Chuck Berry

I live in Columbia, MO home of the University of Missouri. A downtown club here called The Blue Note hosts a set of (mostly) free concerts. Well, August 26, promised Chuck Berry. Of course it is always great to see a living legend. Especially since I am in the habit of blowing these guys off and then they die! Well, Chuck was very much alive, his voice was great but man his guitar playing was a lot like the Cheech and Chong sketch that features Blind Melon Chitlin'. It was like he was up there playing air guitar and then someone foists a guitar in his hands. It was so out of tune that if you walked in to an alley where the sound was distorted it would put the guitar back in tune. I thought surely this guy can hire a guitar tech. Seeing that beautiful Gibson hollow-body being violated like a couple of alley cats hard at it damn near ruined the experience for me. I did get to see him walk through The Blue Note and say hello to him. His handlers whisked him away pretty quickly. As far as I could tell, no one was peed on.