♬ I SAW HER STANDING THERE ♬

“I SAW HER STANDING THERE”♬

There is always a frenzy when you know you have to be somewhere, that internal frenzy no one else sees, but your mind starts racing and your normally solid work like concentrated demeanor is fragmented.

I have a concert at Lunch time, what in the ten types of instant cake mix?? 

There’s no reason I cant do this.... so, after joining the madding throng of tail lights jostling for relief from the freeway, I not exactly swiftly, bobble across the dirt of this fine arable tract of land next to the San Diego Fairgrounds, alight from my mode of transportation, after being meticulously directed by the fine gentleman that’s been hired for the season, he loves his job its clear, maybe insert for yourself here a sarcastic demeanor in your reading mind!! I was an inch over my boundary and I had to get it right for him, good on you Sir, job satisfaction is important.

Now, only 12 minute’s from show time, I negotiate the lines, the strollers, bags, pure excess trying to squeeze through the eye of the needle, I’m not sure these folks have the same intentions I do, with doughnut burgers, fried snickers bars and gargantuan plates of fried mass with,who knows what that cheese stuff is, poured all over the top, all awaiting them in their charge.

My goal is different, where the dickens is the stage.

With, and I kid you not, less that 30 seconds after putting my amazing grace into a seat four rows from the front, the coolest chic saunters onto the stage, over sized 70’s style Elvis sunglasses perched on the nose above that oh so distinctive mouth, whose wry smile we will see more than once over the next hour, a quite formal two piece suit finished off with silver platform shoes which I am pretty certain were legitimately from 1972, and the Aladdin Sane album photo shoot.

It’s so true she could easily be "Cass" from Tom Robbins classic “Even Cowgirls get the Blues”.

I am worried that the atmosphere is too open, there’s no stage lighting, no sound buffer from the masses walking by, oblivious to what is about to happen. I don’t know if she wants to be here, you cant tell, starting us out with “Weasel and White boys Cool” I mean come on the names of the songs folks… there is a dalliance into a couple songs from her new album “ Kicks” ( out now folks on Rickie's own label  OSOD ..Other Side Of Desire)
Her cover renditions of “Houston” and “Bad Company”. are so refreshing, I’m in deep now and I don’t know it, transfixed in the story of her running away from home in “Last Chance Texaco” and Michelle Pfeiffer’s kiss with Al Pacino in "Frankie and Johnny" for “It Must Be Love”.

Then it hits me, I was a pimply faced high school teenager, maybe  
ahead of my musical age, but forty years ago when this song put her in the echelons of the great singer songwriter Genres, where you speak of yourself in the abstract or third party, “Chuck E’s in Love”, she can play it, she can sing it, her smile now  says she’s enjoying it, and she does want to be here, that I can recall anything at all after this, I notice that I’m smiling, a pure simple smile, I haven’t done this in a while, I need to do it more. There are a few more songs and she's told us she doesn't have much time,
I find myself two feet from the stage, I see her standing there, and i'm standing looking into her eyes, I'm hoping she see’s me, I pretend she does, after all, this is a “Girl at Her Volcano”.....

 Rickie Lee Jones at the San Diego Fair June 27^th 2019  Photos and words Benny Santini Productions…

 #bennysantiniproductions #grahamsataconcertagain