They say the neon lights are bright...

Seeing Broadway shows always reminds me of the great affinity I have for theater and dance. If I got to choose a path from any in the world (and had the necessary talents), I very well might have chosen the stage (yes, even above guitarist). And I wouldn't even need to be the lead -- although the complete package of musicality and dance would be very appealing -- just a part of a company putting on a show like "Hair." So my unspoken dream would be to dance on Broadway.

Now I've danced on Broadway.

It was just a couple minutes at the end of the June 20 matinee performance of the Tony Award winner for Best Revival. But it's enough.

Had wanted to see the show for a while. Saw "The Tribe," as they are deemed, on Letterman and again on the Tonys broadcast. The energy and spirit was just amazing. It really sucks me in.

Tried to get the lottery seats for the show once -- a couple hours before each show, there's a lottery for 28 seats at $25 apiece, a real bargain considering what even the TKTS prices for shows are. Didn't win, but I knew my sis, Lorrie (aka Pook), was coming into town in a couple weeks and she said she'd like to see it, so I didn't buy the TKTS $91 partial view option (come on! That's a discount?)

We tried in vain -- not the artery but in vain -- to get the lottery tickets again, and even the crowd was a little sparser due to matinee/rains, we still didn't win. Went to TKTS and got a little better of a deal. It was about to get a lot better.

Hair is on stage at the Hirschfeld Theater and pretty quickly after the lights go down, Sasha Allen drags you willingly into the period with a dynamic "Aquarius." I hadn't seen the show before, so I didn't know how different it was from the film version, but they break the fourth wall pretty quickly and it stays broken as The Tribe sings and dances in the audience on almost every number.

The main characters introduce themselves right off the bat and one of the male leads, Will Swenson (Berger), jumped into the crowd and introduced a lady in the front row at his mom. Apparently he does it every show, sometimes picking a teenager and calling her mom. More on Will/Berger later.

You don't really know where to look next when the Tribe is singing and dancing their hearts out, but Gavin Creel proves very magnetic as the other male lead Claude. Caissie Levy has an amazing singing voice and she gets to use it to great effect, particularly in "Easy to Be Hard" and in the seminal "Good Morning Starshine." Pook expects Allen to be a big star with her huge voice and beautiful countenance, and I gotta agree. Kacie Shiek (the first photo in the blog) is deft comedically and musically as pregnant Jeanie.

Our show had most of the cast intact, with only Allison Case as Crissy and three members of the tribe subbed out.

After the first act, Pook had noticed that the seats directly behind us and on the aisle were vacant, so we moved there for the second act. Fortuitous indeed, because one of the first things that happened was that members of the cast (including Swenson) entered from the side and after one of the female Tribe members patted me affectionately on the head, Swenson as Berger (he's the second blog pic) said "Hi, lovely" and kissed the top of my head (or my new Hair bandana). We also snagged an orphaned flower that had been tossed into the audience at the end of the first act and had been left unclaimed.

The second act moved swiftly into the very poignant staging of Claude leaving for the army ... and his sad return. Then the lights came up and the cast was beckoning members of the audience to come on stage. It took me about 30 seconds (and a little push) to go. When I got stage left, I was dancing with a nice older gentleman with a metal cane. He thanked me when the first encore ended. Then everyone joined in for "Let the Sunshine In," with arms rippling across the stage like waves.




















I turned around to applaud the band, and the guitarist tossed me his pick! On the way off, I stopped to congratulate Briana Carlson-Goodman, who had stood in as Crissy. She thanked me profusely and gave me a hug.

We went outside and waited for members of the cast. Ten of them came out, including Swenson, Bryce Ryness (a perfect Woof, in my opinion) and Sheik. When Jeanie came out, I yelled "Hey, she's not pregnant!" and the crowd laughed. Easy laugh.

The songs haven't left my head ... well, when there's room for them amidst my impressions of Charles Grodin's overacting in "King Kong," which kept cracking Pook up, so which of course, I kept doing to excess.

It was a great mental space to be for a few hours, and I'm hoping I get to invade that space ... and, OK, yeah, the stage, again sometime.

We can go our own way

(Note: I don't do blog dedications, but my heart is so heavy for two terrific friends and big music lovers, so this one is for Susan and Pam.)

After all the excitement of Wednesday's Clapton/Winwood show and one unexpected engagement, there were two roads Park could have gone down. The duo were making their way to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. But we Claptonians decided to go down a different (and very long) path, and it didn't hurt that it was a cheaper path as well.

For months, we had been bemoaning the fact that our fave singer in the word Dana Fuchs, her kickass guitarist Jon Diamond and their rockin' band had been in Europe for months. So, with both the Dana Fuchs Band and Robert Randolph's Family Band on the free bill, we charted a course for Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Arts Music Festival.

That was all fine and good, except for when we hit town, we couldn't find the darn thing! No signage, and the GPS left us off in the middle of traffic. If we had wanted to go to Mellon Arena to rub elbows with Pens fans (and a few brave Wings fans) drooling over their impending Stanley Cup or if we wanted to take in a Pirates game (with a few brave Tigers fans), we would have been in luck.

But finally, we got pointed in the right direction (hey, there was signage AT the event, at least) and were seated in front of the stage (although a little discombobulatedly) with about 10 minutes to spare.

Dana, Jon and company were just what the doctor ordered. It's akin to a massage therapist getting into a knot on your shoulder, minus the residual pain the next day.

I got myself namechecked from the stage when Dana introduced "Drive," one of my favorite songs, and I hooted ... loudly. "Is that Paige? Thank you, girl." It's great to know all the songs in a setlist, it just added to an already substantive comfort level.

It was only a 45 minute-or-so set, but it was capped by Dana's trademark number, "Helter Skelter." Jon later told me that he saw me rockin' out from the stage, I gotta admit I do love to cut loose on that on.



We got on line to say hi to Dana and made some new friends -- particularly Brittany (a younger fan who apparently has a lot better idea of what music to listen to and of what to do on a Friday night than many of her peers) and another Mark (his dad owns the world's largest album collection -- vinyl -- in the world, which sadly recently went up on eBay.)

Saw one of the coolest things while waiting on line. A woman was very deftly working a hula hoop all over herself -- neck, arms, waist -- she was really nimble about it. Jon pointed it out to Dana, who was just amazed and open-mouthed. So there's someone who made her feel like we do when we hear her sing!!

I told them about how great Dana is with her fans, treating us more like friends. She bore that out by looking so happy when I told her about the engagement and had a hug and kiss for both of us. I told her once again that I would be happy to help her out anyway I can on the writing front. And also that she better stay in the USA for a while!! She said that it really was great to be on home turf in front of people who could understand what she was saying.

By the time we were done, Robert Randolph was underway and we sidled into an open spot. In fact, we kept moving up and by the end of the show, we were pretty much in the second or third row of the crowd.

RR and band exemplify a theory that Dana has about her religion (and ours) being the church of music, peace and love. Something to believe in that really make you feel better. And you feel it with every fiber of your body when both of these acts perform.

After our "religious" experience, we started heading toward Atlantic City. We found out the Penguins had won Game 7 via an electronic travel advisory sign: "Congrats Pens, Stanley Cup champs!"

We stopped for the night about an hour out of town and then ran into a parking lot in Philadelphia the next day, when we feared for 1. our sanity and 2. our Fleetwood Mac show -- not necessarily in that order. The GPS was less help than usual, so we pulled out a map and got ourselves up to Trenton and then over to AC.

AC is a special Mac place for us, since Mark had his Lindsey Buckingham epiphany when we were there last year with my sis. The city was almost under a layer of fog, and I sort of felt that way myself. But when the opening notes of "Monday Morning" started, I shook it off.

Stevie was in particularly good voice -- better than in both the shows we previously saw on the tour. There was a great stretched out-line (she's a draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-gon) in "Gold Dust Woman" that made me and Jenna (we had met on the eternal Stevie line at Borders a couple months ago ) gasp out loud.

Jenna was battling the forces of evil, namely a man who spilled at least half a glass of wine on her back with limited remorse, but we ended up rocking out pretty well. The three of us played the Mac drinking game (sans alcohol) and pretended to take shots each time a member hit one of the signals -- Lindsey talking about the band's complicated emotional history, Stevie twirling, Mick saying something unintelligible and John not saying anything (basically the whole show).

It was fun and exhausting and I am realllllllllllllllllllllly eager to just settle in on the old (make that new) homefront for a while.

You're old school ... and engaged!

First show of the 2009 Clapton/Winwood Tour and, once again, it was in my backyard. This time at the former Continental Airlines Arena, a place that was my home away from home when my beloved New Jersey Devils played there.

A few things had changed since the previous tour incarnation. Namely, I had met Mark while hanging with some Clapton friends prior to, during and after his Jones Beach show a year ago. We have been to many many concerts since, but we had never sat together for an EC show.

I considered the MSG shows to be in the upper echelon of concerts I've ever seen, and I was expecting a lot this time around. Didn't know if there would be setlist changes (there was some tweakage) or how the addition of backup singers would affect the balance (not too harshly as it turns out, but still unnecessary).

"Had to Cry Today" was a nice opener, but it wasn't until the fifth song ("Presence of the Lord") that everything started to come together. Truth be told, it wasn't a lot like the MSG dates. That had a different vibe, and only "Presence," "Glad/Well Alright," "Pearly Queen" and the first part of "Can't Find My Way Home" (done acoustically instead of electrically this time) seemed to be in that vein. (I jammed out to "Well Alright," and I'm convinced that Steve was looking my way at the time -- as Park found out during its time on stage with Mick Fleetwood -- it's pretty easy to see the audience four rows away ... although he may have been looking at a tall blonde behind me. ;))

A lot of that came from the change in drummers, I feel, from the more retro-sounding Ian Thomas at MSG to the hard-hitting Abe Laboriel Jr. MSG's show-stopper "Voodoo Chile" took on a more palpable drum feel, even "Little Wing" did as well -- and the latter featured the most incendiary solo of the night via Mr. Clapton. (It also provided for a couple humorous moments when I flicked a Bic lighter during the song and two different fans approached me to say I was showing my appreciation "old school," like in the days of yore.)

By contrast, "After Midnight," "Tell the Truth" and the crowd favorite of the night, acoustic "Layla" were serviceable, but not particularly memorable. The Buddy Miles tribute from MSG, "Them Changes" was changed to one for legendary blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin ("Tough Luck Blues") without missing a beat.

Winwood's Traffic numbers "Pearly Queen" and "Dear Mr. Fantasy" came off well, and as EC did in his recent Allman Brothers stint, his style is beautifully suited to those numbers. In turn, Winwood delivered some great vocal chops while trading vocals with Clapton on "Forever Man" and even "Cocaine."

EC seemed almost resigned to do his solo number, "Driftin'," even slouching into his seat after Winwood brought the house down with his solo signature song "Georgia on My Mind." But as usual, Clapton punctuated the acoustic version with notes that resonated strongly throughout the building.

The crowd was appreciative throughout, and for the first time since those MSG shows, there didn't seem to be any conflict between fans who wanted to dance their way through the set and those who wanted to just sit and soak it all in.

The festivities ended surprisingly ... for me at least, when my man proposed following the final notes of "Dear Mr. Fantasy" and the crowd's roar of approval. After I regained consciousness, I was given a Ring Pop (orange, yummy) and the option to choose my own ring. A most engaging end to a wonderful night at the ... OK, I can finally say it ... Izod Center.