Where the hell can I get these suits!?

The worst thing about idolizing a somewhat obscure star of a musical genre that is hard to identify is there are few times that a concert is very easy to get to. My hero, Chris Isaak, is almost never in town, but rather in Austin, or his native California, or a couple other big cities (take a look at him; you KNOW he plays Vegas).

The BEST thing about it is the kinda thing that happened last night. I came home from rehearsal, and an exhaustive search for gas, and sat down to a dr pepper and 250 cds that needed to be put in my cd bible (it becomes ridiculous to call something that can hold 350 cds a cd "wallet"). I flip around, not expecting to find much, as it is 10 o clock.

Lo and behold, there is a PBS SpotLight concert featuring Chris Isaak. WOOHOO! says I, and settled in for about a half hour of good show.

Aside from the obvious musical taste, I idolize Chris Isaak because he is a SPECTACULAR showman. Wearing sequin jumpsuits has long been laughed at, but good god, he makes it work. He doesnt ever take himself too seriously. Speaking freely with the crowd between songs, he reminds me how much bands like Semisonic suck so much, live. He truly makes the audience feel as if they are there to experience something with him, not to worship him. You can really tell he admires his band (THE SILVERTONES, how cool is that!?) and looks at them as friends as well as mentors. They played good songs, including a few from his Baja Sessions album, a totally acoustic LP that I just bought and am right in the middle of being obsessed with. At one point, I was polishing and applying the weird decal-ey thing to my guitar, and I pulled it up and played along. Ah. How music soothes the savage beast.

My favorite part of the evening, however, was when the bass player and drummer began a riff that you knew was leading somewhere, but you couldnt identify quite where yet. (I love that) Chris steps to the microphone, and makes the following speech:

"Okay....I need everyone here who is with someone they deeply care about to raise their hands...yeah...keep em raised...I need to remember you all so I dont waste my time trying to hit on you after the show...ok, you people at home! There aint no one there with ya, go ahead, take off all your clothes. Its hot in yo house!....dont worry, Im wearing a sequin jumpsuit! That makes me like a government official. Rollie (the bass player), go ahead and step right up to the edge where they can touch ya...Ok, now, people at home....if you got ointment, use it.....now, take your body and just go ahead and press it up against the tv set....feel how cool and comforting that is? Its not a sexual thing, just a comfortable healing thing, between you and me...its just you and me now...."

He then launched into Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing.

I wanna do that someday.

PS: I wont tell the ENTIRE story, but I also remember watching him on Austin City Limits. During one of his little raps, he said the following:

"Now, if you guys really love me, we'll take y'all back to the hotel with us. It never goes quite as smoothly as planned. The first time you wake up spitting out sequins...man that's ROUGH."