What's Up Now

I was in Orlando Florida spending some time with family and got a chance to check out Earth, Wind & Fire at Universal. I go way back to the 70's as a devoted follower/fan of EWF so the opportunity to catch this show wasn't passed up. What was interesting to me was the fact that, I have such wonderful memories of the breath taking shows the group performed when Maurice White lead and toured  with them, but these memories didn't interfere with my enjoyment of what the present group had to offer. I didn't try to do a comparison of the old to the new.

Yes, the show has been scaled down from the years of pyrotechnics, like the huge flame thrower which shot fire into the air directly after the robed announcer announced, "Presenting; Earth, Wind and Fire". I remember the flash and heat driving the unsuspecting audiance in the front of the stage back like a chorographed human wave. It was fun. I remember Bassist Verdine White taking a solo while being hoisted into the air, giving the appearance of him walking in the air above the stage. A friend of mine told me, after that show, that he had come back into the arena while Verdine was "walking in space" and totally freaked out thinking he was having another kind of experience, which I won't describe here. I saw EWF members come out of pyramids, cylendrical tubes, disappear in smoke and blow up in metal boxes into thin air, but through all of this my ears were treated to great music.  Great music then and great music now. The Earth, Wind & Fire standard.

At the Universal show, even the faces of some of the touring musicians we have come to know like Mo Pleasure or Sony Emory have changed, but original members, Philip Bailey, Verdine White and Ralph Johnson still headline the show, keeping this great music alive. I stood there with a smile on my face as I listened to song after song, hit after hit and loved every minute of it.

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Here it is!! After promising and promising, I finally got it done, so there!! Now after waiting and waiting...you need to read it and oh yeah there will be a quiz, so paaaay attention. Ah, just having fun. Honestly, I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had putting it together and I know you Hartford musicians will relate to this. After checking out the interview, you can leave a post here.

http://www.lionelcrawford.com/innerviews_rolandcarter.html

Lionel

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I uploaded the song "The Journey " from the CD on my home page. You can go there t ohave a listen. http://www.lionelcrawford.com/home

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