an evening to remember

as u may or may not have known this anchor is another year older (with still nothing to really show for it), and this year he got a treat that was over a decade in the making. back in my earlier years (around 7th grade) there was a musical troupe you may or may not have heard of that went by the name of primus. they are lead by les claypool who can only be described as the best bass player to walk the earth. over the years i have always wanted to see them live, but for one reason or another it never came to fruition, that was till this past week. i was approached by a dear friend last month who informed me (knowing of my great love for primus) that primus was touring and would be in the az area for an evening with just them playing only. "just primus for the nite" was my response. i couldn't believe it, a whole evening with just them. no openers or other things to get in the way of a great show. unfortunately for me i was short on the green (and i'm not talking green naugahyde their latest album). so it looked grim for my hopes of seeing them play live, but then that dear friend let me know a few days later that he was looking at purchasing a ticket for me. i couldn't believe it. there was no amount of thanks u i could give him and his significant other for making this dream come true (although i'm thinking i'm working in the thousands now and still going strong). so then came the waiting game. waiting for almost a month for the show to come. the day of show seemed to go crawl at a snail's pace, but then it FINALLY happened. my dear friend, his significant other & me got to the mesa amphitheatre around 7pm, and shortly after that nothing short of amazing happened. we stood right in front around the sound board area just outside the pit area. there was a dancing troupe of 4 ladies and a hesher wanna be guy dancing most of the show right in front of us, which ended up being almost as entertaining as the band. les played that evening with 3 different bass guitars during the course of the 3 hour show. words cannot describe how he plays those bass guitars. for several songs he brought out what appeared to be a homemade instrument that looked like a stand up bass with just 3 strings and he would pluck but also use a bow just like a cello. larry the guitarist was switching guitars after almost every song (most song would last 7-10 mins). the first set they played classics from their catalogue. then after an intermission they played green naugahyde in its entirety. after finishing up with that album. they left. knowing in advance that they play a 2 song encore we waited for them to take the stage again to complete the evening. they played a 2 song encore and, well i'm not sure cause we left towards the end of the 2nd song. that's part of the fun about getting older is knowing that traffic for a show like this going to be heavy so getting a head start is important. so that was my b-day this year in a nutshell. the only thing about the show that i would change was have them play a couple of my favorite songs they didn't get to. another year down and another thing i can mark off my bucket list. enjoy a video someone shot that evening with whats appears to have been taken with a camera phone.