Journ-o-Lanterns

So, I'm singing my way through the half-hour commute this morning when it hits me: only two weeks until The Feeling. This isn't a countdown to any sort of tent revival, fertile moment, or theme party. In two weeks I'll see a live show from a band about whom I am more excited than I have been in a long, long time. The Feeling could count me as an über-fan from the first time I heard them on Virgin Radio UK. Part whiny Brit-pop, part Beatle-bred wonders...right up my alley. Plus, they sound dreamy *sigh*

In the past few years anytime I've fallen hard for a new musical love interest, it's been cursed from the word 'Go.' They either:
(a) break up the minute iTunes notifies them I'm on-board (The Libertines);
(b) tour as far away from Indy as possible, preferably across an ocean or two (Orson, Manic Street Preachers, Mika, Scissor Sisters);
(c) aren't huge enough to play a nice, roomy venue but are popular enough to sell out a theater before I can get tickets (John Legend).

This is another reason to be psyched about The Feeling: access. I can give Ticketmaster a few bucks, sway awkwardly for an hour or two, and then go home, confident that I had been part of something that legitimized me or the city where I live.

When I was growing up, my hometown screeched to a halt for one week every August and sponsored free, riverside concerts. If you sat in our front yard and held absolutely still, being careful to rustle your Teen Beat, you could almost rock out. And we almost did: to the Jets, Julian Lennon, the Beach Boys, and Taylor Dayne. We almost got rocked to our very core. And then we watched the top of some firework displays.

Access to [former] radio stars, backyard brushes with fame...I suddenly had an appetite for live music. To my kiddie mind, big names stopping through my West Virginia hometown legitimized our capital but not colossal city in. When the morning paper ran a palm-sized eagle (is that an eagle? has the rock landed?) trumpeting Journey's imminent arrival, I was jazzed. But I didn't ask my parents to take me. I didn't beg for 45s, a Journey Trapper Keeper, or a t-shirt. Frankly, I wasn't even that interested in Journey; I was pretty wee and am fairly sure I was still wearing out a hand-me-down vinyl copy of Free to Be, You and Me at the time. Still, I was so moved by the concert announcement--by the idea of big, bad Journey giving my hometown its stamp of approval--I set out to bring Steve Perry to life in tuber form.

When one aims to capture the lead Journeyman on a pumpkin canvas and one is not particularly artistically-inclined, one's options are few. So my Journ-o-Lantern started out pretty run-of-the-mill: triangle eyes, crescent moon eyebrows, first-grader gap-teeth. But then I added it's crowning glory. I fringed rows and rows of black construction paper and crowned the pumpkin. At the last minute I abandoned my original vision, courtesy of the "Separate Ways" video I kept seeing on Nick Rocks!, and added a yellow construction paper headband to tame any stray locks. Voila! Steve Perry.

So, what was I talking about? Oh, right. I sure like live music. I sure like The Feeling. But mostly, I think I just needed to get the Steve Perry thing off my chest.