Pink Over Cold

Two tours in town last week worth considering, Australian Pink Floyd and Coldplay. APF play Pink perfectly, plus they have the background video, lights and lasers to back it up. But they are not the real thing, so they play in an old Victorian theater called the Paramount, rather than in the big arena that seems a more natural home to such expansive music. A big sound demands a big hall. Coldplay, on the other hand, deal in intimate songs for the most part - the likes of The Scientist, Yellow, Green Eyes are small, intricate ballads. Yet Cold are Hot these days, so the Paramount wouldn't do at all, unless they camped out there for a week! So there they are at the massive Pepsi Center, an indoor hanger built for spectating indoor professional hockey and basketball - and the real Floyd.

So which lopsided concert to go to (both would be far too extravagant)? Well, partly on the strength of my disappointment with Cold's latest pandering CD, I went with Pink, and was glad I did. My older brother loved PF in the day, while my younger brother and I always went for Yes and Genesis over PF in the "progressive music" department; yet somehow the Floyd captured the spirit of the time more - DSoTM was in the charts so long that it became self-generating: people were rebuying the album after their original was worn-out! Listening to APF doing The Wall really brought that sense of The Time home. The "we don't need no thought control", the marching hammers, the Scarfe cartoons - and the Ultimate Guitar Solo in Comfortably Numb. I have to say, I loved it, every minute, every note, every light and laser! Maybe I'll catch the Australian Coldplay 20 years from now - the setting will be right then!

Wassail! (It's a kind of beer)

A couple of weeks ago I was pulling into my driveway when I noticed my neighbor had his Christmas lights up already - and it was not yet Halloween! Jeez, Christmas just gets earlier every year, I intoned to myself, repeating the annual mantra, there ought to be a law against it.

Later, I was shopping in Target Boutique when I realized it wasn't busy. And I thought, wait a minute, this is perfect for Christmas shopping - the Christmas crap isn't out on the shelves, there are no crowds, no checkout lines, no annoying Salvation Army bell ringers on the way out. This is when we should be Yule shopping, not waiting until some appointed hour! Besides, I'm a great lover of Christmas music (the real stuff, not the aural torture meted out by the misnomered entertainment industry), why not start early listening to it.

So thank you, yon neighbor, for igniting such inspirational advice. I sure wish I'd taken it!