I've lost count of the days. It's Friday. I guess the vacation started on Monday, so this is day 5.
I saw the "Peatbog Faeries" (http://www.peatbogfaeries.com/) last night (Thursday). When I heard them I thought "can only be called "Celtic fusion", and that's what they describe themselves as. They have a tenor sax, a trombone, a big fancy drum set, an electric bass, an electric lead guitar, a person alternating between playing the bagpipes and some flute instrument), an electric fiddle, and a keyboard.
There was a bit of space between the audience and stage, and the audience members wasted no time filling that space and dancing. There were two memorable dancers. The first was youngish (mid-20s, maybe) who lept up and started to dance as soon as the music started. She started with very Celtic style (back ramrod straight, arms alternating between being clasped behind her and held elbows out in front of her, and feet going a mile-a-minute). Then started to relax and go all over the place (as appropriate for the music, which also started celtic and went all over the place). As soon as the band stopped to speak after the first song, she interrupted the speaker to tell everyone that that "that guy" (pointing to the trombonist) "is really great". I didn't hear exactly what else she said. The band's spokesman (flutist/bagpipes guy) agreed that he was quite a musician. After listening for a bit, I agreed. He was smooth as butter on velvet. To stretch the metaphor, he's like the butter in the pound cake, where the fiddler and flutist are the icing. Yes, the icing is good and gets lots of attention, but you can have a great cake without icing. Try making a poundcake without butter, and you just get a lump of sugar and flour. At least, that's what I assume happens. I've never tried it. Anyway, he added a really solid and slippery smooth backing sound to the band, and I'm glad that the cute dancer-girl singled him out for special attention, because he deserved it. Much as I enjoyed the fiddler's theatrics, I was also anticipating that extra buttery goodness when I saw him pick up his trombone each time in the songs. Also, I was a bit hungry, which may explain why I was obsessed with butter.
Why is is that bands always try to get the audience to clap out the beat? Can't they find their own beat? If not, can they just hire a better drummer? Why do we have to do all the work?
There was also an older woman dancing. She had what appears to be prematurely grey hair, in that her hair appeared completely grey, but she looked under 70 (for a woman, that's premature). She danced like she was 20, however. Actually, she put the 20 year olds to shame. She unabashed, and danced with her legs, hips, back, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers. All joints of her body were moving in different directions, in perfect sync. She was also completely uninhibited in her (quite unique) dance style. She was so much in her own world with the music I thought maybe LSD or some other reality-enhancing substance was in use, but she was also moving quickly and well coordinated, which (I think) many drugs interfere with. I really don't know. This is BC, so it's quite possible.
Today I drove into town to get a haircut, get the mail, pick up some fancy pilot clothes for Robyn, and get my new iPad. OK, I drove into town to get my new iPad, and while I was there I also did a few other things. The iPad is OK, but I'm not an apple fan yet (I'm blogging this from my linux netbook, for example).
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