Oblada

I was at the McCartney concert on Tuesday night.  Donna had scored two tickets from a friend of hers who had mistakenly bought the tickets for a day when she would be out of town.  So there we were with about thirty thousand others in Fenway Park going back in time.

I rarely have gone to concerts since my college years.  When I have, it has been in small venues.   For birthday gifts I saw Joan Baez about twenty years ago, and Judy Collins about ten years later. Both were in spaces that held fewer than 500 people.  Friends invited us to hear the The Manhattan Project a short time before COVID and that too was in a small venue.

Watching McCartney in Fenway Park was something else entirely. Some observations

• We were seated in very good baseball seats. Behind home plate several rows up.  He was on a stage set deep into center field.  You could not see him. If you matched up the blown up image on the screen, and then glanced at the stage you could maybe make out which of the performers was McCartney, but otherwise it was like watching a movie of a performer.
• He's still got it.  The man will be 80 in nine days, and when he sang songs with which I'm familiar, he sounded to me like the same guy on the records.
• I had not been to Fenway Park since before COVID.  We drove in, parked near Northeastern, and walked to the venue. Since it had been a while I was not quite sure when we got to a particular junction which way to go.  Then I saw a cluster of gray and bald headed people ahead of us, and I knew we were on the right route.  
• We were seated next to people who had bought the tickets in part to celebrate the man's 80th birthday.  He was not an outlier.  Lots of folks collecting social security for years in the stands.  A majority.  There were some young 'uns, but the crowd acted like the Ed Sullivan audience in 1964--just sixty years later.
• I typically don't like to sing or hear others sing along with the crooner.  It did not bother me on Tuesday particularly when he sang Beatle songs.  And if it bothered me, it was tough luck because everyone was banging out the lyrics.  Some attendees were getting up and dancing spontaneously at some junctures.
• The place was jammed--any worries about COVID in that group were not apparent. We brought masks, but mine remained in my pocket. Donna wore hers but only for short intervals. Maybe there was one percent of the audience wearing them.
• The promoters told us that the show would start at 630. It really didn't. Some piped in music with pictures of the Beatles and McCartney were displayed for an hour.  When he came on at about 730, he did not stop for two hours, before we left, and from what I understand continued for about 40 minutes afterwards. The guy is pushing 80, looked on screen like he was fifty, and performed as if he had the energy of a young man.
• He gave a number of shout outs to George and John. And the crowd responded energetically to these references.
• The people to our left went to get food and drink before the show started. The guy came back with two cans of beer while his wife was buying food.  He leaned over to me, showed me the two cans of a nothing special beer, and said "Twenty Three bucks."
• McCartney said he knew that the audience wanted to hear Beatle songs but he interspersed some new ones and Wing numbers as well. They, the non Beatle songs, did not get the same kind of response.  Band on the Run and Live and Let Die were appreciated.  However, it was I've Just Seen a Face, Something, Obladi Oblada, Lady Madonna, and the other Beatle numbers that revved up the crowd the most.

Like the lyrics in the song: life goes on, la la how the life goes on.  He brought a lot of the past back for me.  The apt name of his concert tour is Get Back.