THE GRAND ILLUSION

THE GRAND ILLUSION.

Welcome to The Grand Illusion
Come on in and see whats happening
Pay the price, get your tickets for the show
The stage is set, the band starts playing
Suddenly your heart is pounding
Wishing secretly you were a star....




As I write a few notes down on paper, and try to start the next missive, I really don't know what the next inspiring spark will be, its elusive, unpredictable, fickle even.
The journey of memories reside nonchalantly waiting to be unpacked.

America was always the ideal, the New World, a place that seamed so far off, a place only found in the movies......I knew a kid once who went to Disneyland, I mean that was it, I could maybe talk to someone who had been there once.
Joan Armatrading sang about "Calling all the way from America" Neil Diamond sang about "Coming to America", Bruce was "Born in the USA"....

It was a place of dreams and well places that only resided in song, I wondered if I really would ever "Stand on the Corner in Winslow Arizona"( see me to the left doing my best David Letterman impression and actually standing on a corner in ... well yes you guessed it Winslow Arizona) or indeed "fly from Phoenix Arizona all the way to Tacoma" even experience as previously written about that " Rocky Mountain High"
I've taken music with me on this incredible life journey, I even remember waiting in a small bus station in the early 80's down town Tel Aviv, ready to go explore some far flung corner, the best companion I had then for the adventure was the Talking Heads Little Creatures Album on loop in my Walkman, was I really on that Road to nowhere,

Very early on Rich Mullins had a song called "Here in America", which I was enamored with and was also encouraged by, I mean that the God of Israel truly does love me here in America, and he's provided ways and means to experience this amazing country, and to this day drawn in by the lyrics of the song, I still crave the sights and sounds of the waves crashing off the coast of North New England.

And so as I sit in The Magnolia Theater in downtown El Cajon on a balmy Southern California evening in March 2020 (unknowingly, and unwittingly just moments from being told to stay home and live music as I have known it will cease to exist, the world stopped turning, and as we have found out in the last few weeks music did not die as the iconic song wisps,,,,stay tuned as rather this is for a different blog)  anyway, here waiting for Dennis DeYoung to wander on stage and take me through the Best of Times. It was there as I contemplated the upcoming lyrical bombardment of memories, that the elusive, "fickle spark" aforementioned came to the forefront.

How true were the words as we embarked upon this endeavor, close your eyes, pretend your 17 again, sat in your room on a Saturday afternoon, arriving back from your favorite record store and slide that magnificently grooved twelve inch spherical midnight black colored disc of wonder from its perfectly drawn and marketed sleeve, enticing you to simply unpack those memory banks and as the vinyl spins,the stylus crackles and reacts.... for the next 40  minutes or so there is no one else, no place else you would rather be, the absorption of the content inscribed into those modulated spiral grooves.

Dennis is a tall distinguished, grey haired gentleman, dressed in his finest, and well rock star sunglasses, but don't they all !! Effortlessly playing the entire length of the album with the promise of greatest hits to come, the night

sent that triggered spark of thanks, as I recalled not only the exceptional Styx moments, with the curtains parting for Paradise Theater, opened once more for that fleeting moment in time. But it was the shout out of gratitude to America herself, in the form of the song Miss America, not actually written by Dennis but by James Young that has given me this exceptional musical journey.

Well aren't you Miss America
Don't you Miss America
Won't you Miss America

Originally probably a some what misogynistic song about the Miss America beauty pageant, that has evolved and changed meaning, to the Miss America we live in, that place of musical dreams, from Laurel Canyons gift of The Eagles, and Joni Mitchell to Nashville's Ryman Auditorium trying out Elvis and giving us real Country and Western Music or lets not forget CBGB's in New York the club set to lay way to Country Blue Grass and Blues ( CBGB get it) instead laid waste to groups like Television, Ramones, Blondie and Patti Smith... I love America.

It was the robotic classic Styx that took me back there, and still fired that spark that said you're lucky mate, you get to dig in hit the road and experience this, also amazingly you just need to look round the corner and hit the Belly Up in San Diego or the Ace Hotel in LA....

Sweepingly familiar, Dennis danced and played to the crowd and we didn't seam to care that he used the same jokes he used 10-15 even 20 years ago, clearly no more the angry young man, with too  much time on his hands, more apt to coax us to come sail away with Loreli, and sing ballads Lady and Babe, to his wife also on stage of over 30 years.
At 73 trips around the sun he is still showing us the way and as kitsch as it seams to wrap the songs into the final paragraph, raising his Kilroy mask he makes that final statement we as fans chant back Kilroy was indeed ...Here.

Live music is for sure my guilty pleasure, I dedicate this as an ode to that moment dotted in time somewhere in the future that we again will gather in fearless surrender to the magical sounds from a stage, large or small, what does it matter.

#grahamsataconcertagain
#bennysantiniproductions



I've got soul but i'm not a soldier