Red Kryptonite

Here's what I know; you can't wear the hippies out by putting them up on stage and letting them dance while you play. That only supercharges them. It's like Superman getting too much sun - he just gets out of hand. Not only that, but so many hippies dancing in such close proximity for so long could quite easily result in spontaneous hummus. (If you think you're going to name your hippie jam band "Spontaneous Hummus" now, please at least send me a Thank You card.)

Such was the scene last night when I went to see Los Lobos. It was a very interesting show. Things just kept happening. Los Lobos is home to my favoritest guitar player ever, and he was in a sort of destructive musical mood last night. It was awesome. He was generally trying to stir up trouble in the band by stretching out endings and segueing into songs that weren't on the set list, and he did this pretty much all night long. I think he was really just airing it out, so to speak. And good for him, I say. Glad I was there to see it.

They played for two solid hours. For the encore, he called a song the band had never played, told the other guitar player what to do, and launched into "Sunshine of Your Love", which they nailed pretty easily. So, again, while stretching out the ending of the song and generally just free-associating via awesome guitarness, he played a little bit of "My Generation", so he quick ends that song and tells the band they're going to play "My Generation", which they also quite nailed. The bass player knew all those little Entwistle bits in the middle there, and one of the band guys reaches over and just cranks the bass amp up for it. Like I was saying; all pretty out of hand.

They played "I Got Loaded" and the guitar player asks for "help from some friends for this one" and proceeds to pick out every hippie dance girl in the front of the audience and get them all up on stage to get their hippie groove on. This just worked all those gals into a massive hippie frenzy which resulted in nothing more than spontaneous muffin tops. I can tell you, hippies really seem to like this band. Actually, hippies like just about every band, don't they?

I kind of doubted that cameras would be allowed, so I didn't bother bringing one. All in all, it was a very odd and entertaining evening.