Have Keyboard, Will Travel: But Somebody Tell Google Where We Are

'Do you see a park?' said Elektra. 'I don't see a park.'

'Neither do I,' I admitted. 'But Google says it's here. I'm going to turn left into this parking lot.' I did. There were very few cars there. This was not surprising. It was Labo(u)r Day, which the Borough's announcement had inexplicably spelled with a 'u' when touting the concert in the park. The concert I was supposed to be playing in, if we could find it.

There were few cars about because it was a national holiday, and this was the university campus, and the students and faculty were all somewhere else on this beautiful late-summer afternoon. It was hot as blazes, pools were still open, the river was a half-mile away….take your pick. And I was driving in circles in an SUV loaded to the gills with noise-making equipment. I couldn't find the venue. What made this embarrassing was that I was two blocks from my house.

After two passes, following the Google directions and seeing no sign of park, equipment, or technicians, I gave up and drove home. This took two Earth minutes, which are the same even in western Pennsylvania.

It didn't help that it was 31°. About as hot as it's been here all year. Thanks, weather. At least the sun was shining: the sky was deepest cerulean. Keep this in mind for later.

I got home. We found Belinda's number. 'I got lost,' I confessed. 'If I go to Wendy's parking lot, can somebody come and show me where it is?'

'I'm sitting in Subway right now,' was the cheery reply. 'And from where I'm sitting, I can see that he's just put the tent up.'

Aha. That clarified things. Thanks, Google: you only had us on the wrong block, on the wrong side of the street. Back into the car, taking Belinda's phone number along, just in case.

Next task: to cross Main St. For some reason, the light balked, leaving traffic to pile up for about ten minutes until we all wised up, realised it wasn't ever going to change, and turned our respective rights, finding a new way to cross the street by circling the town. We're used to that here – it's a tiny maze of one-way streets – and a traffic queue here is hardly of Philadelphia proportions, but it was an inconvenience and a puzzle. It didn't matter: we still arrived at the soon-to-be venue with a good two hours of setup time left. See tent above, with keyboard and amp huddled in with the rest of the sound equipment.

Woodstock It Wasn't, But a Good Time Was Had

Conferred with genial sound engineer, easily recognisable from the fact that he was about my age and had a white beard. In my experience, all the best sound engineers are about my age and have white beards. The assistants, as always, were teenagers: thus do the wise elders pass the sacred knowledge to the next generation. Who were really good sports, because they ran errands, connected cables, and put up with fussing about in all that heat. One young woman even went above and beyond, volunteering a bobby pin to hold my music in place. I mean, I should have brought clips, but who knew the air would actually move?

Once we'd solved a few sound issues and secured the equipment out of the path of deadly electronics-hating solar rays, Elektra and I set up our lawn chairs in the shade. I believe I forgot to mention that this concert, in addition to being free, was a BYOC affair. Bring Your Own Chair. We'd considered making it a Bring Your Own Dog, too, but we decided that Lola might melt quicker than the Yamaha, so we left her at home, chillin' in the a/c.

Elektra was thrilled to discover that Wendy's was having a Labo(u)r Day sale on Frosties – ice milk, which we consumed gratefully while chatting to the volunteers and talent that came along.

Our concert turned into more of a Happening. The mayor showed up and said a few words, likewise the university president, a very cool lady whose presidential vehicle boasts flames in the university colours. Some students came to watch and listen. Other students came to sell food for their clubs. The taco bowls looked great and smelled better. Consumables were consumed.

This was not like Woodstock. There was no drinking, smoking of anything, and no bad language. There was loud music. I saw to that. There was also good music, thanks to a super fiddler (she's still in high school!), the local teen festival queen, who almost made me cry with her rendition of Cohen's 'Hallelujah', and her younger brother, who sang duets with his sister. We also had a local dance champion, also a teen, who deserves special mention for managing to perform a complex routine on grass….and sloping grass at that. Did I mention the heat?

It was late in the programme. We'd done all of the major acts, and I'd played in between them. It's a bit difficult to play keyboard on an incline, but heck, I'm a pro. (No seriously, I sometimes get paid for this.) My hands were sweaty, the sun was in my face, and I was pretty sure I was getting sunstroke, and the occasional breeze, while welcome, kept turning my pages at unwanted intervals, but I was enjoying myself. Particularly when the audience liked my rendition of 'American Tune'. I had finished 'Both Sides Now' and was just about to launch into some real rock organ, when I noticed the alarmed interruption signals coming from Belinda.

And then I heard the thunder. I turned around.

As I was playing, I was facing the audience – and a perfect blue sky. The audience, however, was facing the other way and could see what I couldn't: the menacing thunderclouds rolling in from the direction of the river. We'd better hurry up and get all that electronic equipment under cover.

True to the Happening nature of the day, a quick consultation took place between Belinda and the university president. It was decided to end on a patriotic note. Fortunately, there was a copy of 'America, the Beautiful' in the back seat of my car, and we were all clamouring for Belinda to sing, anyway, and she hadn't yet. So she led us in 'America, the Beautiful', and we packed up before we could be hit by lightning.

Don't tell musicians they lead boring lives. They won't believe you. Or maybe we're just easily entertained.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

24.09.18 Front Page

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