Lusting in her Heart

This past weekend, the Tiki Gal, Dale, Carol and I went to St. Louis, Missouri to see the Peter Mayer Group perform in the Duck Room at Blueberry Hill. Dale and Carol had introduced us to Peter Mayer's music when we went to the Jimmy Buffett concert in April. Dale had been making jokes all weekend that Carol was going to run off with Peter Mayer if she ever got the chance so we listened to some of his music on the way home. It is entirely different than Jimmy Buffett's music but I thought it was good. I ended up buying his Romeo's Garage CD and have enjoyed listening to it but I never paid much attention to the music or the lyrics. I treated it like background noise while doing other things.

While watching the Peter Mayer Group live on Saturday night in a crowd numbering around one hundred, I had the exact opposite reaction that I had at the Motley Crue concert all those years ago. I could hear the distinct sound of each musical instrument but they all blended beautifully together. Peter did a great job on the vocals, especially on the Beatles songs that he covered, and the entire band seemed genuinely excited to be there (even the bass player who was not feeling well.) Better yet, the band played with only one break for over three hours. In that time, there were only two mistakes. I know this because Peter Mayer stopped the band after both of them and made them do it again. If Motley Crue had stopped after each mistake, I'd still be sitting in the Myriad today with some scary, smelly people.

I bought Peter Mayer's Still In One Peace CD at the concert and listened to it when I got home. The songs are good and I enjoyed it but I don't think it is as good as the live music we saw on Saturday night. Part of my preference for the live event is, I'm sure, due to the small venue, being with my wife and friends, and being able to watch the musicians while they play. The other part of my preference is I think some acts are just better live. We saw Collective Soul in a smaller venue a few years ago and I thought they were better live as well. However, Dale and I saw Shinedown live and our ears still have not recovered. The moral to this story is: go see Peter Mayer and Collective Soul if you get a chance.

Here are a few other random thoughts from the weekend.

• R. Scott Bryan played a few songs before the Peter Mayer Group came on stage. During his first song, the Tiki Gal and I noticed an obviously intoxicated woman either dancing or doing Tai chi (it was hard to tell which) in a corner of the room. We chuckled and turned our attention back to the music. A few songs later, the drunk, dancing woman climbed onto the stage and attempted to seduce Scott Bryan while we all watched. It would have been funny if it hadn't been so sad. She was led, carefully, off the stage and she then tried to seduce - in a very obvious manner - a guy who was keeping her from going back on the stage. Eventually, she was evicted from the premises. This is the kind of person that shows up wherever I am. Carol has even considered ending our friendship to get away from these folks - seriously.

• Peter Mayer has a huge thumb nail that he uses instead of a guitar pick. Carol, although still infatuated with Peter, has some trepidations about this grooming habit.

• The Duck Room had New Belgium's Fat Tire on tap. Live music and one of our favorite beers on tap. Life doesn't get much better than that.

• The bass player was really getting into the music and he danced around with a lot of hip action. The lady next to Carol admitted she was lusting for him in her heart.

• Maggie Estes was incredible on the violin. We were surprised to find out she is only nineteen, has been with the band since she was fifteen, and is now in college majoring in music.

• Peter did a solo version of Strawberry Fields Forever that was amazing. I'll be buying his upcoming Beatles cover album in hopes that this song will be there.

• On our way home, we stopped in a store in Cuba, Missouri hoping to find Fat Tire to bring home. We had never seen a store quite like this one. The guns were stocked right beside the whiskey. You could also get fishing bait, beef jerky, and, luckily for us, Fat Tire. We were all stocked up on guns and fishing bait so we passed on those.

• And finally, in the "someone has too much time on their hands" department, we stopped at a McDonald's for a bathroom break. Apparently, someone thought it must be too mentally taxing for us homo sapiens to get our hands wet in a sink, squirt soap on our hands from a dispenser, rinse our hands back in the sink, and then dry our hands at a dryer on the wall. Since we aren't bright enough to handle these seemingly simple tasks, this McDonald's had an all in one machine to do the job. You put your hands into a hole in the machine and it automatically squirted water on your hands, then theoretically squirted soap (Dale and I don't think we got any soap), then squirted more water and finally blew your hands dry. Was this really a problem that McDonald's needed to solve? Shouldn't they be working on a way to make decent, cheap food that won't inflate you like the Goodyear Blimp?