Monday, July 22, 2013

One for the Ages


MAYBE I'M AMAZED:  How to put this? Friday night was The Best Friday Night in the History of Friday Nights. We saw Sir Paul McCartney rock Seattle with a three hour set of music spanning five decades.

But, it didn't start out so swell. 

First, we had an appointment at Pacific Science Center on Friday afternoon as part of the focus/study group we're a part of there to give feedback on "The Studio" part of their Wellbody Academy. 

So, we checked out their new exhibit on neuroscience. Including a cool, interactive close up of a mouse's brain subjected to some sound waves (the green 'noise').
There was also a fun biofeedback game where the most relaxed (as measured per brain waves) person won. 

That was all well and good and interesting, of course, but on the way home from Pacific Science Center 'round 4 p.m. we noticed that traffic southbound, into town, was bad. Epic-ly, horribly, bad. Like I've never seen in in the 5+ year we've been here. We rebooted our plans and basically left as soon as we got home (and picked up RIck and Ken).

We headed toward Safeco Field, the site of Friday night's Paul McCartney concert, at 5 p.m. We were in the car for 75 minutes for what is usually a 10-minute trip. It was horribly frustrating, needless to say. 

We finally parked about three blocks north of King Street Station around 6:15, and started walking south. Our plan was to catch dinner at a restaurant near Safeco Field before the show but we eyeballed lines and called a few places and all the waits for a table were 2+ hours - well beyond show time. So guess what/ The kids had hot dogs from a street vendor for dinner and they loved them and we saved lots of money. Win!

We headed into the stadium shortly after 6:30 and made our way to our seats. 
If it were a baseball game, we would have had some of the best seats in the house. But for this particular occasion - the first big concert in the history of Safeco Field! - we had the kind of cheapish-seats. But still, they were fantastic!!! We had one of the big ol' speaker trees pointing right at us, and the stage had a couple of huge screens showing us closeups of all the action, so no complaints here! 
Kennedy and Abby were up on the landing by he left field foul pole. Can you spot him waving at us?
Paul opened with "8 Days a Week" and that started our journey to Nirvana (no pun intended).

I'm 47 years old and have been going to lots o' concerts since I was 12. I've seen icons like David Bowie, Queen and Lou Reed multiple times. I've seen The Hottest New Band too many times to count. 

True confession time, I'm a HUGE Wings fan, and a BIG TIME John Lennon fan, but not so much a Beatles fan. But this was the best show ever. I mean like EVER Ever. CrAzY gOoD. Three hours of wall to wall waves of music that overwhelmed all of us present. Seriously, the Seattle show created so much buzz (people posting on social media DID YOU SEE THAT?!?!?) that by Sunday morning Paul McCartney was trending in the top 10 nationwide for Internet searches. 

Wasn't it nice of Sir Paul to use University of Washington Husky colors during the concert in Seattle? ;)
For the record, here's a set list. 
There were too many high points to count. Hell, the whole thing is a high point. Case in point- read the Seattle Times' sports editors' take on it ...  Or the Seattle Times music critics' review. The bottom line is, it was pure magic, from the first chord to the last. 

Sir Paul wowed on piano ...
 On guitar ...
on ukelele (during a special tribute to George Harrison), and on bass, of course.

The kids (pictured here, looking awkward) LOVED the show. 
Seriously, when Paul and friends started singing "All My Loving," they started squealing like Ed Sullivan circa 1964!

At one point during the show, I looked over at CJ and he looked absolutely stricken. 

Alarmed, I asked him, "What's wrong?!" 

"I'm trying not to cry," he managed to choke out. No wonder. Paul had just finished singing, "Here Today," a song he wrote about what he would have said to John Lennon, had he had the chance. Heartbreaking.

I managed to maintain my composure, until Paul went and sang "The Long and Winding Road" followed by "Maybe I'm Amazed," which, he noted, was written for his late wife, Linda. It ripped my heart out, in the best way. 
The largest visual spectacle of the night was during "Live and Let Die." 


If you look at the bottom of the picture above, you can see Paul in his white shirt crouched, ears covered, during the explosions!

We'd studied up on "Out There" tour set lists before the Friday night show, so I could make sure the kids knew and enjoyed the songs, but Seattle's set list was special. For instance, after morphing "Let Me Roll It" into "Foxy Lady," Paul talked about what a "sweet guy" Jimi Hendrix was, and how cool it was to hear Hendrix had performed "Sgt. Pepper's" live just two days after it was released way back when.

The concert was amazing, but the encore was ridiculous. Wait, what, who's this joining The Fab One on stage? Well it's Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear, the surviving members of Nirvana. That's when the concert switched from epic to sublime. (See Dave behind Paul?!) 
"Sirvana" was mind blowingly amazing. I mean, totally "Out There,"  per the name of Paul's tour.

They played ... 
  1. "Cut Me Some Slack"
  2. "Get Back"
    • Encore 2
  3. "Yesterday"
  4. "Long Tall Sally"
  5. "Helter Skelter"
  6. "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End"

"Cut Me Some Slack," (written by Grohl and McCartney for Sound City documentary) was hardcore old school rock, and "Helter Skelter" ran off the rails, just the way John Lennon would have loved.

All in all, an epic, Epic EPIC night. 
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