After a day of selling my life away and dickering with old women on the price of board games, I was in need of a refreshing beverage and some live music. My brother S had strongly recommended that I go see Junior Brown who was playing here last night, but I have been feeling the need lately to do things unique to St. Louis as much as possible before I leave. The Live on the Levee music series was happening last and we have never gone, so I asked K if she wanted to go down and see Pete Yorn. I usually don’t like going to events with such huge crowds, but since I have a soft spot in my heart for Pete and his magnificent head of hair, I was willing to go check it out.
The humidity broke this weekend so the night air was perfect. The stage was situated right in front of the Mississippi River so the performers faced the large staircase that led to the Gateway Arch. It really is a perfect setting for a summer concert.
I was going to title this post “St. Louis Likes Free Things” but thought instead to use some lyrics to a PY song. The reason I say that St Louis likes free things is because I was shocked at the number of people that had come out for the event. As I climbed the top of the stairs to take some pics of the stage below, there were people passed out on blankets on the grass under the arch oblivious of what was going on below, and lots of people my dad’s age, who wouldn’t be coming to The Pageant to see this same show if it had a ticket price. The crowd was enormous.
Pete put on an excellent show. He said it was their first night of their tour and he was happy to be in St. Louis and loved his view from the stage. He ran through a lot of songs from all three albums but leaned closely to his first. As usual, he also peppered in some covers like Warren Zevon’s Splendid Isolation and The Smith’s There is a Light that Never Goes Out.
After he performed, we sat on the Arch steps and watched fireworks accompanied by tunes of local celebrities like Chuck Berry and who could forget---Head East! We sang along and then called it a night.
When I got home later that night, I had Harrah’s Lucky Break on as I wrote some posts for the blog. If you live in St. Louis and you have not seen this show, you have got to see it. It’s a karaoke contest hosted locally at Harrah’s casino and it’s a trainwreck. They cut into the programming to report that due to a power outage there were 200 people stuck in the Gateway Arch. We were right there and had no idea. When the reporter on the television was talking to a guy that was stuck at the top, she asked him how they were doing and he said, “We ain’t doing anything. There ain’t no fireworks to watch now”. I felt bad laughing having been up in that thing and thinking about the panic attack that I would be having if it were me, but you just never know how redneck someone is going to say on live television. --J
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