DON'T STOP

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (02-21-19)

      Last week we went to see a Fleetwood Mac tribute band with our friends Julie and Jeff at Daryl's House in Pawling. I like Daryl's House because it's a nice-sized room, the sound is good, the stage is close, and you can sit down and have a meal while you watch the show. I wish Daryl would move closer so I could go over to his house more often. I would probably like it less if I was Daryl, and I'm upstairs in my pajamas brushing my teeth, and I wander downstairs to see what's in the fridge and there's 250 people sitting around eating everything that used to be in the fridge. Did they eat those last two pieces of pizza that I was saving? Don't even bother to answer. I was going to order a burger before the show started- if I was at McDonald's they probably have something called a Fleetwood Mac, but instead I ordered a Philly Cheese Steak, since Daryl Hall is a Philly guy. 

 

      These days, rock and roll is sort of a dying art, because so many rock and rollers are dead. I saw Earth, Wind & Fire a few years ago, and Wind and Fire are both dead. Same with Blood, Sweat and Tears. You could combine the remaining members and you'd still only have Sweat and Wind. And then of course bands break up, they have legal battles, and one of the songwriters owns half the songs, and the other one owns the other half. So legally, the band can now only play the first half of all the songs. Thus, your favorite band might not survive (even the band Survivor did not survive). If they are still on tour, like the Rolling Stones, you would have to take out a second mortgage on your home to go see them in seats a couple miles from the stadium that have been set on fire to justify their low ticket price. A tribute band might be the only way you can get to enjoy the music that you love and barely remember.

 

      There are all kinds of acts of this type. There was a tribute band for the Police, but they were all arrested for impersonating an officer. The lead singer was taken in during a Sting operation. When I go to the Jersey shore I see the same Springsteen act at every bar I go to, and the singer sounds like he swallowed a fresh cactus before each performance in order to get that raspy voice. But sometimes the tribute bands can be sort of a "farm system" for the major league groups. Remember when Steve Perry left Journey and they hired a singer from a tribute band to replace him? It doesn't always work; for instance, if you are Cher, and you don't feel like going out on tour and you want to replace yourself, you're probably only going to find a drag queen who can pull it off convincingly. They recently kicked Lindsay Buckingham out of Fleetwood Mac, and he wrote about half of their big hits. So now all the Fleetwood Mac tribute bands have their Lindsay Buckingham guy chained to the bass drum just to be on the safe side.

 

      In between songs the lead singer was giving us a running history of Fleetwood Mac. The band is like one of those parties in the 1970s where you put all the car keys into a fish bowl, and at the end of the party you pick a set of keys out and go home with whoever came with the car. I was never invited to any parties like that, probably because I drive a Dodge Dart and everybody else drives a BMW. Anyway, Fleetwood Mac was its own soap opera, and the words to their songs are all secret messages about the intrigue and chicanery that were rampant at the time. Whenever they played "You Make Loving Fun," it was code for "Dude, you slept with the keyboard player, who is literally RIGHT OVER THERE, and she admitted to it by singing this song even though I wrote it!" And when they played "Go Your Own Way," it was code for "I did NOT! And even if I did it wasn't until after I heard what you and the bass player were up to!" Then the singer in the tribute band announced that she had just married the guitarist. Have we learned NOTHING from the lessons of Fleetwood Mac? After that announcement they played "Big Love," which is code for "Honey, can you pick up some milk after the show tonight?"

 

     The band was fun and the music is toe-tapping, and I'm thinking that this is a pretty good gig. These guys are playing four nights at Daryl's House, and they're touring up and down the East Coast playing good rooms. The hardest thing about appearing as Stevie Nicks is not the singing, it's finding a top hat in a ladies size 8. It's impossible, so you have to follow a female magician around and when she turns her back to saw somebody in half, BOOM- make your move. Once you clean all the rabbit droppings out of it, try it on, look in the mirror and be honest with yourself: Does it make you look like Abraham Lincoln? Winston Churchill? Anyone from Alice in Wonderland? If not, you're good to go.

 

      The audience totally ate it up, and how do I know that the audience totally ate it up? Because they burped afterward. At first I thought it was a little weird that the band should soak up so much of Fleetwood Mac's glory, but when you go to hear the philharmonic you give a standing ovation for the band, and they didn't write the songs either. And who do you clap the loudest for? The conductor, and he didn't even play anything, he just told a bunch of people WHEN to play, and pointed at them sometimes when he knew they couldn't point back. Maybe I would have clapped louder if he had taken the time to do his hair and dress up like Beethoven. 

 

     I enjoyed the band, the company, my Philly cheese steak and the music, especially when they did "Don't Stop," which is code for "We're about to stop now."