Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

This is the second time I heard such a statement this week, the first time was when our 18-year-old son said it, standing in our kitchen/family room. Thank you, friends of Bill W.
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The tickets came in the mail yesterday for the evening concert by Michael Feinstein. When I opened the envelope, I saw that we were spending "An Evening With Michael Feinstein and Jimmy Webb," and I got real excited because I wanted to see and hear Michael Feinstein's interpretation of a couple of Jimmy's standards.

We got to the hall, the same place we saw Tom Hanks in Godspell when my cranial landscape was lush with overgrowth, just before show time; and it was then that I thought that something was awry. Two Baldwin grand pianos were on stage. No guitars. No guitar stands.

I recalled the Clapton concert that Dr. Cyborg, J-dogg, and I took in a few years ago, at which we knew E.C. would be playing only the blues. At intermission, a guy, standing before a urinal in the men's room, asked no one in particular, "You'd think that maybe he could hum a few bars of Layla?" I pushed the thought out of my mind. Guitars are portable, pianos are not.

The two performers hit the stage to polite applause, Michael wearing a black tux, white shirt, and black tie, and Jimmy in some nasty-looking dark brown suit, dark brown shirt, and dark brown tie. And Jimmy's hair was shorter than I remembered and was straightened and colored to match his suit, and he totally looked like hell.

Michael Feinstein started into his first tune that I had heard before but can't name, and he sounded like you know he would sound, but the song wasn't Gershwin or Cole Porter or Rogers and Hart. Whatever. The guy has a great voice, you know, not like Robert Plant, but really, really good. When he was through with the first song and after he thanked us all for being there and all that stuff, he leaned on the piano and said, "Jimmy, why don't you sing one of your classics?"

And Jimmy -- you know, I'm thinking, like here we go, now you're talkin' -- he starts fiddling with the ivory, no guitar, and he starts singing, "By the time I get to Phoe-nix ... she'll be ri-sin'" And I'm thinking, "Doggone it, this isn't Stairway to Heaven!"

Then I realized and said to myself because, at this point, I couldn't possibly say anything out loud, "This isn't the Led Zeppelin guy; this is the Wichita Lineman guy."