Today was also a "bridge," so to speak, from last weekend's Big Ears festival back to "normal" (whatever that is), day-to-day life. The festival officially ended Sunday, but on Monday morning I still woke up in a Knoxville hotel, and much of the day was spent driving back home - not "normal," day-to-day activities. Tuesday would have been "bridge" day, but it rained all day and I stayed indoors, foregoing my usual routines of grocery shopping and walking exercise. Today, I finally put the shorts and sneakers back on and got outside and got my miles and steps in, and restocked my pantry with low-sugar, low-carb foods for my new, pre-diabetic diet.
I've made a lot of friends at Big Ears over the years and part of my attraction to the festival is getting together with the community of "strange" music lovers. One of those friends is a gentleman from the UK who flies to the US every year just for the festival. I've known him for three years now. In the course of our conversations, we realized that back in the late 1970s we were both at the same Art Ensemble of Chicago concert at Jonathan Swift's in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What are the odds of two people, one from Redding, England and the other from Atlanta, Georgia, going to the same concert at Jonathan Swift's, a tiny nightclub tucked away in New England, and then meeting some 45 years later in Knoxville, Tennessee?
Today, that fine gentleman drop-boxed me 2¼ hours of FLAC files from his tape recording of that AEOC show. I'm listening to it now and can attest that it's the "real deal." He apparently recorded it straight to cassette from his table (back in the day, one sat at tables with waitress service at clubs), but the quality is remarkable for what it is.
Oh. Big Ears, you keep on surprising!
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