A very short distance from my house, just inside Prospect Park up at the end of the block, is the 9th Street Bandshell. Every summer it is home to the Celebrate Brooklyn concert series, and it seems that each year the lineup gets better and better.
Tonight the lovely Nina and I strolled up there to see Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, a bluesy rock band from Vermont with roots in the late Sixties, and they were absolutely stupendous.
Frank Zappa famously said that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, so I won’t say much here; anyway, I’m still recovering.
But: damn, can that woman sing. Holy crap.
On the table next to me is a book I just got hold of today: Does Life Have A Meaning? It’s by the late philosopher Milton Munitz, whose son Charles, also a philosopher, I got to know just recently. The subject is one that occupies a great deal of my waking attention. Tonight’s performance reminded me that if life does have a meaning, it probably has something to do with music.
If Grace Potter and her band are playing anywhere within mailing distance of where you live, go see them.
One Comment
Without taking anything away from Saint Francis, let’s not forget what Sri Chinmoy said: “next to silence, music is that which best expresses the inexpressible.”