Check this out. Taylor Swift, I swear, or her lookalike in the grocery store line. Maybe, even two of her earlier looks and locks, and she used to get this all the time! Made a jaunt this way between concerts? And I just saw early-evening at a different Dick’s a singer with much similar style, “Adele” also, having a drink alone. Parallels to, and apologies to, Dan Fogelberg.

A music buff, I assume, could not call my bluff when I asked her at Dick’s Market – at check-out not in the frozen foods, and I did not touch her on the sleeve, and she did not spill her purse, to pay the self-serve machine — if anyone had told her she looks just like Taylor Swift.

She used to get that all the time, the fan as such added, but now she was a little older and Swift had again changed her hairdo, too. But she was still a tall, cool one, in fact both of them.

Swift in fact, has all kinds of her personas and style looks shown as she rides an elevator, and hits the concourse like in a concert stadium, during a commercial you probably have seen umpteen times, unless you’re not into pop music and/or live under a rock. My new acquaintance, blond or not so blond or not at all, could now after years only sport a couple of those looks, but she was wearing one as we spoke. Concert is coming.

All this would make for a good trivia question, as when the Hudson Tap has at times had on a weekend day, the exclusively Swift challenge. Tailor your trivia to Taylor.

Why the picturesque pictures on what fans would love to call love in an elevator? A commercial shows all her different looks throughout the years. Her mega tour is aptly dubbed The Eras (Eros?) Tour. A fellow music critic over at the Pioneer Press raved that she is indeed the big deal, responding after her late June performance(s) here. Other metro papers and TV stations are often abuzz with Swift commentary, things from helping out with a personal touch a fave fan fallen on hard times, to calling out security for roughing up a patron, a few rows back from the front row.

Speaking of fans, what if you are a youngster? Mom and dad can use their best judgment for if you are ready, and take you to that show tonight, as there’s a light on, but kids are staunchly prohibited from being in The Pit upfront. Moshing madness at a non-metal concert?

There are other interesting and exacting stipulations. Yes, still cameras are allowed, and patrons are encouraged to capture the joy, but no video taping. Lens can be no more than six inches, and methinks they may be yet another boyfriend problem behind that?) And yes, posters are allowed, but only can be up to 24-inches-by-24 inches. Coulda made it easier and just say two feet twice.

There were two shows here and they were not Swift, lasting a full three hours, even after a couple of warmup bands hit the stage at around 6:30 p.m. When you have that many hits! That’s why there were a sellout total of 120,000 fans attending and ticket prices started at 80 dollars. Thus needed when you put on, and have to pay for, this kind of high-level production! Swift from the stage said the Minneapolis fans, plus those trekking here from all around the Midwest, were the “most generous.” Much needed.

Much of this is great marketing. The commercial that has flooded the airwaves shows Swift hawking Capital One credit cards, although with their stringent credit limits I doubt that she carries one. So does she really need that extra cash, after singing about beauty and singing about truth at $80 or more a patron?

Swift is a great business person, and has been said to have an IQ of about 160, and it shows now and when she was a child singing wiz. (Anything above 150 is thought to be statistically insignificant.) There are a lot of Mensa-and-past level geniuses in the rock world, and they don’t all sing super-deep songs about philosophy. Enter believe it or not Gene Simmons of KISS, and I bet you’d never see both of them mentioned in the same sentence/paragraph.

So for now, hope you all made the diagonal trek to Chicago to take it at least one of the three, count them, shows there.

Share the Post:

Headliner

Urban Table has solo and duet acts already in the books, and the tunes put in its vault, as they’ll soon be brought back for more music events. and positioned practically tableside tonight in their designated intimate enclave, has been enlisted an acoustic ensemble, turning it into an ample stage, and then another band next Saturday, just for starters. Bluesy, yes, and even jazzier. And always eclectic.

This about all that soft jazz, and a whole lotta related offerings, taking a renewed seat at the table, like a not-seen-for-a-while relative at Thanksgiving dinner, as they have plenty of quick eats or full meal to go with the music too, at a venue that adds another element to the local song scene. It’s an intimate setting, where you can be not much more than an arm’s length or two from one of the players as the regele you with their sung stories — and still stay out of reach and vocal range of that odd uncle, but close...

Headliner

Clarity. Craft. Better together. Like a guitar harmony. Or Clarity & Craft Co., for penning business proposals that turn old notes and rough drafts into persuasive plans for your client’s action. Like a concerto. Choir to double down, on composing ditties.

Business writing, and even life, is like penning a song. It moves through the various seasons, like The Rain Song. (Snow coming soon.) But the very season at which we choose to begin is telling. And it may vary. For each client’s, or band’s needs. Or the second side of an album. They say keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your bandmates closest, because they are the ones you hole up with for long periods and churn out the creative process. One of those for me, is the pen during the day, and voice at times at night when...

Headliner

Nicolas Cage has been around locally for weeks filming one of his latest projects. Could ‘Parish’ be considered a cage match between he and St. Michael the Archangel, a local parish, with sword slitting sinner’s neck, considering his bent for projects of a spiritual and apocalyptic nature?? But farmhouse famously. Read on, or see it in a theater soon …

When I first heard that star actor Nicolas Cage was in town for an extended stay to film one of his new movies, it didn’t take too much of a deep dive to discover that the film and its protagonist takes the name of Parish, which made me think it had something to do with things post-apocalyptic and churches, like some of his past flicks. (Spoiler alert: It actually is not a parish in the sense of the name of a church, but has that end of the world and eternity vibe, as it’s about a man who decides to hole up in his adapted...

Headliner, Killer Metal Lyrics

MAGA goes South, and everyone from South Park to various ends of St. Croix County ‘can plainly see’ it. Yes, Republicanism may have won the day in the county, but in the final tally in the state, and country, it was curtains for them keeping a majority, being tied too closely to Trump. aberations in that county voting were Knoke vs. Zimmerman, and the early tallies in Town of Hudson absentee voting.

Mr. Hat, meet Mr. Reality, meet Mr. Mandate. Via Mr. Crowley. If you don’t get that post-election humor, then there’s no hope … When it concerns the latter, check out the Ozzy song and it’s message, “won’t you ride my white horse” and “did you think you were pure,” see if you then get the gag, as a U.S. dictator’s realm falls in a landslide rarely seen. “Your lifestyle to me seems so tragic.” As the last midterm election tallies are being, well, tallied, South Park (and later SNL too) roared on with its satire on Wednesday night, getting going at it...

Headliner

Sick of getting flyers in the mail, as many as five a day, and leaving no room in the box for the postman? Even if they happen to target a political interest of yours? I went through more than 100, so offer this synopsis, which got very detailed, as your primer for when you go to the polls today. (See results here in coming days.)

The divide in politics these days is not still as much left vs. right, with granted little center, it’s become the informed vs. the uniformed or downright ignorant, and by the flyers politicians put out, you can see they are catering to this predilection. So I propose a solution, though radical, as long as these days we’re throwing that word around all over the place even when it’s not merited, and it’s mentioned literally hundreds of times in Republican flyers across the state: If you are not going to educate yourself, don’t vote. If you think about it, this is very Darwin-ish. Another...

Headliner

Few inflatables? Just Chip away at the beyond-rigatoni-like-structured (Penne please?) them plastic bones? Halloween has come crashing to a sugary candied conclusion. But not before the alley cats were spooked, if they were not caught with their costumed tails between their legs, (no prizes), or by a pirate that’s DEPP-osed, (maybe.) Or, did Zappa do it? Double, double P. —– But hence, tomorrow is Election Day, and I will provide detailed coverage and how-to-fight-through-the-chaff analysis that will include the local polling numbers. You will see that much sooner here than in the local paper, as they do not staff elections firsthand.

Hark Halloween has been buried, as the big inflatables are now being sacked and stored — they were slowly being replaced anyway by some bigger creatures of all, very tall types and rounds lengths of plastic, currently used as the centerpieces, not the ones that often end up laying flat on the ground, strung out. As far as the bigger than gourds, such pumpkins were seen around town at the bars and antique shops, such as three of carefully chosen shades set in a triangle, of all different colors were the shapes painted on — they being squares and circles of...

Related Posts