Fleetwood Mac. I think Lindsey Buckingham is the most underrated guitarist ever. But it all comes down to the songwriting aspect and Stevie has that. I like her synth-heavy songs from the early 80’s; they take me back to a time of childhood innocence. It was also great that she had a full band with her. Two guitarists, two keyboards, etc. So all her songs sounded just like the original recordings. I was afraid that she’d have a pared-down band and that the live songs would sound more like “re-interpretations” than the actual music. But nope, she delivered what the fans wanted. And I think what the fans want, at our age, is to be validated. Like, Stevie is saying “Yes, here are all the songs you remember, just how you remember them, performed by a person you’ve read about your whole life. You didn’t dream all this stuff up.” Whereas when I was young and went to concerts, I didn’t need validation. I just wanted to move around and listen to all this music from relevant artists/bands.

So after Stevie was done they set up for Billy Joel’s band. They played the theme from “The Natural” beforehand, and then he started playing “My Life” with Ode to Joy thrown into the intro.

I’ve seen BJ four times and this was my favorite show, not counting the very first time. I don’t know if it was the setlist or acoustics or what, but I felt like this was a guy at the very very top of his game. It all sounded great.

The first time I saw him I was 11 years old. My uncle (mom’s twin brother) took mom and I to see him in St. Louis. It was the first concert I’d been to. It was my first time to St. Louis. This is the trip that changed my life forever. We went to a ballgame, which changed me from being a passive Cubs fan to an active Cardinals fan and baseball aficionado. It gave me a love of St. Louis and the Arch. It gave me a love of music and Billy Joel in particular. Later that year at Christmas I got a little Yamaha keyboard. The demo song was “Just the Way You Are”, which I took as a sign that I should play piano like Billy Joel. I got a songbook for his songs, thinking that I’d soon be tickling the ivories. But the book was just a simplified sheet showing how to play the vocal melodies, not the underlying piano parts. So I didn’t follow that trail too much farther. But it did lead to my friends and I eventually starting a band around the time I was 13-14 years old. Even after all these years if I have to sit down and write a song it’s going to end up sounding like some 80’s pop hit. As much as I’d love to create irreverent ditties like Ween, or awesome metal like Slayer, that’s just not what is going to come out of me. And that’s kind of the curse of getting older. You get to know yourself better and better, and you feel more at ease and comfortable with yourself. You better know which actions to take. But you also see doors of opportunity shutting themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I love being old. I love being this age, with the life that I have surrounding me. I would not trade it for anything, ever. I love my wife and my children dearly. I love the wisdom and maturity that I’ve gained over the years. I would never want to be again in the mindset I had when I was young. I sure would like to have my young body back though! I am confident that I went through some great doors to get to where I am today.

After the show we headed back to the hotel, slept in, got crappy hotel breakfast, then set out to do some shopping before heading home. We went to the “good” mall, in Overland Park. It seems like every city has two or three “dead” malls and only one “good” mall left. It’s probably natural selection, or survival of the fittest. There can only be one!

The entrance to the mall was a two-level Barnes and Noble. I figured out that B&N aren’t selling books – they’re selling impulse items. It just so happens that these items here are books, kids toys, and Legos. There would be no point from B&N to go back to the old days of quiet, baroque music playing in the background, of big comfy chairs to sit in and read. There’s no point of them going back to being a traditional bookstore because there are plenty of small independent bookstores that have this sort of thing covered. B&N can sell a place to hang out for an hour, and hopefully for them you end up buying something you didn’t think about before.

There was also a Lego Store in this mall. We went in there and I wasn’t surprised by any new items. I think I’ve already fallen down the Lego rabbit hole far enough that I know what they sell and what they’ve retired.

On the way home we skipped the KC and Independence super chargers and headed for Concorida MO, which I don’t think had SC the last time we came through. But we pulled off to the small town and they had six stalls behind a Casey’s. It was perfect because there was a BBQ place next door, and one of our goals for this trip was to eat great BBQ. And great it was. I knew it was going to be great when I saw the stack of wood in the back. And when we walked in it smelled like BBQ smoke, and it covered us, and we were one with the BBQ, and it was a mom-and-pop place, and there was a whole roll of paper towels on the table, and it was great. The food was so good that I could have kept eating and eating, well past the point of being full. Just like some cartoonish man, sitting there for hours eating pulled pork and brisket. The hot sauce was so good that we bought a jar just to bring home. God I’m getting hungry just typing all of this.

I charged the car up to 97%, because that’s when we got done eating. That allowed us to skip Columbia and Hannibal super charging and get home a little sooner. I was glad to be home and see the kids. I didn’t see them at all on Wednesday, and it was a hectic week. The kids are growing up so fast. You try to capture time in a bottle, like lighting, but you can’t. The days are long but the years are short.