Don McLean

I saw Don McClean yesterday. Not a huge star, but I thought it might be fun. It was fun. I never thought of him as a great singer. Yesterday confirmed it. No offense to him, but he just isn't. Had a little trouble with a few of the notes. OK, a lot of the notes. But that's fine.

Yes, he did American Pie. The long version is like 9 minutes. He did it all. He finished, the crowd went wild. They he asked, "Do you want to do it again?" Then he did it again. Not the whole thing, but like another 4 minutes worth. It is about Buddy Holly, which is clear as he did two or three Buddy Holly songs beside. He must have been a big fan.

Some of those lyrics make sense. I think some make sense when McLean explains them. And some are just meant to throw people off the track. I saw a list of top rock songs ever - one by the experts and one by the commoners. The experts picked "I Can't Get No Satisfaction". I think I've blogged about that before. How it is, in my estimation, one of the worst, not one of the bust. The verses have two or three different notes and the chorus has two or three different words. And the title is grammatically incorrect. Disqualified.

The commoners voted on "American Pie". Nice job bourgeoisie masses. (Had to look up the spelling for that.)

Overall the Rolling Stones have decent lyrics. All-time worst is the group America, who once admitted their main goal was to get things to rhyme.

And Oz never did give nothing to the tin man, that he didn't already have.
And cause never was the reason for believin', or the Tropic of Sir Galahad.

The Tropic of Sir Galahad??

Don also isn't real animated. Again, I'm fine with that. Least animated person I've seen in concert? Gordon Lightfoot. Walked on stage, sat on his stool for over an hour, then walked off. That was it. I was a ways back, so all I know is what I heard. He sounded great. He sounded just like Gordon. I've got to assume his fingers were moving while playing the guitar and his vocal cords were moving while he was singing, but he was pretty much a singing poster from where I was sitting.

I've seen all of those acts (except the Rolling Stones) and liked them all. Disregard the fact that I've just trashed all of them in one way or the other.