I can tell by all the feedback that I’ve gotten that everyone has been waiting with bated breath for Part 4, so here it is, with all the attention and time taken that I feel it’s worth based on the hit count and feedback the previous three reports have generated.
We got up on Sunday, went to my parent’s, as had become our routine, to empty out the previous day’s refuse and clean up.
We got back to our campsite, packed a few things up, then hiked over to The Other Tent to see Canadian Ragweed. They were pretty good.
Then we went to see John Fogerty. The crowd started rather small, I thought, for a living legend of his status. I mean, he’s on the same level as Dylan or McCartney (and in my mind FAR FAR above Stevie Wonder) and here he was on a Sunday afternoon (not even headlining the day) playing to a ¼ full field. Bleh. It was nice to see the group of 5 or 6 guys, who wandered up about 15 minutes prior to Fogerty’s start time, get excited by, as one of them put it to all the others, “I can’t believe we found a spot this close for John FUCKING Fogerty!!!! WOOOOOOOO!!!!”
How old is he now? 70? Thereabouts? Couldn’t tell by watching him. He put on a more energetic show than most of the new, young bands we’d seen over the weekend. I do bet, however, that about 30 minutes into his set he started wishing his trademark was something other than a long-sleeved flannel shirt. Heh.
It was also fun watching the kids who wandered over without knowing who John Fogerty was. You could see the recognition dawning as Fogerty pulled out classic after classic, from CCR, his eighties comeback, and his nineties renaissance. Three decades, three separate and distinct series of hits. All amazingly wonderfully Fogerty. I am glad I finally got to see him live. I feel an important milestone has been passed in the phases of my life. Fogerty is one of the gods in my rock pantheon, and for that hour and a half, I was worshipping at his feet. And loving every minute of it.
But, if I ever see the guy with the stinking blow-up parrot that he kept waving around in front of me, happening to get it in the way of pretty much EVERY picture I took of Fogerty, I’ll kill him. Slowly. Painfully. Painful for him, not me.
I must have about 50 pictures ruined by that stupid inflatable parrot.
Then we went and packed up all our stuff. Unfortunately, between 2 hours of sitting in the over 100 degree Tennessee sun, and the adrenal rush of seeing (and dancing to) Fogerty, and the exertion of packing everything up, left us exhausted so we decided to skip the rest and just leave. Who wants to see Dave Matthews, anyway? We certainly cared not the least. Just about the only performer more dull and lifeless than Dave Matthews is James Taylor. Hell, I think I’d rather see even Barry Manilow than Dave Matthews. Okay, maybe not…
So, anyway, we left, went to my parent’s, got another shower, then went out to eat some real food instead of the concession stand crap we’d been having all weekend.
That’s it. If I decide to go through with it and write part 5, that will be the epilogue and fallout of the trip. And, trust me, all that is FAR more entertaining and funnier than anything that happened on the trip. Whether I feel up to it, though, is up to how much traffic, comments, etc, that my blog generates in the coming days/weeks. It’s tough to get motivated to write this stuff when no matter how much time and effort I pour into it, the most I’ve ever gotten is 20 hits in a week (and that was from reposting a Beatles bootleg story from Rolling Stone Magazine’s website.) Mainly, these days, I just write when I have something I want to talk to somebody about, but have nobody that wants to talk to me about it.
I must have about 50 pictures ruined by that stupid inflatable parrot.
