Monday, August 4, 2008

Last year I watched Pearl Jam close out Lollapalooza online in the AT&T blue room. I’m not so sure that watching Kanye West will be the same fulfilling experience for me that Pearl Jam was, so I think I’ll find something to watch on regular TV. Of course, by regular TV, I mean any combination of Comcast cable and DirecTV. Surprisingly, even with all of those channels, sometimes I can’t find a thing to watch. My last gasp choices are HGTV and the Food Network. If they don’t have something that I don’t mind watching, then I sit in a darkened and stunned silence, and think about possibly reading a book, or just going to sleep. Maybe I’ll turn on the blue room just for the heck of it.

Okay, I just agreed to their terms of use and now I’m watching Blues Traveler jamming on what I believe must be the main stage but it’s hard for me to tell on my computer. I am surprised that Blues Traveler is still together. I thought the big guy got busted and was serving some prison time. Prison is always a good place to sharpen up your harmonica skills. I guess Blues Travel is a jam band, and that’s why I can only take a little bit of them at any given time. If I want to hear someone self-indulgently playing his or her instrument, I’ll just go down in the basement and fire up my electric guitar. There seems to be a rather large crowd watching Blues Traveler, so I’m sure I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Now I’m watching the Jon Butler Trio in the AT&T blue room. They are also on a big stage. Maybe that’s the main stage. I don’t know, I can’t keep it straight. Jon plays lap steel, banjo and guitar. He came out and dedicated his set to the “indigenous people of this land.” Does he mean the people who live in the condos on Randolph Street, the people at the Chicago Yacht Club or the homeless people on lower Columbus? I bet Jon Butler would really get ticked of if he found out he was playing so close to a street named after Christopher Columbus. Columbus, as we have learned, was not necessarily a friend of the indigenous people of any land. Heck, he was Italian and worked for Spain. He was all over the map, quite literally.