{"id":25276,"date":"2019-11-10T11:35:24","date_gmt":"2019-11-10T17:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=25276"},"modified":"2019-11-11T10:02:07","modified_gmt":"2019-11-11T16:02:07","slug":"the-polite-fiction-of-janet-evra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/10\/the-polite-fiction-of-janet-evra\/","title":{"rendered":"The Polite Fiction of Janet Evra"},"content":{"rendered":"

I might have mentioned<\/a> that I have an aunt who might be terminally ill in St. Charles. I have been remiss in visiting the St. Louis area and seeing her in the last ten years since we bought Nogglestead–I might have been back only two or three times–so I have been inventing excuses to drive to St. Louis as she would disapprove of me making the trip solely to visit her.<\/p>\n

A couple weeks ago, the family and I traveled to see our first Blues game as a family.<\/p>\n

This week, my polite fiction was that I was going to see Janet Evra<\/a> perform.<\/p>\n

I just happened to visit my aunt for coffee and<\/em> with my brother, who up to see my aunt at the same time.<\/p>\n

“Are you really going to see this jazz singer?” my other aunt, the caregiver, asked.<\/p>\n

I did.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it has taken my aunt’s illness to shake me out of weekends of doing the same old, same old martial arts-book signing at ABC Books-nap-chores-dinner-reading-church-nap-football\/chores-dinner-workweek cycle that has seemingly consumed a better part of the last decade. That oversimplifies it, but honestly, when I look back at what I’ve done lately, that’s what I see.<\/p>\n

At any rate, Evra played two sets, about two hours, in a coffee house<\/em> with seating for about thirty–and those seats were full. It seems odd to me to see her in a coffee house–I mean, in my coffee house days<\/a>, I saw a lot of coffee house musicians, and I even got a CD from one later, but in this case, I’d heard the artist on the radio and got her CD and then saw her in a coffee house which seemed backwards. Unnatural<\/em>. As though by CD and radio time, artists should be playing halls. The Focal Point at least (although I have not been to the venue since it moved from Webster Groves because Memories<\/em> part of Coffee House Memories<\/em>).<\/p>\n

She played a couple of oldies jazzed up (“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” and, I hate to say it, Blondie’s “Call Me” is an oldie), a couple of pieces from her album (“Paris”, “You or Me”), and many selections in French and Portuguese (including “Agua de Beber”) and assorted Sambas (“The Girl from Ipanema”).<\/p>\n

I enjoyed it, needless to say.<\/p>\n

So, Brian J., how’s your concert musical balance<\/a>?<\/em> you might ask. Well, gentle reader, my concert going tends toward septuagenarians (Gordon Lightfoot, Herb Alpert), women my wife likes (Dar Williams, Mary Chapin Carpenter), and jazz. I don’t go to many metal concerts because, to be honest, metalheads intimidate me, whereas I am pretty sure I can best one or more jazz concertgoers in unarmed combat. Which is a misconception that will likely lead to a future butt-kicking by a septuagenarian at a jazz concert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I might have mentioned that I have an aunt who might be terminally ill in St. Charles. I have been remiss in visiting the St. Louis area and seeing her in the last ten years since we bought Nogglestead–I might have been back only two or three times–so I have been inventing excuses to drive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25276"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25280,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25276\/revisions\/25280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}