Rose State Community College Performing Arts Center - Monday August 16th, 2010



My first time ever seeing Gordon Lightfoot, the 72 year old Canadian hippie-like, folksy, pop, and always precise musician (of about 6 chords) was a treat to finally see. He’s Canada’s National Treasure as John Prine is to America. Certainly a diversion from a long hot Oklahoma summer. Finally seeing the legendary Gordon Lightfoot was a thrill and an honor.

I think Lightfoot’s music is in his own genre, truly unique. He brings you into his life and shares his emotions and experiences on a personal and often spiritual level. We all felt like we were seeing an old friend again and catching up on our lives.

The music was well done and expectedly a tight performance with the experience they have together as a band. He started with Triangle and ended the show with a short encore of Blackberry Wine, in between were all the other songs you’d hope to hear from him with his 5 piece band. Carefree Highway, Sundown, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, If You Could Read My Mind, Don Quixote, and Let It Ride. I was especially moved by his singing a song he told us he wrote after his first wife left him with their kids and moved to Europe, a song called If Children Had Wings.

Some of his songs he played short versions of, I guess to squeeze in more songs. I was a bit disappointed that the show was not louder but in such an intimate setting it didn’t really matter. The show was at Rose State CC in OKC which probably seats about three thousand people. The Okie crowd is always subdued, clapping on cue and ending on cue otherwise quiet and orderly but this was not a foot-stomping in-your-face kind of show. I guess I’d been conditioned by so many rock shows that this one calmed me down a bit in expectations.

It was fine show and a great evening for all who attended.

Tour info:

http://pollstar.com/resultsArtist.as...earchBy=gordon lightfoot

Gordon's website:

http://www.lightfoot.ca/

Hi MiddleEarthling ,

gad, well there's a blast from the past!! I remember Gordon Lightfoot when I was young living in Canada, what a voice, what lyrics, although I am into a lot of different music as an adult, I will always love this man...........thanks for putting that up, trotting off to youtube now to reminisce

Well hello hat lady! Thanks and you're welcome...I really enjoyed the show and I have never stopped listening to him..Carefree Highway was always on the CD's I gave out to friends and family. Who could NOT like his music, you know? Eh?..lol.

He is a living legend and his music will last forever...and a day.

Gordon Lightfoot - If You Could Read My Mind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2DjqB0SO9M&feature=related

Love his music!

Love your profile...thanks for taking care of our animal friends.

Sundown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOOs-MqDOI0

Hi'
'Early morning Rain' and '***** Willows, Cattails' always make me mellow, he is a great singer, heck I probably like a lot more but those two spring immediately to mind, as for 'If you could read my mind' that's a core meltdown track!
'Hat Lady' *tee hee* I suppose I 'asked' for that!

If you can't jam out to "Sundown", then you are not human!

He played that too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP_MDIYhPH0&feature=related

Love the Hat! Why are all my kindred spirits always in the UK? I feel stuck in Middle Earth...but obviously making the best of it.

We got BB King with Al Green and Buddy Guy in a few weeks!

Thanks for counting me as one of your kindred spirits 'Stuck in Middle Earth', not a bad place to be

btw what do you think of the Gordon Lightfoots' cover of Roberta Flacks', 'The First Time....', personally, he captures the song in a way I have NEVER heard before, truly moving and beautiful..........()

WOW, DL'd that one...very nice one I had not heard! Will have to share that one soon...lol. oops, you may have gotten me laid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5X8cn4zzA8

I love Roberta Flack....a fellow Tarheel(Black Mountain, NC) she's in Japan right now...hope she comes close when she get's back to the mainland. If you haven't noticed yet I am a concert junkie.



http://www.pollstar.com/resultsArtist.aspx?ID=19666&SortBy=Date&SearchBy=roberta

No, I hadn't noticed at all that you are a 'Concert Junkie' , nothing like hearing music live to gage whether bands need the studio or not, Muse imo, really do produce the same sound live as they do on CD.....btw Gordon and Roberta have that effect on people don't they

I bought a best of CD about a yr ago....love it.


Too bad I wasn't paying attention, he played Michigan in June

Nah, I am more about experiencing the artist's live performance to connect with them and their music. To feel what they convey from their lives and the reasons and meanings behind the songs. It's not important that they try to sound like the studio recordings (to me).

Sometimes you can be half way through a Dylan song before you can tell what song it is...shucks, I once finally heard Dylan do Tangled Up In Blue live and he left out my favorite verse from it...lol.

"She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe
"I thought you'd never say hello," she said
"You look like the silent type."
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century.
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin' coal
Pourin' off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you,
Tangled up in blue."

That's OK Mr. Zimmerman,...Good to see you again...lol.

Yeah, I've see maybe 300 shows with a thousand acts overall. It' my thing...

You said the same thing about Debbie Gibson's Shake Your Love.

That's a lot of shows! But the missing verse didn't spoilt your enjoyment of the concert, did he have more songs in his set where he remembered all the verses?
I have seen my share of bands over the years, for me I have to hear them live if I have heard them on the radio/CD and liked them, I want to hear if the studio made them sound good or they really are that good. It just irks me when some bands get used to the studio and forget the live show.

Well of course not...saw Dylan a few months back in Tulsa and he doesn't miss a word or verse now...mainly because he plays onljy keyboards and has all the lyrics prints on top of it...lol...last month Robert Plant used cheat sheets on the floor, even stopped one song he screwed up...did I mind?, hell no!, it was an honor to see him again.

One band that goes to great lenghts to do their material well live is Pink Floyd...well Roger Waters in '08, (it was '94 since I last saw the other Floyd.) Got The Wall in November at Dallas...can't wait for that one.

Ya gotta remember that live they can't dub like in the studios. Gotta take it at face value.

Read Lightfoot's show review for Grand Prairie, TX, the writer took a cheat shot about Gordon's voice not being as it used to be....what a dick huh? He's like 72? Excuse me? He sounded ok to me for that age...and again, to see him still doing it so well was incredible and entertaining.

*ahhhhh* to take a band at 'face value' defeats, imo, the sound they are putting out on the CD. Led Zep (I can accept RP and GF don't hit the high notes like they used to because of age and many performances!Yep, the critic/writer was a 'dick' ) BUT bands like Muse, from the recordings to the venue, sound the same, Hawkwind from recordings to the venue sound the same....so when a band takes to the stage and you have certain expectations, to be let down by the live performance.....
example: Ladyhawke......great on CD........awful live, imo!!

Gordy!!! your right he is a national treasure...I grew up very close to his hometown. He is much loved

Intersting I grew up close to his hometown also