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Marvin Gaye tribute at the Colony
Friday, August 9 2019
For weeks already I'd been slicing fresh (and super hot) carrot peppers into the sauerkraut I've been putting on the frozen pupusas that make up the bulk of my workplace lunches. Today I added a fresh tomato to the mix, but in so doing I quickly ran up against the limits of my available tools. I have a trapezoidal razor blade on my desk that I fidget with, occasionally sharpening with a promotional nail file (it's in the shape of a gavel and promotes the candidacy of a judge), and that's what I use to cut up these garden vegetables. But it's hard to hold and (despite all the sharpening) not particularly sharp. So today on the drive home from work, I bought a largish kitchen knife (as well as a small food processor) at the Tibetan Center thrift store. Thrift stores are great places to get cheap knives, since many people are helpless when it comes to the simple task of sharpening knives and routinely buy new ones, dumping their old ones off at places like the Tibetan Center. After she rang up my purchase, the cashier (the same woman who had wanted to charge me $4 for a 9v power brick earlier in the week) went to find a paper bag to wrap my knife in. "That's okay, I'll just carry it like a psycho killer through the parking lot," I said.
Gretchen and I don't always agree on what we want to do on a particular evening, though it's not uncommon for her to sign me up to participate in something she knows damn well I'd rather not go to. Such was the case tonight when we set off for the Colony Café in Woodstock to attend the Rock Academy's performance of the works of Marvin Gaye. Part of the reason we were going was that a couple of the kids performing tonight were the children of people Gretchen knows, particularly her boss Jackie (one of whose sons would be performing) and her college friend Lisa (whose daughter, though currently grounded, would also be performing). It was also Lisa's 51st birthday, so Gretchen had made a bunch of cupcakes.
As the number of students who had worked on the Marvin Gaye material was fairly small (twenty five), the same kids kept taking the stage in different permutations, often switching instruments from one song to the next. Given the wide age range of the participants, some of the students looked like fully-grown adults towering over classmates that were still little kids. There were a number of great performances, including vocal work done by Lisa's daughter in "You’re All I Need to Get By" and an amazing guitar solo by someone else's teenage daughter in some other song. For understandable reasons, "Sexual Healing" was not performed.
Interestingly the outfits worn by the performers would've all been appropriate in the 1970s; I have to imagine that was deliberate. One of the students even had a ruffled white shirt. He'd also died his hair purple, though I kept thinking it was catching that color from the stage lighting.
Seeing the show tonight, it was hard not to wonder how my life might've been different had I been raised in a place like Woodstock and done extracurricular activities like this as a teenager. I probably wouldn't have developed as many marketable technical skills, but it might've provided some much-needed social development. I was also very musical as a child, something my parents pretty much ignored.
Then again, I also wondered how healthy it is for society (the parents and the Rock Academy itself) impose a musical paradigm on children that is from the parents' generation instead of the generation of the children. The kids seemed to be enjoying themselves, but what if they want to learn how to do music in the style of Katie Perry? I know, it's a rock academy, so on some level has to be musically nostalgic. It's something I would ask one of the kids if I ever found myself in a conversation with one.
My two beverages tonight were Interboro Judgement Night IPA (very nice) followed by Jack Daniels on the rocks (good pour on that one!) while Gretchen had a 10 ounce KCBC Bride of Beach Zombie Sour Berlinner Weisse beer. I tried Gretchen's beer and it tasted exactly like vinegar, and not in a good way, though Gretchen apparently thought it was great).
Gretchen with her sour beer.
Most of the teenage performers. Note their 70s outfits; the young man on the right has a ruffled shirt and purple hair. He's 16 years old and just got accepted into the Berklee School of Music.
The audience at halftime. Somewhere back there, just right of the center of the photo, is Donald Fagen (of Steely Dan), who was in the house tonight.
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