Living the Dream with a Smoke Machine
Friday Night my wife and I went out for a night on the town with a few friends and then a few friends more. Because we don’t yet have kids, we tend to make last minute plans and because of this we don’t very often get to hang out with some of our friends because they have little ones to care for and an hours notice from us usually isn’t enough time for them to find a sitter. Don’t get me wrong, we love kids, and good Lord willing, we’ll have a house full one day soon.
The number of our friends without child is shrinking faster than a Costanza in cold water. With this being the case, we value the rare occasion when we can get a large group together, even if it’s only for an hour or so to enjoy a meal together while we tell stupid but always funny stories over a few cocktails (Bud Light for me of course). For those of you that live in Fort Worth, I want to give a plug to Casa Ritas on Western Center. As good as the food and drinks were, the service was even better, it was top shelf.
Like a kids birthday party that has ended before the cake and ice cream has been served, our “parents” were off to the house to relieve the sitter, and their bank accounts for that matter. Can you believe what it costs to have someone trustworthy watch your kids for a few hours? I can’t blame them for not going out with us more often, and to think all this time I thought they just didn’t want to be seen in public with me, or was that my wife?
Meanwhile, across town our newlywed friends were wrapping up dinner and agreed that the night was still young, even though I’m not anymore as my body reminded me the next day, and that we should seize the moment while it was still ours and cap off the evening with a few drinks at a little establishment near home.
Unfortunately there aren’t any Red Dirt Music venues within safe driving distance of our homes so we had to settle for a joint that provides entertainment in the form of people watching and the occasional cover band. By this point in the evening and because my wife was nice enough to volunteer to be our D.D., everything was alright by me, including the dudes living the dream on stage that night.
Now who am I to judge guys that are willing to live in an 80s time capsule complete with hair metal hair, wrist bands, smoke machine, and a set list that would make the class of 87 feel like they had just taken a ride in Delorean. Hell, I was singing along with the rest of them like I was 11 years old again riding around in the back seat of my sisters 82 Pontiac Grand Prix that is until the fog rolled in and I don’t mean the kind that is created from one to many Jack & Cokes.
Even though I’ve been fortunate enough to see more concerts than a squirrels seen nuts, including my first concert experience way back in the fifth grade when my God Father to us to see Pink Floyd, I still don’t understand how the smoke machine works. Obviously it’s not the kind of smoke created from a fire, unless of course it was at that same Pink Floyd show and we’re talking about the thousands of little fires blazing from the ends of what my grandmother called left handed cigarettes, the kind of smoke that sent me to school the following day proudly yet casually sporting my concert t-shirt and a look of calm and quietness that I’m sure my teachers had never seen before or since. It’s the little things in life that boggle my mind, things like where does the smoke come from, is it set on a timer or does some one mash a button for an on demand effect?
Needles to say, the belly of the smoke machine beast was puffing out signals like it was going out of style, wait, I think it is out of style, isn’t it? Does anyone in Red Dirt music employee the smoke machine, and if not why? In the age of what’s old is new again, I challenge a band to bring it back. While we’re taking a quick detour, did I mention that the female version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre was in the house? I’m not kidding, the whole family was there; everyone from Leather Face, a huge b_ _ _ _ wearing a wig and walking like Frankenstein, even an elderly woman that fit the part of the grand dad they fed the blood to, it was really creepy to watch them setting together in a booth across the room. Any who, one minute we are taking in both the visual and audio entertainment, and several songs later we’ve been transported to the cosmic junction of a Great White concert taking place in San Francisco bay as the fog rolls in off the Pacific. I have to believe that in their minds eye, these dudes weren’t playing a sports bar in the mid cities, they were playing Texas Stadium (God rest its soul) circa 87 along with Rat, Warrant, & Poison (make sure to check out the video of Justin covering a little Every Rose). I don’t know if the machine got stuck wide open but I do know that it got to the point that we could barely see not only the band 100 feet away, but each other a few feet away. Thank God for the draft that was created when the resident bar tender/fire marshal opened the front and back door to allow the place to clear out, the smoke that is, along with the four of us. As for everyone else, there was still time to “rock it, yeah”.
It’s nights like this that remind me that just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so to is the dream, even if you can’t see the dream thru all of the smoke, or maybe that is part of the dream….. May everyone’s dream live on and maybe just maybe when the smoke clears I will figure out the intricacies of the magic smoke machine.
Weiver Esiurc It has taken me a few weeks to have a mind clear enough to set down and write my wrap up review of the 2nd annual Sonny Burgess Cowboy Cool Cruise. My body came back but my brain, liver, and extremely expanded stomach was temporarily lost at sea. For those of you lucky enough to set sail this year, I am sure you know exactly what I am talking about. Like watching the sunrise up over the Caribbean ocean horizon, the haze of seven days at sea has finally cleared to reveal a beautiful view of what was a wonderful trip. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together, and there could not be a better example of this than Sonny & Dona Burgess, his band The Show, management, David and Julie Green at Cruise Planners www.funoncruises.net , and of course the foundation of it all being his fans. There could not be a kinder and more fun loving group of folks in all of Texas Red Dirt Music. Words cannot describe what it is like to look in every direction and see nothing but Blue Ocean. I’ve said it many times, but I can certainly understand how pre-Columbus explores thought if you sailed to far you would fall off the end of the earth. Seeing this for the third time it was still absolutely amazing and humbling all at the same time. I am glad that I was not in the process of giving up drinking or in the midst of a diet, because a cruise ship is no place for either one of those wagons. It would be nearly impossible for a person to die of thirst or hunger on a cruise ship. Booze was a flowing and delicious gourmet and buffet style food had my waste line a growing. Now would be a good time for me to start using that gym membership I’ve been paying for. In fact, if I owned a national gym I would stand on the dock and pass out flyers to everyone wobbling off the boat at the end of the week. Perhaps the best part of my job here at TXRDR is sharing the talent and music this scene has to offer. It was really neat to set back and watch unsuspecting and random people walk into an ambush of great music while Sonny and The Show were playing in one of the ships lounges, or on the post card beach in Cozumel. Who knows where these newbie’s call home, maybe Oklahoma or Ohio, but from the toe tapping and sand shuffle dancing they were doing it was obvious that the recognition of good music is universal. There was plenty of lip smacking food, an ocean of booze, great Texas Red Dirt Music, and great company so who can blame me for taking a few weeks to snap back into reality.
Cruise Review
This article was written several months ago and managed to get lost in the shuffle. After reading it I’m sure you will understand why.
