“Looking down from a motel room” takes on a new meaning with the death of Tom Petty, and dozens of others in Vegas, with the link being Jason Aldean, as noted after-the-fact by a music fan at a local nightclub.
– Some tragedies go in twos. Aldean, who was performing on the night of the mass shooting in Las Vegas, has been known to do a lot of covers by the iconic artist who died on a heart attack at around the same time, Tom Petty. That word from a fan I saw at the Smilin’ Moose, who was fresh off experiencing such a show by Aldean. On the night when the cardiac arrest occurred, Last Dance With Mary Jane sang out its signature line, “Looking down from a motel room/Nightfall will be coming soon … I walked to the road,” as I walked in the door of Dick’s Bar and Grill.
Petty also was listed as an influence by the Nato Coles and Blue Diamond Band, which played in Roberts recently. But back to the shooting, the Facebook page of a friend and lover of music that includes that of Petty, had a respondent who said he was working the desk at that motel across from the concert scene — and unwanted host of the shooting several stories up — that night. He noted that he was impressed beyond words by the flooding of volunteer help to those who needed it, by people from all walks of life.
Lastly, the next time I heard a song after that inadvertent Dick’s tribute, it was one of those “pithy” tunes — I have heard that word bantied about in the national music press as associated with Petty — by John Mellencamp. I had also thought that the same two artists were alike in that way, and were interchangeable in my mind, with their style of hometown-based lyrics and instrumental tone. Being from north-central Wisconsin, you would think that would have endeared him more — despite Petty’s totally straight long hair and John Lennon-like glasses — to one of my relatives, who in Petty’s heyday said dismissively to his wife, “what would you say if I looked like that?”
On a lighter tone:
– A 30-something man at the Smilin’ Moose said he’d seen Eric Church in concert 14 times, starting with a ticket he bought for $8 when he was quite young, at a northern Wisconsin festival. Rural Wisconsin and beer drinking and a country act … hmm. Add to that, a local bartender looks just like Church when he dons his sunglasses after being out and about away from his drink-pouring job.
– Bill Murray, a native of Chicago but more pertinently a former fixture in Hudson, was on a late night talk show where he gabbed at length about the Cubbies postseason chances, rather than his own St. Paul Saints, of which he has been an owner. He borrowed a shtick from the antics that are seen at Saints games, namely firing T-shirts from an air gun into the crowd. Murray was a friend of the late owner of Dick’s Bar and Grill, Fred Kremer, and would stop in for a dinner — or drink — whenever he was in St. Paul on business.
Next up on the show were repeated toasts with rum, (not the Jag that is the favorite in St. Croix County, but if you think about the taste, not too much different). And then spoken of was, also at length, from he of many talents, his collaboration with a German man to record a best-selling classical music CD. (Sure, not the Blues Brothers, by any means, but it will pass). Murray met the man on a plane trip. This is much like the immediate bond struck up by a California couple who flew to Wisconsin simply to have a beer, and ended up talking to the guy in the next seat, a musician — but definitely not a cellist — with the group Death Angel. (See that story a few items down on this page).