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I had a great time recently visiting Chicago. My son and I drove up from southern Illinois to attend two concerts at the Vic Theater. The band is a Genesis cover band called The Musical Box. We saw them at the same venue in December, 2007, as well. At that time, they were performing the “Selling England by the Pound” tour as Peter Gabriel-era Genesis. This time it was the “Trick of the Tail” tour with Phil Collins as front man. We saw them on January 15 and 16, last week, actually. The Thursday evening show was a bit rough, probably due to the band arriving into sub-zero temperatures after a long flight. But, Friday evening's show was brilliant! Dennis Gagne's voice was spot on. Their performance of Supper's Ready was the climax of the show and it was absolutely breathtaking.
For our six hour drive up to Chicago, I put together a great selection of songs for my son and I to listen to. One song in particular that my son liked was Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" featured in the David Lynch film "Blue Velvet". Since "Trick of the Tail" came out in 1976, the bulk of the songs I brought along were from 1976. I was 13 then, and it was a pretty good year for pop music. My son got to hear a lot of tunes he never heard before. Among them were "Tom Traubert's Blues" by Tom Waits, "A Song For You" by Joe Cocker, and "I'm Mandy Fly Me" by 10cc. As we headed into the cityscapes of Chicago, we listened to the entirety of Stevie Wonder's 1976 album "Songs in the Key of Life", just a wonderful album. My older sister owned that one, and I remember the day she bought it and played it at volume 11 on the family stereo. Good times.
Our only day for touring Chicago was on Friday. It was January 16, 2009. A week ago, today. Just an ordinary day…or was it? We made it a rather quick tour of the city due to the very cold temperatures. Around mid-morning, we took the Red Line train down to the belly of downtown Chicago. Since my son is a music major and heavily into classical music at the moment, I took him to the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Ave to visit a rather large sheet music store. We rode an elevator operated by an elevator operator which was a first for my son. We went to Performers Music, a sheet music store on the 9th floor. That was rather uneventful. We then rode the elevator down to the 2nd floor to visit a used bookstore that had the owner's 17 year old pet cat, Dash, running through it. We found a Pink Floyd guitar tablature book that looked interesting and decided to buy it.
It was around noon, so lunch was in order. We ate at a Cajun restaurant called "Heaven on Seven" that was on the 7th floor of some office building. When we were seated, we noticed about 20 bottles of different brands of hot sauce at our table and about 1000 different bottles lining the walls. They had a gumbo that was probably the best I've ever had. Great place. While paying for our meal, we noticed for sale some of the bottles of hot sauce that was at our table. We found our favorite and purchased it. It's called "Ass-in-the-Tub" and features a dude sitting in an old washtub with hot steam shooting out of it. Written on the back is something along the lines of "It burns going in, and burns hotter coming out." Very funny, but very HOT stuff.
We returned to our hotel afterwards and relaxed in our room for the afternoon. The staff assigned us room 420. Can you believe that? My son and I got a chuckle out of that. Anyway, we were a bit bored by around 3:30, so we decided to go visit a local record store down the street from our hotel. To our dismay, the store was closed. So we froze our asses off walking there and back, so as we entered the hotel lobby, we decided to make some hot tea. This is the first time my son and I have ever sat together and had afternoon tea. So, like a couple of old English gents, we took our tea with us and sat down on a couch next to a nice fireplace in the hotel lobby. We were having a peaceful, cozy time sipping our hot tea. All was well with the world.
Seated next to us was a gentleman working a crossword puzzle. We took no notice of what he was doing, only enjoying our hot tea together. Two of his friends came up to him and started up a conversation. We only heard bits and pieces of it, but it seemed like they were discussing musical things together. The tall gentleman mentioned going "across the road" for a bite to eat. Their accents were the first thing that grabbed my attention. Such wonderful lilting English accents they had! Their words just floated off their tongues effortlessly, it was such an aural pleasure eavesdropping into this conversation, like a silk napkin caressing my crude American ear.
After this gentleman's friends departed, he was left alone with us. I thought to myself, "Ah, what the hell, strike up a conversation with this chap." So, I blurted out, "Hey, are you guys musicians or something?" Or, maybe it was "Hey, are you guys from England or something, your accents sound funny." I honestly can't remember. He replied, "Yes, we're musicians. We're from Sheffield, England. We're in town to help record an album for Jarvis Cocker." I honestly had no clue what he said. Was that a person's name? Being the confused American that I am, I had to have him repeat the name a couple of times. When he said, "You know, like Joe Cocker." I said, "Oh, yes, Joe Cocker, I've heard of him."
This kind Englishman continued to explain that Jarvis Cocker was in a band called Pulp, they were a British pop band, and of course I had this confused, blank look on my face. I mentioned that my son and I were attending concerts by a Genesis cover band and we had a nice talk about Genesis, Peter Gabriel, and British music. I told him that I really hated American bands as a general rule, with the possible exception of Jimi Hendrix. My son kindly reminded me later that the Brits were heavily influenced by American bluesmen, Elvis, Bob Dylan, etc. So, I'm sure I came off as a bit of a moron.
I even told him, "Hey, I got to see Pink Floyd once back in 1994!" This is true, but it was only the Dave-Rick-Nick trio, but still good. The one thing I failed to mention, I think, was how I brought my son up to Chicago in '94 to hear Pink Floyd play at Soldiers Field. Without tickets, we could only stand outside, listen to the music creeping over the walls, and watch the lasers shooting into the dark sky from the belly of the stadium. My son was five years old at the time. This is one of the most beautiful memories of my life, and I failed to tell this story to this British musician. I also failed to tell him about the great concert by fellow Sheffield residents, The Thompson Twins, which I attended way back in college in ‘83 or ‘84, and how my friend and I danced our socks off that night.
We talked a bit more and wished each other safe travels back home. My son and I returned our tea mugs and up we rode the elevator back to room 420, completely oblivious to whom we just shared the past five or so minutes.
So, what is the moral of this story? When you are sitting next to Richard Hawley (edit: being impersonated by Simon Stafford) for the first time in your life, completely unawares, and later discover the greatness of this man through his beautiful music less than a week later, be sure to remind yourself, several times over, what a special time it was, and to count this moment in time as a blessing and special moment of history in your life.
Last edited by genesisfan on Fri Jan 23, 2009 6:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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My sister's boyfriend at the time was really into them. I loved 'I know what I like' the first time I heard it on the radio.
