I Watched Al Green

Al green laid down, writhed on the stage, and sang the title track off his newest album, Lay It Down. The Ottawa Jazz Fest show was an outdoor performance, and the weather was pleasant. Directly in front of the stage people sat in lawn chairs, but on the flanks were sections "reserved for dancing" filled with sing-alonging twenty-somethings. A couple swayed, and a blonde girl beside me hummed between hits off her joint.

This was the second stop in my own personal mini-tour. I'm trying to see as many of the 60s and 70s RandB singers I can before it's too late. Last month was Smokey and next month, in Motown, it's Aretha. I missed out on Gladys who played Casinorama a couple weeks ago and James Brown who died before his scheduled Toronto show last year. And of course I missed Michael.

Al Green still had it despite his 70 years. He came out in a sharp dark suit and a red vest that matched the roses he tossed out to the crowd. Prime Al was all about pop music sex and gospel music celebacy and the resulting conflict. But this Al Green seemed above this contradiction. He sang "Love and Happiness" and "Let's Stay Together" with this grin that seemed to mean "I get it, I get how sex and god make sense." Sure, he danced and his good looks were still there, but, it looked to me, everything was smoothed out with by that wisdom that comes with age.

I'm almost glad this was the al green I got to see, and not the young man who inspired so much passion. He was, after all, doused with hot, boiling grits by a scorned woman. Both he and Smokey are examples that artists can emerge out of their creative primes intact. I used to think it had to do with the genre, the purity of Motown. Maybe all those songs about love and happiness, the booty shaking bass lines were restorative.

Of course, besides these examples, these guys with their quiet nostalgia, there are the ones who crash and burn up. Who die a bit too young and publicly.

Michael Jackson segue: My first, clearest memory of Michael was that Thriller video. At my old house, the red-bricked semi-detached where I spent my first years. My uncle would press play on our Beta and those line-dancing zombies sent me scurrying around the staircase and out of sight. Then my uncle would laugh and press stop and tell me it was ok to come back. And I did. Then he played it again.