re: [Harp-L] Bonfiglio, Buddy G and the sociology of the

[martin oldsberg <martinoldsberg@xxxxxxxxx>]

>I once saw Jerry Lee Lewis at Carnegie Hall....and he opened with a Chopin's
>Prelude in E minor (op.28 No.4) . The Killer playing Chopin!!! LOL The
>contrast was hilarious and the audience "got it". He gave it a good shot and
>had fun doing it. I think he's great, but he´s no Horowitz
 
Steve caught Jerry Lee on a good night. He was a bit more rustic when I saw him. It was many a year ago now, but memory lives.
  Already after the opening act had finished you could see that his set was off to an interesting start when two assistants carried the main attraction onto the stage and placed him on the piano stool. 
  It was obvious that Mr Lewis had had a tipple, or 18, in his dressing room before the show.
   He swayed precariously to and fro a bit, but after a while seemed to become clear of his role in the evenings entertainment and started to play, mumbling lyrics in a sluggish way.
  A few slow country tunes later you could sense some frustration in the Swedish audience, many of whom had dressed up in their best ´50´s gear and clearly expected this to be an evening when there was a whole lotta shakin´ goin´ on with their rock ´n´roll hero. But not so. Nobody had informed him that country is something of an anathema here, but probably that would not had made any difference. 
  After a while, however, "The Killer" (did he get that name from killing his wife?) started some more intense left hand jabbing on the keyboard and was immediately rewarded with enthusiastic cheers from the audience.
  This died down and turned to discontented whistling when he took on the next country song. The Killer, unperturbed, let this pass, soporifically crooning about what had made Milwauke famous.
  Then another rocker. This time he got in to it, and after a while stood up on shaky legs --there was gonna be some shakin´after all! -- and proceded to bang his posterior down on the piano. Crowd loved it.
  Then he perceived the proximity of his rear end to the microphone and you could see an idea dawned upon him. He took the mic and placed it to his rectum and blew off a healthy fart. He chuckled a bit to himself and sat down, almost missing the piano stool, finished the tune and then took up another, even slower, country song, now longing for another place, another time.
  At this point you could see several in the audience giving one another incredulous looks and quite a few appeared to share Mr Lewis´ longing. Some of the philistines even wrinkled their noses on this kind of entertainment and left the hall.
  I, being a bit of a culture vulture with only a mild interest in finding rock solid bottom in the show biz world, must say I toyed with the idea myself, but decided to stay on, mainly based on the "where do we go from here?" premise. So I hung in there.
  All in all, his set was, if not sweet, short. He got help off the stage as well.
  There were no encores.
Cheers,
Martin