Still they lead me back

    Paul McCartney came to town last night. Macca puts on quite a show, quite a show. He gave us 3 hours, or pretty nearly, which considering his age is dang astonishing. He also dedicated "The Long and Winding Road" to the people killed in Charleston last week, which struck me as brave, considering that it isn't entirely an optimistic song. Or maybe it seemed not to be way back when because it was the last Beatles single.
    He also performed "Blackbird" solo, saying that he had written in hopes of giving black people in the States in the '60s hope, which I had never heard and would have never guessed. I guess I wasn't of an age for penetrating metaphor yet. He played it beautifully on a forward stage that I don't think they used otherwise. (Claire, who was nice enough to give me the ticket, said that they did two or three songs up there, so I'll go ahead and believe her.)
    There were a lot of gaps, good and bad, in the playlist. I was surprised that he didn't play Get Back, Junior's Farm or any of the really awful stuff from the '70s. Considering where we are, a nice Hold My Hand/I Want To Hold Your Hand medley would have been in order, but no! As an exercise, you might want to make a Paul McCartney playlist. Great googly moogly he has a lot of songs! He missed many of my favorites, but I didn't feel in any way cheated.
    Otherwise, I just couldn't hold out on a bathroom break when Back in the USSR rolled around, so made my run. Since I was seated apart from the other three in the party and since it was very late and surely, I thought, he wouldn't be playing much longer, I decided to stand for the rest of the show. Trying to get back to our section, I went down rather than up. In the expensive seats, boy, they're quick to clear you off the stair areas. Up in the cheap seats, nobody ever bothered us, and people were on the stairs for the remainder of the show. I was really grateful to be there when Live And Let Die turned into a pyrotechnic spectacular. I held on to that railing hard!
    The other slightly weird thing was that there was free wi-fi that worked on the concourse but not in the seats. However, it did work right up to the steps and even a few feet into the arena. I don't know what that means. Since my phone worked fine, as far as I can tell, it isn't a Faraday cage. Go figure. I'll just plan not to download anything major at my next basketball game.