PPL
Wally Chapman
night. It was a charity gig, and they raffled off an 800 Suzuki, as
well as some other things; they also auctioned off some autographed
guitars and t-shirts.
The opening act was trio of reasonably weel-endowed young women who
apparently won one of the "Idol" spinoffs. They could sing and play
okay, but they had no stage presence aside from some choreographed moves
that probably looked fine on TV but didn't go over well in the
auditorium of the OU Shoemaker center. The lead singer tried, invoking
everything from a patriotic salute to "our veterans' and the virtues of
Budweiser (the tour sponsor) to invoke applause from the audience, of
whom about 80% were stoned/drunk/otherwise chemically enhanced, to
little or no avail. Sam, who is an ex-Ranger who dropped on Turkey
during the Balkan thing, opined that the singer could express her
gratitude in a physical fashion to our veterans if she chose, and he
would accept on behalf of all of us. I deferred, of course, to his
generous offer and offered myself as a fit recipient for similar
gratitude from her backup band. Our plot was foiled when the young
ladies left with the slide player after the show.
PPL was good, very good, and this incarnation of the group had two of
the original members. They played "Pickin' With The Devil", "Willin'"
and of course "Amy". The group varied between five and nine members, as
friends and former members joined for songs and horsin' around. They
had a tambourine player/backup singer who was probably born a decade
after they released their last album as a quartet (1976?) and was, I'm
sure, an accomplished musician/groupie. They were on for about an hour
and a half, which was long enough for Sam to fall in love with four
different women. The bass player is from the area, and he had his
mother come out to draw the winning raffle ticket. She got a bigger
round of applause than the first band did. All in all, it was a good
time, and cheap - twenty bucks for seats in the bleachers.
I thought about Graham Parsons when they were playing, and his ambition
to be the first cowboy rock star. Too bad he never got the chance.
Wally
Wally Chapman
He did, however, give us "Grievous Angel."
Wally