Into The Evening with garage rock bands may be the closest thing we have to a concert these days, as actual gigs are still limited, but find out about those in the following:
— What of the days of the garage group, as was the essence of a small and intimate version of an open mic night at the birthday party of our friend Liz, two times over, (and her modeling take on Marilyn was pictured up on the wall). That’s how, going to the wall, many times I saw Bob the guitarist in consecutive days recently, when he said in the Ice Cream Man aisle, Hey Joe, and I Am Pleading With My Eyes with you, if you know of anywhere I can bring my real six-string and turn it into a gig, even if it’s just open mic or underground, please let me in on the show dates. And lets get the band back together again for some of those open mic sessions that go back over two decades, he implored me. He had been without his All Along The Watchtower, courtesy of yours truly, for way too long. Then we met inadvertently a couple of added times over, and the void was met in a way. But again, what about Bob? He just said he had found a new place to play on occasion — of course a garage band in an actual garage. And not the five-car-wide kind. That was at the Village Inn, where I again encountered him in short order, as in a second time there, on a much slower night, and he was Tumbling The Dice as in The Stones, but don’t know if he was Getting Any Satisfaction. Appears to be on the short end.
— Is this Mike ready to grab the mic again, as in days, or even decades gone by? “Yeah, good one. There are few gigs any more.” So just regular work and lots of it. Much like a lunar eclipse in regard to regular occurrence, said this large Lueneberg of a man and former guitarist for the band Red Over Lunar. Thusly, they were always spread out on the stage, right and left, and hard for me to photograph. He did say the last time I saw him, about a year ago and also at the former Freedom Valu Center in North Hudson, check online for the new band of former bandmate Kerry Boesel, but this didn’t show great search results.
— It was the Indy 500 on our street and extending into the cul-de-sac — see further on — with two children on their bikes becoming the new version of what had been termed The Cul-de-sac Kids by my neighbor Ron, the ringleader of the crew and its small version baseball even if only an asphalt infield, but at least they had Game. They were going round and round, over and over, on Cherry Circle, but then took a break, and it kind of turned out to be a drum break. I soon heard a beat of various tempos coming from where they had rested their spokes and themselves. I never was able to determine what actually was causing the thumping noises. Maybe the kids a bit later, who were running circles on their X Games-type bikes around their leaf covered lawn. For more about such kids, and fitting percussion into most any scenario, see the next two items.
— And what about those kids in the Lakefront Park bandshell, (screw the Hudson Star-Observer stylebook, as was put together by former publisher Jay Griggs), who were doing what comes naturally to kids in such a setting, no not skateboarding, which you used to see a lot, but yoga!
— And Doug my friend, the thrower of all those great holiday parties where no one got drunk but everybody got off on the conversation and great globs of gourmet grub you put out, but only with a bunch of people clamoring around a small kitchenette — ouch! And … oh yeah .. where perchance is that potent predeliction for persistent percussion, faux as it was, that you were also known for flying into if only using arms at a moments notice. Also is/was the official Vikings tailgate deejay, prior to the virus keeping people from rocking out, (granted his style is more pop-ish). Karaoke as thus, is now back but hard to find. The killer version at Ziggy’s in both Hudson and Stillwater on Tuesdays, is now the only place that married couple plays on an active basis, when they not long ago were all over the scene. The Hudson Bowling Center still has their twice a weekend karaoke, but only on alternate weeks, which is which is kinda hard for people like us to memorize, and that is also true of other avenues I will be publicizing on The Food Western Front. But one of the first venues to open back up to their long-running twice a weekend live music — and this is every weekend and should surprise no one — is the Willow River Inn in Burkhardt. But they are indeed matched in a very real way by another Inn, the talent often seen at The Bungalow in Lakeland, with the very “authentic” karaoke that was to segue into a costume contest via crooning on Halloween and via the staff dressed up in Roaring ’20s garb, and the like is still going these Fridays, because after years running, It Is How It Feels To Be Real. (Really real? Weekend update: There will not be the karaoke on Friday nights, because at least for now, live music has been “banned” all over Minnesota with no exceptions for holidays, I was just told. Things change fast in the virus era.
— Lastly on the theme of music is where you can find it, especially these days, is in the form of various pieces of broken plastic strewn across not just Cherry Circle but also Fourth Street, and a closer look revealed they were really all kinds of CDs and their housings. There they all were, a trip from when you could also find cassette tapes, works by Bryan Adams, like the lead item that referenced a first real six-string, and then Chris Issak. I asked a friend of mine who is into those kind tunes if he had heard of them (yes, sort of), and could sing them (not yet but he’d try). then there was the CD of The Calling (Two). We were perhaps the least familiar with that one, maybe the record labels had not exactly come calling for another take. Don’t Call Us Child, We’ll Call You? Then the fourth and final CD on the street, balancing on a manhole. Like the rhythm guitarist that rounds out the band, is an artist whose name escapes me. But my friend had sung a bit of his stuff. But what about the rest? Could he listen to some of the tracks and sing them? Only if he could go Jimmy Jamming the partly broken CD into his equally banged up tape player. Until then, since he was rehabbing a badly broken arm at a local nursing home, he would have to settle for listening to streamed music at services from St. Patrick’s Church in the big main room, but nearly as sizeable as a concert hall. He’s thought that however, for that particular purpose, the tunes were made out to be too modern. He was joined by a few others, two bands worth, who seemed to agree, but hey, eight is enough, especially in these days of social distancing. But For Those About To Rock, it will soon again be a mainstay, we hope, at St. Pat’s as the lead service to kick off every weekend; the liturgist is well versed in stuff that rocks out, not just Gospel and choral. And for something even more up-tempo, there is the youth band playing weekly at Bethel (Lutheran) Highlands, and other places such as Cornerstone/Crossroads (not the Eric Clapton version) that go toward progressive, as a guide for you.