"John," I said.
"John, get your ass on up here" said Polly, and I hopped on stage and grabbed a mike.
I put an F harp behind a blues number in C, did some back-and-forth with the lead guitar, and took them by surprise by taking a solo--the dance crowd ate it up. Played a few more numbers, shook some hands, and blended back into the crowd.
Now it's early the next morning and I'm sitting on a bench with a cup of fast-food coffee,a tin of rolled cigarettes, and three hours sleep under my belt; barefoot in sweat pants and a cutoff, looking out over the Methow River at a hang-glider in the distance.
It occurs to me that I made some serious wrong choices back down the line by not giving myself over to music.
II.
I almost didn't hear anything hotter than those five hot ladies. As good as they both were, John Lee Hooker Jr. didn't top them, and neither did Charlie Musselwhite. But then came Eric Burdon and a handful of musicians he calls the Animals, and they blew everyone away.
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