Saturday
before last, I flew to Detroit, then drove up to London, Ontario, and finally saw
Saga. I last caught
them live in 1984: they don’t tour much in North America, despite being from
Ontario, because although they sell out arenas in Europe, they’ve never caught
on here for some reason.
I
was supposed to see them November 20, 2010, but of course that didn’t work out.
Then I had a ticket for a show at B.B. King’s club in Manhattan last September,
and the band cancelled (something about a visa problem for one of the band
members). I have a watch on their
tour page, and
thus sometime in May learned that they had been added to the bill for Rock the
Park 10, so I booked my trip.
It
was a grey, rainy day, but that failed to dampen (!) my spirits, or those of
the other concertgoers. With the doors opening at 3PM, I got in line about 2:30
and chatted with my line-mates—most of whom were my age or older. I’ve never
seen that many guys with long, grey hair outside of Grateful Dead photos!
And
it was a good show. Not as long as I would have liked—that’s the price you pay
for having multiple bands on the bill—but Saga were as tight as I remember.
After 35 years of playing together, they still seem to be enjoying themselves.
And they must be able to read each other’s minds: during the opening track, the
keyboardist was trying to adjust one of his (six!) keyboards. The display
either wasn’t backlit or wasn’t bright enough, so he was trying to shade the
display and adjust it with one hand, while still playing with the other. The
lead vocalist noticed this (although it was behind him), and came over and
shaded the display himself—all without missing a beat. Pretty impressive.
The
impact of just hearing live music again took me by surprise. Katie of course
lived for music, and loved concerts (I think she agreed with me that any
music sounds good live, no matter the genre). I wound up about 25 feet from the
stage, and when the otherwise-mediocre opening act started playing, I found
myself missing her more intensely than I have in a very long time. She was my “concert
buddy”: I took her (and friends) to her first concert, Green Day, in
Pittsburgh. Later we saw Rush a couple of times, the Doobie Brothers once,
David Wilcox at the Birchmere, and more. And she had desperately wanted to see
Saga: I’d tried to make an expedition work once when they were playing in
Ontario, but the logistics proved too difficult.
I
left after Saga, to enjoy the other treat of the weekend: my sister had come
down from Toronto just to visit her little brother! We had a nice dinner, then
spent most of Sunday just talking and walking, what I call “found time”. With
nothing in particular that we needed to or even really could do, we just relaxed
and visited. I think those are often some of the best times. Then I dropped her
at the train station to return east, and headed west on the 401, back to
Detroit.
On
the drive I was listening to the radio, and heard an ad on WCSX, a Detroit classic rock station,
that starts with Boston
playing in the background, and a question: “How do you teach your kids to like
classic rock?”, with a baby gurgling happily. Then we hear a woman: “Honey, can
you turn that up? The baby’s
trying to sleep!” (I haven’t been able to find the ad on the Web, but I’ll keep
looking.)
I
could see Katie’s smile…
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