Summer is right around the corner and that means you might be going to a concert or two. Paul McCartney is playing Dodger Stadium again and, as fun as it was several years ago, I don't need to do it again.
Usually, the summer season is one where acts from the 70s and 80s pop out for one last hurrah before they all head up to platter heaven. Of course, these groups try to emulate the sounds they used to make. But, as I discovered with Hall and Oates at the Hollywood Bowl a few years back...well, "Private Eyes" now have cataracts.
Indeed, I have been lucky enough in the past to have a few brushes with musical greatness. Back in the mullet-cut 80s, I was working at an entertainment company that made an awful lot of coin producing their own concert tours. Of course, at some point, the powers that be decided that the best way to entice top talent to tour with us was by having other talent on staff to do the luring. After all, they all talk to each other, right? I'm sure Boy George, George Michael, and Bono regularly got together to play Strat-O-Matic baseball.
But, I digress...
The talent the company hired to be on staff was Rick Wills, one of the guitarists of the then-white-hot Foreigner. I think he stayed with the band for about ten years. (He's on the far left in the album cover above.) Well, anyway, they parked this guy in our very community office in a cubicle adjacent to mine.
Over the first few days, you could tell that he was completely out of his element in an office setting.
"What's that strange noise?"
"That would be the phone, Rick."
He pretty much kept to himself, spending the day on the phone talking to whoever rock guitarists talk to during any given day.
I decided that ice needed to be broken.
Because the office was essentially one big area like the bullpen on Murphy Brown, one radio could provide the background music for everybody. One morning, it was tuned to the then-rock station icon in New York, WNEW-FM.
Everyone is busy working in their little cubicles. The song comes on.
Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is."
You could hear a pin drop. We all knew that one of the guys performing on that song was sitting amongst us, counting paper clips like the rest of us. The song played on. The office sat in reverent awe.
This was my opening. I was going to roll the dice. Into the steely silence, I asked the following question.
"Hey, can somebody please turn that shit off."
If it was possible, the silence deepened further. For 15 seconds or an eternity, there was an inaudible gasp around the office. Until...
I heard a little British giggle coming from Wills' cubicle.
I had made a friend.
We did lunch.
Wait, there's more.
This is Chaka Khan standing at a microphone. The day I had a run-in with her, she was standing, thanks to a wall that was propping her up in a drunken haze.
Once again, an odd meeting, precipitated by my involvement with that entertainment company which specialized in concert tours. We had engaged Chaka to appear at an industry Christmas luncheon. That would be followed by a reception for clients at a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria. (Rhetorical question: was that hotel once in Queens, hence the name?)
By the time Chaka got upstairs to meet the client base, she was about as coherent as Kirk Douglas with a hairlip. But, the photographer was there. The clients wanted pictures. Who cares if the other person in the photo looked like she was on the express line at Betty Ford?
We all ended up on line getting her picture snapped with Chaka. Everytime the flash went off, she almost slid over and hit the coffee table.
When it was my turn, I ambled alongside her. She muttered "Shmerry Christshmas."
Snap. Flash. Done.
This would probably be the first time I've been in a picture with someone completely drunk out of their gourd. I'm, of course, not counting family portraits at Christmas gatherings.
I do remember getting quickly distracted by one of our sales managers. He implored me to escort one of our sales people out of the party. It seems he, too, had been over-served and was swallowing hors d'ouevres without removing the toothpicks.
I never knew what happened to him either.
You want more brushes with musical greatness? Come back next Sunday.
Dinner last night: Pepperoni pizza with sun dried tomatoes from Maria's.
Once again, an odd meeting, precipitated by my involvement with that entertainment company which specialized in concert tours. We had engaged Chaka to appear at an industry Christmas luncheon. That would be followed by a reception for clients at a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria. (Rhetorical question: was that hotel once in Queens, hence the name?)
By the time Chaka got upstairs to meet the client base, she was about as coherent as Kirk Douglas with a hairlip. But, the photographer was there. The clients wanted pictures. Who cares if the other person in the photo looked like she was on the express line at Betty Ford?
We all ended up on line getting her picture snapped with Chaka. Everytime the flash went off, she almost slid over and hit the coffee table.
When it was my turn, I ambled alongside her. She muttered "Shmerry Christshmas."
Snap. Flash. Done.
This would probably be the first time I've been in a picture with someone completely drunk out of their gourd. I'm, of course, not counting family portraits at Christmas gatherings.
I do remember getting quickly distracted by one of our sales managers. He implored me to escort one of our sales people out of the party. It seems he, too, had been over-served and was swallowing hors d'ouevres without removing the toothpicks.
I never knew what happened to him either.
You want more brushes with musical greatness? Come back next Sunday.
Dinner last night: Pepperoni pizza with sun dried tomatoes from Maria's.
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