Making movies of themselves

Here are a few observations and impressions from last night’s Steely Dan concert at the Seminole Hard Rock Cafe.

• I had not realized that Hard Rock is a mall, a mall full of old people in bad clothes. Kind of like Aventura Mall.
• I don’t know if it is a sad commentary on me or the machines, but when I wasted a dollar on one of those incomprehensible video pseudo-slots, all I could think about was how amazingly bad the user experience was.
• People collect Hard Rock Cafe merchandise? I find something deeply unsettling about this. Do they also collect TGIFridays flair?
• As we walked past a middle-aged guy in a black polo shirt with a full head of well-groomed white hair we joked that he must be the president of the Michael McDonald Fan Club. Actually, we were wrong; it was Michael McDonald.
• I confess to being predisposed to like the show, since they opened with Bodhisattva, my favorite Steely Dan tune.
• The sound in the concert hall was terrible. Perhaps it was better in the more expensive seats, but in the upper back corner it sounded as though someone next door was playing Steely Dan albums really loudly, and the concrete was absorbing everything bit the mid-range. This particularly affected the vocals, which were often so muffled as to be incomprehensible.
• The band was tight, though, and the horn section was great.
• I stepped into the nosebleed lobby between the Michael McDonald set and the Steely Dan set. One glance around the room and I counted sixteen people playing with Blackberries, Treos, or other smart phones. There were also an awful lot of skullets in evidence, as well as plasticized women in halter tops. It’s also the only time I’ve been at a concert where the men’s room line was longer than the ladies’ room line.
• Michael McDonald was good, Steely Dan was better, and when he joined them for the second half of their set it was very good indeed. They playlist was an impressive reminder of how many solid hits they had, and a testament to the strength of the Brecker/Fagen songwriting team.

It was worth going, and I had a decent time, but before I go to another show at that venue it will have to be something for which I’m willing to shell out the big bucks.

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