Bandstand Stories

A Musical New Year

By Art Jacob

I guess its the old firehorse in me but there's no way I can hit the sack before midnight on New Year's Eve and I always get such a hoot out of listening to some rock band just prior to the drop of the peach.

This year some ditzy blonde was skipping back and forth in front of a couple of guitars and drums...apparently this was her sole talent. They dropped the peach, which actually looked more like a Squash with a thyroid problem , and that instant the guitars set off on "Auld Lang Syne" in more or less one key and the blonde kept cavorting back and forth while screaming the lyrics in ANOTHER key. This went on for an interminable time until they got to what should have been the bridge, but no one would venture into this uncharted area so they all just tapered off to nothing one by one.

It takes a pile of nerve to tackle an old folk song and screw it up that badly. New Year's eve used to be the climax to a musical year, now it's just a hollow mockery. In more than 50 years, big and small I've never heard such a mess in my life . Truly this was a golden moment in musical history.

Art Jacob is a retired bassist who worked with SJO many times over the years. He has settled comfortably into his new role of music critic.

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