The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

I went to another concert yesterday, the B.R. Cohn charity concert in Glen Ellen, CA. I think it was the first concert I've been to in years where I wasn't carrying law books with me. The change was thrilling, but also a little disorienting, so I threw a few unread bar association magazines into my backpack just in case I started showing signs of withdrawal.

On paper the concert seemed great: an all-day event with six acts, including Tower of Power, Huey Lewis and the News, and the Doobie Brothers as the headliners. In reality it was... Well, there were things about the day I liked. Really, really liked. And there were things about the day that I didn't, and those things have unfortunately colored my impression of it.

One of the highlights was that three of the acts included children of the professional musicians, and they were great. Two of these acts had children of the Doobie Brothers (I particularly enjoyed the first one, with Pat Simmons, Jr. and Sebrina Barron, who had lovely voices, creative songs, and excellent arrangements) and during the HLN set the drummer's daughter Olivia Gibson joined Huey for "Cruisin'" from Duets. I still dislike that song because it's pretty limp - despite its name it doesn't really go anywhere musically. And she was clearly too good for it: her voice was great, as was her composure. There were 3000 or so people there, I think, which is a pretty big crowd to perform to when you're sixteen. But she took it all in stride. (It was actually Huey who looked a little apprehensive with sort of a fatherly anticipation.)

Another upside to the event, although the same dynamic also produced some downsides, was its general location, nestled in Sonoma Valley. Behind the stage was nothing but rolling vineyards. (Well, that and a barn fire, which of course goes in the negative column.) The weather, too, was just what you'd expect for up there: perfect.

Props also go to the food. Sure, it was too expensive, but no more so than fair or stadium food, 25% of the cost went to charity, and the penne pasta marinara and root beer floats(!) made for a really nice lunch.

And then there was the music. I particularly enjoyed the first act with Simmons and Barron, the set by Lydia Pense and Cold Blood, and then came Tower of Power, which puts on a show that is never to be missed. After that came HLN, which of course is going to be the highlight of my day.

But, it was a short set, which is kind of a downer. It was nice to see them jam again with TOP horn players they used to play with 20 years ago, but more songs would have been preferred. It also would have been nice if they'd stayed for the Doobie Brothers set and then jammed with them, but they'd apparently already left. Which was eminently sensible on their part, just disappointing to me because I hadn't, yet came to wish I had...

It turns out I don't really like the Doobie Brothers. I mean, I like certain songs, and some of them were played yesterday and played well. I also generally liked the keyboard player and guitarist John McFee, who used to play in Clover 30 years ago with Huey and Sean Hopper. John played a violin on one song, which, as a frustrated violinist (I played it for seven years but hated all the music I had to play and thus also the instrument) I found inspiring. But apart from all this, I just couldn't get into the show.

Which is kind of too bad, particularly because I was in the front row. Which is a story itself.

People who know me well know that I can be, crudely put, uptight. I do not like leaving logistical things to chance. The more I'd regret the consequences if something didn't work out the way I wanted it to, the more effort I put into making sure those consequences don't happen. This is, of course, a prudent attitude, but there's also something to be said for not trying to over-control everything and instead go along with the flow. Things can work out that way too. It takes a great deal of effort on my part to go that route, to let go and not worry about things, but every so often I can pull it off.

Like with this weekend, because as of an hour before getting there, I still didn't have a ticket. I always meant to have a ticket - I've known about the show for months - but what with the bar and associated crap this summer, I didn't have the cash flow to be able to afford it. By the time I did, it was sold out. So then I started scrambling with Craigslist to buy one. It didn't work out because I couldn't leave work early enough to meet sellers before they'd already sold them to someone else, but I did have a nice chat with someone who told me not to worry about it; I'd probably be able to get one once I got up to the concert. Still, just to be sure, this week I posted an ad seeking a ticket on Craigslist, and on Friday someone emailed me to sell me hers. We arranged to meet that evening for the exchange, although by the time I got in my car and called her to say I was on my way, she'd told me she'd already sold it! I suppose it was a "misunderstanding," but replaying the conversation in my head I really can't see how. It terribly offends the lawyer in me to realize that "her offer plus my acceptance" means I just need to go with the flow when she sells it to someone else anyway. This kind of behavior would never fly on the MBE...

So I went home and hit Craigslist again, where I found someone else willing to sell me a ticket the next morning on my way up. Which actually happened, and at a discount in exchange for driving him and his wife to the concert. So it turns out that going with the flow actually worked (and would have even if I'd not had the ticket before arriving since people there were indeed selling extras).

But then: new problem. It was general admission, and by having gone with the flow I'd not seen to getting to the venue early enough to be first on line to get a good spot, as is my normal habit. Fortunately I got a good spot anyway, right up front. Although maybe it didn't turn out to be as good as I'd thought.

For one thing, the lawn was sort of terraced. But on the parts that weren't flat, the pitch was pretty severe and uncomfortable to sit on for six hours. Worse than that, though, were the inequitable, arbitrary, and pointless crowd control measures that kept me scrambling all afternoon to make sure that people didn't end up in front of me. It didn't really offend me that people kept trying to fill in the walkway between the edge of the lawn and the stage; I was willing to move up too in order to preserve my vantage point. What I objected to was the random, ineffective, and periodic efforts to disperse the crowd, which would have only disadvantaged the few people who obeyed.

The other thing to note about this event is that it was held at a winery. Which means there was a lot of wine being drunk all day by well-heeled people who could afford to drink a lot of wine all day. Being wedged-into a general admission crowd of drunk people who continually danced into me was also not a highlight of the occasion...

It actually came as a relief when the concert was finally over, although I wasn't out of the woods yet. In fact, I wasn't even out of the venue, either, and managing that was going to prove to be a challenge. They'd had most people park offsite in a field behind the winery and ran school busses to shuttle people. Which was very nice of them. What was much less nice was their refusal to let people walk back. At the end of the show, a monstrous and disorganized line began to form as they loaded thousands of people onto a handful of busses, 46 passengers at a time. "I want to walk instead." "You can't." We were trapped.

I suppose they were concerned about liability for people walking through the vineyards, which may not have been theirs. But there appeared to be actual roads to follow, so I'm not sure on what authority they were trying to prevent people from walking on them. Furthermore, I'm not sure they'd considered the possible liability they might face for false imprisonment. There we were, trapped in a bounded area with no viable means for escape. An hours-long wait for a spot on a bus is hardly a reasonable alternative to an exercise of one's own free will, and there was certainly no knowing consent on the patrons' part to this arrangement. Ironically the venue had been very thorough in notifying people that their bags were subject to search (e.g., notices on the website, flyers handed out in the parking lot), which then they didn't (at least they didn't search mine), but until you were already there, you had no idea that you were going to be kept there whether you liked it or not.

At this point I was way too pissed off to obey unjust authority, threatened to walk anyway, and in the chaos ended up on a bus before too long. I thus managed to make a reasonably expeditious departure to begin driving the 40 miles home. During which time my "check engine" light came on, which I also consider to be a lowlight of the day...

Edit 10/2: So the reason I titled this post as I did was because I was originally going to talk about how strange the front row was at this show. It was really close to the stage, although maybe that doesn't quite explain it. Lots of times I've been right up next to the stage while standing in the front row. But in those instances the stage has been elevated. This one wasn't. At this show, the only reason I was looking up at the musicians in front of me was because they were taller. Standing there, nearly eye level, just feet away made it a fairly unusual concert experience, as instead of being sung to it felt like I was being sung at.

But enough with these thousand words, here's a picture so you can see what I mean. Don't mind the goofy-looking person up front in the white t-shirt who looks like her face is made out of PlayDoh. I'm sure she's very nice in person.