Ready and Waiting from the 8th Row

You could, I suppose, trace the story back to my mother. There was a time, back in the pre-history of my life, when I was required to take piano lessons. I recognize that I was not alone in that duress. Countless piano teachers through the years have tapped out rhythms beside and corrected notes on behalf of countless disinterested children who begrudgingly pounded out notes at their weekly lesson while a football that desperately needed throwing or a tennis racket that desperately needed swinging sat idly by in the closet. I'm told that scientific studies have revealed a microscopic, statistically insignificant number of kids who actually enjoyed the metronomic sadism, but I think that's probably an anomaly.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my teachers -- Mrs. Newman, who was a far too delightful of a woman to be subjected to the disinterest of people like me; Mr. Petty, who was nice enough to pick me up at some terrible hour of the morning before school and drive me to the studio. I won't hold it against him that he invariably expected me to actually practice in-between lessons, especially when the assignment was some "sonata" or "concertina" (you should have heard the sneer with which I could say those words!). Mrs. Newman, at least, had assigned me peppy little things like "Aqua Caliente."

No, it wasn't dislike of my teachers; nor was it, I suppose, any particular or focused distaste on the instrument, itself. Piano was abhorred more for the preferable alternatives it displaced than for its intrinsic revulsion. I'll never forget -- and indeed I make this claim quite literally -- the weekly experience of leaving track workouts early in order to get to a piano lesson. I could feel the derisive stares of my teammates burning a piano shaped hole in the back of my head.

So it was in the context of this resistance that my Mother, hoping to mitigate the damage, offered to buy me whatever music I wanted, in the prescient hope that if I liked what I was playing...I would actually play. Caldwell Music Company downtown had a great pop music section, and every now and then I would find a way to get there -- of my own free will -- and browse the racks.

I was recalling these experiences again last night as we enjoyed our way through the Jackson Browne solo acoustic concert at the Civic Center -- because Jackson Browne music was a frequent purchase. I have by now lost count of how many times I have heard him in concert -- with a band numerous times; by himself, now, a couple. He has been at it so long, and has written so many memorable songs, that who can blame him that, as he mentioned at one point early in the show, that he doesn't really make a set list; he just plays what he feels like and what people want to hear. So, he would study his rack of 16 guitars and pull out one that apparently represented a given song and pick his way into the music; or discern a single title from the assault of requests shouted out from the audience and move in that direction; or sit down at the keyboard and plunk his way into another.

And as if it were yesterday I remember pounding out most of these same songs -- actually practicing them -- in the fantasy that one day, just maybe, Jackson Browne would be passing through the area and something like a guitar case would slam on his hands rendering him unable to play, and a cry would go up to the masses, "Is there anybody out there who can possibly perform these songs." And I would be ready. I always pictured it something like the Prophet Isaiah's response to the call in the Bible: "Here I am, send me."

And I was ready last night. Sure, I would have been a little rusty, but I could have pulled it off had the need arisen. Like riding a bicycle, you never quite lose the feel of Doctor My Eyes, Running on Empty, and The Pretender. And the audience -- virtually a full house of cheering, adoring and appreciative fans -- would have had my Mother to thank.

Me, too.