Inflation

Jean-Luc Ponty! I first heard him as a sideman to Frank Zappa. Played some mighty cool stuff.

That's how I stumbled on him as well, Ric. I was a Zappa fanatic in those days and bought tons of albums put out by his sidemen (or featuring them). It lead me lots of great places.
:)

Yeah, Zappa was the man! I couldn't afford to buy bunches of albums then, though. Actually got a bunch of Zappa albums out of a guy's trash can! Still have them. :D

Well, the Robert Plant/Alison Kraus show was awesome! I was really bummed because Mrs. R (for whom I'd bought the tickets, as her birthday present) got sick and couldn't go. And I was unable to find anyone to go with me at the last minute, though today of course I've found several who said "Man, I'd've gone with you!" Didn't have everyone's contact info, so today I have a bunch of new numbers in my cell phone. I ended up sitting next to an empty seat I'd paid for in a sold-out colosseum, alas!

But the show was absolutely awesome! Robert's got a great voice, though he's mellowed out and it's deepened over the years. He was just having great fun performing with Alison Kraus and the others, and made it plain to everyone. Alison has the most beautiful voice on Earth, I'm convinced. She's a killer fiddler, as well. I'm sure you've heard "As I Went Down To The River To Pray" on "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" That's her. (Robert was one of the three guys harmonizing behind her when she did that last night.) They did a bunch of each one's earlier favorites including a bunch of Led Zeppelin songs, but arranged in very different new styles. "Black Dog" and "When The Levee Breaks" (actually an old Memphis Minnie song, BTW) were done as slow, minor blues and were just terrific! A lot of the stuff they did was very bluesy. The musicians with them were all old white headed or bald guys. Let me tell you, they were a bunch of rocking old men! Really accomplished masters of their art. Everyone seemed to be doing just what they wanted to be doing. Robert said something like "It's really free form up here, and that's just how it's supposed to be. Can you feel it?" He was just ecstatic and bubbly. They were all having a big happy jam. It was NOT an album promotional tour show! Most of the audience loved it, but not everyone. The audience was quite old on the average, and I was on the young end of the older set. A lot looked like old bluegrass fans, a very conservative lot that don't like drums and electric instruments. Some were big Led Zeppelin fans, many with Zep T-shirts on. The music wasn't anything like what either of those groups were expecting. Some got up and left, but most of the crowd was having a blast. I saw a couple of really hot babes my age who still had their looks and were dressed up like the groupies they were 35 years ago. Don't know what they thought about the show, but I had to stop and take an appreciative look, even if they were a bit silly. Since the promoters and venue staff made such a big to-do about not taking pictures with cell phones, and I saw so many others doing it, I sneaked a few that I'll have to figure out a way of extracting from my phone now. (Shame on me!) Doubt they'll be very visible due to the distance from the stage and the way the cell phone camera's set up for close portraits. I've been falling asleep whenever I sit still today, and I need to go on to bed! Poor Mrs. R is doing better today, she apparently had a virus on top of her chronic health issues. I hope I can get her into another show while they're touring. They're supposed to be in Asheville in early June.

Hope in the future the producers won't blindfold us, so that we cannot 'see' and only 'hear' (Who knows someone has got a high-tech video recorder in his glasses ?)

Anyways, its great that you enjoyed the show Ric. And really sad to hear that you went there out alone. Man, I'd have been there with you. :wink: