Gordon Lightfoot Forums - Concord NH show

http://andyandang.livejournal.com/123283.html

Had the bizarre yet weirdly hallowed experience of seeing Gordon Lightfoot in concert at the Capitol Center last Sunday. He's about 72, has fairly recently gone through a stroke, a brief coma, a tracheotomy and the temporary loss of mobility in two fingers, and yet is still touring. Sunday was something like his 52nd show of the season. Aside from looking a bit spectral and sounding a bit reedy on the high notes, Gord was in good spirits and was still entertaining, if in a different style than I imagine he may have once been. You could tell that his band (the same guys that have been playing with him for about 25 years) was toning it way down so as not to overpower his vocals (the mic for which was obviously cranked up), which made for a fairly mellow concert. The weirdest part was that, over all of this very chill, subdued performance was the relentless fervor of fans who didn't quite get that their energy and volume really didn't jive with the aura of Gordon who was almost visibly ageing in front of us. There was a group of men, perhaps mid-thirties, only two rows in front of us who were quite obviously drunk. Drunk? Really? At Gordon Lightfoot? Maybe I've misunderstood something about the genre or its fans, but I didn't expect to encounter the same behaviour I might find at a Red Sox game. After every song they would slurrily demand "If You Could Read My Mind" in booming frat-house voices, occasionally pounding backs and shoulders and all but kissing each other like they couldn't believe they were really there. And when their song finally was played, they immediately, all of them, got up and bolted down the aisle and out the door. I guess it just wasn't going to get any better than that for them.