C’MON, SCOTT! DANCE!
I’m a chair dancer. I love listening to music sitting down, for the most part.
That doesn’t “sit” well with some people at festivals. If I’m sitting, they think I should be standing. If I’m standing, they think I should be grooving. If I’m grooving, they think I should be moving my feet.
They espouse “different strokes for different folks,” generally speaking, but still believe their way of celebrating live music is better than mine.
I understand. They mean well; they do what they do with love. They think they’ve figured out how to reach nirvana tonight.
But we are all different, and we do things differently to get to that magical place.
Let me tell you about Alvin Lee. I’m not talking about our dear friend, guitarist and vocalist with the fabulous Lee Boys. I’m talking about Alvin Lee, the guitarist, vocalist, and frontman for Ten Years After, one of the brilliant rock bands from Britain, whose initial career spanned 1967-1974 with eight studio albums and two live ones. His solo career spawned another dozen albums, and TYA reformed several times as well.
Unlike many of his contemporaries such as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck (not to mention myriad guitarists since, and REALLY not to mention Lee’s bandmate bassist Leo Lyons), Lee stood stock-still when he played. He didn’t gyrate or spin around or dance or anything; he stood upright, right up until the encore, when he would actually rock back and forth. If you’ve seen him at all, most likely it was the last song of their Woodstock performance immortalized on film: “I’m Going Home.”
All of his emotion poured out of him through his facial expressions. A brilliant review in Rolling Stone back in the day described it thusly (and I’m paraphrasing, trying to recall the precise wording):
“He looks like he’s being jacked off with steel wool.”
No steel wool for me, thanks, but I do enjoy sitting in my chair.
And I love watching YOU dance!
