Saturday night

On Saturday night, three friends and I went to see Stevie Nicks in concert.  That's a sentence I've said or written many times in my life.  There are only a few bands or musicians that I have continued to follow from the time of discovering them and Stevie Nicks is certainly on that list, fittingly only behind Fleetwood Mac. So, when she comes through Houston, I am in the audience. This time, I got lucky because I purchased my tickets with points from my American Express card. And the tickets I purchased?  In the pit, which consists of six rows before the regular seating begins. Our seats were perfect and, to my delight, I discovered that the pit is also air-conditioned.  The venue is an outdoor venue and with the 100+ degree heat we've had lately, I assume the AC is for the benefit of the performers but we appreciated getting in on that little bit of temperature heaven.



The moon was full and the sky clear, lending a bit of magic and excitement to air. I didn't think I could get more excited than I was as we were walking into the venue but that moon put me over the top!



At several of the concerts I've recently attended, the rule on cameras has been not to allow cameras with interchangeable lenses. Fair enough, right?  As my friend said, there has to be some give somewhere because it's not as if they can take everyone's cell phones away. In the pit, however, cameras were strongly discouraged. And it was the job of a couple of people on the event staff to tap any would-be photographers on the shoulder and request they not take photos. I'm always up for a little hide and go seek with the camera police at concerts, and I'm happy to say that not once last night was my shoulder tapped.







She sang her heart out for her audience. She spun and twirled and wrapped her cape around her body, playing up her mystique to the delight of her fans. I know of no one else who receives such applause for simply twirling but its her trademark move and fans, including me, delight in it. She spoke to her audience, explaining songs and telling stories, and she expressed her gratitude after the applause died down. She's a gracious performer and truly the lady can rock. This concert was more about Stevie the writer and she included several of her new songs and kept the true gems from her previous albums.  It was less about the Welsh Witch, ribbons and costume changes, though when she came out with her gold cape before launching into Gold Dust Woman, the audience went nuts. As usual, I sang out loud right along with her, from the opening song, Stand Back to her new, For What It's Worth. I cried all through Landslide, swayed to Rhiannon and rocked out to Edge of Seventeen. It was quite a concert, such an extraordinarily fun evening of rock and roll.