RED

Family date night. . .
For Christmas last year the man in the red suit brought us tickets to the Taylor Swift Red concert. The Kotrba family didn't get the memo that like Santa, you were supposed to wear red to the concert. It looked like a Lutheran church on reformation Sunday.

I can count on one hand the number of arena shows I've been to in my life--Adele, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Chicago and Rush. Count Basie and Pat Metheny and other jazz and singer songwriter types play smaller venues. This was definitely my kids' first big show, outside of Eastview High's Bravo production, that is.

It was a great show.We all had a great time. Casey James and Ed Sheeran opened up for her. I missed most of Casey James waiting in line to get Mary a t-shirt, but Ed Sheeran was awesome. He stood on that arena stage with his guitar. Just him. And the guitar. After a bit I heard a whole band playing and was dismayed to think that he was singing to canned music. Not. He was using his guitar as bass and drums, making percussive sounds and creating live "loop" recordings that he recorded and controlled with his foot pedals. I've really never seen anything like it. By the second song he had the whole 15,000 people singing in two part harmony that he asked us to sing back to him, left and right sides, and it made this sweet little chorale round. That is some charismatic pedagogy if I've ever heard it. Several times he worked the guitar into a frenzy and he was scat singing or rapping or both at the same time--but it was really well done. He closed with his hit "A Team." If it makes you warm and fuzzy to think about 10,000 eight to twelve year old girls singing this sweet song along with him, I'm going to suggest you not google the lyrics and their meaning. Oh well. My mom let me buy the 45 rpm record of "Afternoon Delight" when I was eight and I sang along with the catchy tune and never knew what it meant till many years later. Sometimes you have to lighten up.

Taylor Swift was really cool. I know folks have strong ideas about what kind of role models we want for our girls. Here's my take: when a girl works really hard and follows her dream to write songs, and takes it all the way to employ a gazillion people and make millions of dollars and sell out arenas on her own terms--I think that's a good role model. And she's done it so far without any drunken headlines. Personally, I think it's a great thing to show our girls that they can be cute and flirty without being raunchy.

Was it a theatrical show?  You bet'cha.  It wasn't Adele sitting on a bar stool with a lamp beside her. But last time I checked, musical theatre was a highly respected and successful art form.  There were a million costume changes and stage sets and dancers and video and her face larger than life on the jumbo-tron. Fireworks and confetti. Taylor flying across the arena in some boom contraption.

But she also sat on a stool in a t-shirt and shorts and sang and played the banjo. With her hair in a pony tale. That's another hidden message. We are okay both ways. Dolled up or in our own skin.

She told the kids--I paraphrase--if you think people stop being mean when you grow up you are wrong. . . when someone is so mean to you and it hurts so bad. . . you have to resign yourself that you will never ever make someone else feel that way. . . and then go in your room and write a song about it. She related again how she didn't fit in at school and didn't have many friends because she was different. Don't we all feel like that?

My favorite? "All Too Well." She played it on the red piano. She sang it beautifully and expressively and I was really moved. She captured that fine line between sadness and anger.  She was dramatically rockin' her head of hair at the climax of the song and Calvin turned and yelled to me--I think she's moving too much to play very well. . . well. . . hopefully the other keyboard player had her back.

Mary lost her voice after the first ten minutes. I think that is a successful night. My ears didn't ring until this morning. . . then only the left one--my drum set side--from ten years of being on the right side of the drummer. Bill had the drums in his right ear for his live music era--we should make a good couple in our old age.

I was only on a jumbo-tron once in my whole pop music career. Is Taylor Swift a little bit of an actress? Of course she is. But. . .she earned it and I'm here to look up to anyone who can smile and sing and play on the jumbo-tron night after night---her own music on her own terms, and send all 15,000 of us home with a song and a smile.