Marianne, I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was probably a little long, and a little rambling, but that's the danger of writing from a hotel room, while out of town on business. Not much else to do, so why not dust off the old keyboard, and bore the hell out of my fellow JMDL'ers with my reminesing.
Speaking of which, last night, I decided to re-enact that evening by playing those three albums in their entirety. It seemed only appropiate that I actually listen to the original albums (not the cd's), so it required a little set up. I have a really nice turntable on my upstairs stereo, but I've recently set up a killer system in the basement, so I decided to finally make the effort and move the turntable downstairs. I then opened a bottle a wine, little a few candles, turned on the lava lamp (yes - I still have a lava lamp!), and began listening to Madman Across the Water. Very nice indeed. I've always loved Madman, though it's not an Elton John I typically grab when I'm in the mood to listen to him, so this was great to hear. Earlier in the evening, I saw Sir Elton on the Carson Daly show, and he talked briefly about how special the Tiny Dancer scene in Almost Famous was to him. That was my favorite scene in the movie, so to be listening to Tiny Dancer later that night was great. Indian Sunset was another highlight. ....And peace to this young warrior, comes with a bullet hole! Great, powerful stuff. The Yes Album was particularly nice to hear. I probably hadn't heard that album in ten years or more. I don't have it on cd, and just sort of forgotten about it. It was a real treat to listen to. I particularly like A Venture. Thanks to the list for all of this talk about Yes. It got me motivated to listen to this group again - tonight I'm planning on listening to Fragile. Before playing Blue, I decided to check out tv for a second - I wanted to get the basketball scores. In turning it on, the set was turned to HBO, and guess what had just started - the Back to the Garden episode of Six Feet Under. I missed maybe 10 or fifteen minutes, but I decided I had to watch this because of all the favorable comments the list has made about this show. I am so happy I did. What an enjoyable hour of television this was. And the final scene where the mother was singing along to Woodstock, and then the plaintive cries of Joni at the end of Woodstock playing over the credits was just incredible. Another big thank you. This show should not be missed if you can help it. Finally it was time for Blue. By now the bottle of wine was empty, it was after 1 in the morning, and my eyes were getting heavy, but I was determined to complete my little salute to 1971. The first little treat was pulling the album out of it's jacket, to discover the blue paper dust cover. I'm not sure why this pleased me, but it did. Cd's are nice and convenient, but there is something magicallabout vinyl, and the packing this format could support. Anyway, listening to Blue was great (isn't it always?). Little Green and River stood out in particular. I tried to recall what was going through my mind 30 some years ago, and while I recall the event very clearly, the emotions are kind of a blur. Seventeen wasn't exactly the happiest of times in my life, but somehow through music I was able to find solace when I couldn't find it anywhere else. And nobody's music does that better than Joni's. Jack
