Shuffle #81 (February 6, 2016)

Never Been To Spain – Three Dog Night

Natalia – Van Morrison

And When I Die – Blood, Sweat & Tears

If I Ever Lose This Heaven – Average White Band

You And I Both – Jason Mraz

(You’re More Than A Number In My) Little Red Book – The Drifters

Me And Mia – Ted Leo & The Pharmacists

The Little Girl I Once Knew – The Beach Boys

Only A Memory – The Smithereens

Happy Hour – The Housemartins

Richard Thompson – All-Request Show, The Barns at Wolf Trap, 2/4/2016

Row C, Seat 105 – third row back, dead center 

“Awesome” is a greatly-overused adjective, but it certainly describes this show. If Richard Thompson does three consecutive all-request shows at an intimate local venue again, I will be sorely tempted to attend all three.

 

While I’ve seen quite a few of his shows before, both with a band and solo, I’d never had the chance to see one of his all-request performances before, so I was interested to see how the whole thing worked. As we came in and had our tickets scanned, a Wolf Trap volunteer handed out slips of paper (one per customer), on which we could write a request. There were several locations (merch table, bar, stage) where we could put our slips, which eventually all wound up in a big metal bucket on the stage. He’d pull out three at a time – his reactions were among the highlights of the show – and on occasion would hand one or two of them to a young woman so she could look them up on the Internet. The occasional missteps (“Space Oddity” wasn’t exactly note-perfect) only added to the charm. At the beginning, he joked that Tuesday night’s requests had been heavy on Doris Day stuff.

 

He asked for some help on “Yellow Submarine”, so it turned into an enthusiastic audience singalong, complete with the appropriate sound effects on the bridge. When his own “Tear-Stained Letter” was requested, he mentioned that he normally performs that with a band, and divided the audience into sections for saxophone (my side), harmony vocals (“And by ‘harmony’, I mean pleasing to the ear”), and percussion (the balcony).

 

Performance-wise, “Valerie” and “Beeswing” (the final song of the main set) were probably the highlights, but he also nailed the slower numbers, especially “Waltzing’s For Dreamers” and a heartfelt version of Sandy Denny’s “Who Knows Where The Time Goes”. He did a very nice version of “Imagine”, a song that to be honest I’m normally not all that fond of. Other covers included “Goin’ Back” (Goffin-King song done by the Byrds among others) and “Old Time Rock & Roll”.

 

He got two requests from his 1000 Years of Popular Music album. The first was the 16^th-century Italian number “So Ben Mi Ch'a Bon Tempo”, which came up early in the show. Quite a contrast from the final song of the night: Britney’s “Oops!...I Did It Again”.

 

He did pass up one request in the middle of the set, saying he didn’t know it. I will not name it here in order not to offend or upset any of my friends, but it’s the opening track from the breakout album by a certain legendary rocker from New Jersey.

 

And in the interest of full disclosure, I requested “Season Of The Witch”, which was suggested by an RT fanatic I know (who was off cavorting in Argentina with his girlfriend this week). He didn’t get to it.

 

Setlist

Maurice White

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/maurice-white-earth-wind-fire-singer-and-co-founder-dead-at-74-20160204

 

Hope it’s not a bad sign that two of the seven Lifetime Achievement Award winners to be recognized at the Grammies later this month are Jefferson Airplane and Earth, Wind and Fire. (Also a little eerie – EW&F is right next to The Eagles on my CD shelf.)

 

I hadn’t realized that the band was formed in Chicago, a city which is woefully underrated for its contributions to soul music.

 

Favorite songs:

September

Let’s Groove

That’s The Way Of The World

Shining Star

Boogie Wonderland

Arlo Guthrie – Alice’s Restaurant 50th Anniversary Tour, Strathmore, 2/3/2016

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because this is the second show we caught on the Guthrie “50^th Anniversary” tour. (The first was almost exactly one year ago.) The tour is still going strong – nice crowd at Strathmore, two-sold out shows at the Birchmere coming up this weekend, plus one in Annapolis in May.

 

We had much closer seats this time (Row J, 116-117 – center section on the left aisle). The band continued to rock, especially on the classic “Coming Into Los Angeles”. Arlo’s daughter Sarah Lee Guthrie has recently been opening his shows; she did a 35-minute set leading off with “Catch The Wind” and including two originals plus songs by Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs. She performed with the band, which was a bit of a mixed blessing, as a few of the more gentle tunes (“Catch The Wind” most notably) really aren’t meant for drums.

 

Consequently, Arlo’s section of the show was somewhat shorter than in Frederick. Both times he did two sets (coming on right after his daughter this time), but he dropped four songs from the show (including, unfortunately, “Darkest Hour”), while adding “St. James Infirmary”.

Setlist