Elton John Recap

Know Your Medal of Honor Recipients:

Seaman Austin Denham (US Navy) received his Medal of Honor for his actions on April 12, 1872 on board the USS Kansas. His citation reads:

On board the U.S.S. Kansas near Greytown, Nicaragua, 12 April 1872. Displaying great coolness and self-possession at the time Comdr. A. F. Crosman and others were drowned, Denham, by heroism and personal exertion, prevented greater loss of life.

Sergeant John Henry Denig (US Marine Corps) received his Medal of Honor for his actions on August 5, 1864 on board the USS Brooklyn. His citation reads:

On board the U.S.S. Brooklyn during action against rebel forts and gunboats and with the ram Tennessee, in Mobile Bay, 5 August 1864. Despite severe damage to his ship and the loss of several men on board as enemy fire raked her decks, Sgt. Denig fought his gun with skill and courage throughout the furious 2-hour battle which resulted in the surrender of the rebel ram Tennessee and in the damaging and destruction of batteries at Fort Morgan.

Landsman Lorenzo Denning (US Navy) received his Medal of Honor for his actions on October 27, 1864 on board the US Picket Boat No. 1. His citation reads:

Denning served on board the U.S. Picket Boat No. 1 in action, 27 October 1864, against the Confederate ram Albemarle which had resisted repeated attacks by our steamers and had kept a large force of vessels employed in watching her. The picket boat, equipped with a spar torpedo, succeeded in passing the enemy pickets within 20 yards without being discovered and then made for the Albemarle under a full head of steam. Immediately taken under fire by the ram, the small boat plunged on, jumped the log boom which encircled the target and exploded its torpedo under the port bow of the ram. The picket boat was destroyed by enemy fire and almost the entire crew taken prisoner or lost.


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So here’s my little recap of the Elton John concert (or, what I like to call the AWESOME Elton John concert):

First, The Wife wanted our baby sitter to show up at 6:00. I said, “I think we should probably leave the house as early as we can… like 5:00”. The Wife said, “Really? The concert is at 8:00, I think we’ll be fine”. So I replied, “Jeremy said traffic gets real bad around there for concerts. He thinks we should leave as soon as we can. Like 5:00”. So The Wife says, “Ok, I’ll see if the babysitter can get here by 5:00”. The good news is Jeremy really did tell me that about the traffic… after I had that conversation with The Wife, but I think that still counts.

Anyway, we leave just a little after 5:00 and go have a nice romantic dinner at Chic-fil-A (because my cousin Louis, who writes what I assume is an annual blog about chicken, had some great things to say about the restaurant). After dinner, we parked in the Tanger Outlet parking lot and caught a shuttle bus over to the coliseum. I don’t really know the best way to tell this story so I’m just going to throw it out there. There weren’t a lot of people on the bus and those that were on were (and probably still are) white. We were about 3 rows back. On the way, one of the women sitting in front of us (I’d guess early to mid 50’s) asked the bus driver if he was going to sing. She followed this by saying to him and her friends/family who were with her, “You know, because he looks like Darius Rucker”. The Wife and I looked at each other and did the best we could to not laugh and/or shout to the bus driver that we were not with this woman. Why do I say this? Because this guy looked nothing like Darius Rucker. Well, to be fair, I guess that’s not 100% true… he did have 2 eyes, 2 ears, one nose and one mouth… and his skin was darker than mine if you catch my drift (he’s a black guy… if you didn’t catch my drift before). To his credit, the bus driver laughed and didn’t seem to think I was with those people. Anyway, we were one of the first in line (relatively speaking) and got to our seats a little before 7:00pm. We were sitting on the right hand side, on the floor (well, in chairs that were on the floor), in the second section from the front. Pretty good seats. I’m not sure if the pictures or video that I will post on here one day will do the seats justice… but I was happy with where we were sitting. While we were sitting there waiting, a nice (older-ish) lady sitting in front of us turned around and started talking. As you know, I’m not big on talking to strangers… but I didn’t mind this lady for some reason. This is what I remember her saying to us:

*It was her and her husband’s 28th Anniversary this Saturday. They decided instead of giving each other gifts, they’d go to their first Elton John concert.

*She didn’t know beer was sold at concerts.

*She followed this, though, by saying that she had been to “quite a few” concerts in her youth where you could get a lot more than beer.

*The Wife offered to help her find that kind of stuff at this concert. Ok, not really… but she did tell the woman she could probably still find that stuff at concerts these days.

*She said she once saw Ted Nugent swing out at a concert wearing nothing but a loin cloth.

By the grace of God, the show then started…

The opening act for the show was two cello players from Croatia who are also in the band (Elton John’s band… not The Band, who used to play for Bob Dylan, but that’s a different story). I know what you’re thinking: “Two cello players? Man that sucks”. It’s ok, I was thinking the same thing. But boy was I wrong. These guys were GREAT! They started by playing a little ditty from Michael Jackson that I like to call Smooth Criminal. After that, they played some U2 song. They followed this by playing Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit… at which point I got up and yelled to The Wife, “Grab your purse, we’re not sticking around for this crap”. Ok, maybe I didn’t say that… and it’s a good thing I didn’t because the next song was AC/DC’s Highway to Hell. Friends, you haven’t lived until you’ve had a chance to hear a couple of guys play these songs on cellos. I can honestly tell you that this was the greatest cello duo I have ever had the chance to hear and I dare say they may very well be the greatest in the world. For their last song, they started playing Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting while Sir Elton John and the rest of his band (again, not to be confused with The Band) came out on stage and joined in the fun. So that started the concert. The rest of the playlist went like this:

Bennie and the Jets

Grey Seal

Levon

Madman Across the Water

Holiday Inn

Tiny Dancer

Philadelphia Freedom

All the Girls Love Alice

Harmony

Candle in the Wind

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Rocket Man

I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues

Hey Ahab

Gone to Shiloh

Some song I didn’t know and didn’t hear the title to

Funeral for a Friend

Believe

Somebody Saved My Life Tonight

Honky Cat

Sad Songs

I’m Gonna Be a Teenage Idol

Daniel

Sorry Seems to be The Hardest Word

Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me

I’m Still Standing

The Bitch is Back

Crocodile Rock

Some of these songs he played back to back, but usually he would stand up after each song and take a short bow and walk around the stage waving/pointing at fans and yelling “Thank you!” After the last song everyone left the stage for a minute or so and then came back out. Sir Elton then walked around the edge of the stage signing autographs. When he was done with this, he sat down at the piano and talked about what a great crowd we were and how lucky he felt to be able to play in front of such great people and how they feel so grateful to be able to do what they do. He then dedicated the last song to me (or maybe to everyone in the crowd, I’ve heard it both ways).

Encore: Your Song

Let me tell you something you probably already know… this guy can flat out play the piano. Some of the piano solos were just mind blowing. His hands were moving over the keyboard with Jedi-like speed. Thank you to Sir Elton John for a wonderful concert.

My favorite text exchange during the concert was between me and Sonny:

Me - I don't want to understate this, but Elton John can flat out play the (Bleep) out of the piano.

Sonny - I'm almost that good.

Me - Yeah... And I can almost play Highway to Hell on the cello.

I didn't hear back from Sonny so I'm thinking one of 3 things happened.  1) He laughed and went about his night.  2) He got so mad that he started practicing the piano and ended up practicing all night long.  3) He laid down in bed and cried until he fell asleep.  Really, I think I'd be ok with any of those.


The I’m just sayin… Know Your South Carolina Athlete

The athlete we are going to look at today is my former James Island baseball teammate, Brett Spivey. Spivey was a two-sport star at James Island playing baseball and football, but we’re going to focus on his baseball. Brett was two grades behind me in school. He made the varsity team his Freshman year (my Junior year). I always thought that if I’d had a little brother, he would have been like Brett. Like me, Spivey threw right-handed but batted left-handed. He lived in the same subdivision as me, so I would give him (and Hudson, who I’m sure I’ll talk about at a later date) a ride to school every morning and a ride home from practice every night. He started in left field and was our leadoff batter his first season as he helped us win the State Championship over Riverside. As we started our pre-season practice the next year, Coach Hatley came to me to ask who I felt should play Short Stop. Our starting SS (James) from the previous season wasn’t going to be on the team due to grade issues, so we needed to replace him. James had been a great defensive SS, but I had never really felt 100% comfortable with him there. You see, the SS and the second baseman have to be able to communicate and work together well. We had a great year… but I never really knew what he was thinking. And because of that, I never really felt comfortable with him there. I knew Brett had come up playing SS/2B, so when Coach Hatley asked me who I’d pick between Brett and another guy, I said Brett. I’m pretty sure if such records were kept, you’d see that Brett probably set (or came close to setting) the record that season for errors by a SS. But man we had a great time. I mean it was fun. And I give him a hard time about the errors, but he did make a lot of great plays as well. He spent most of the year as a lead0ff batter but there were times when Coach Hatley would put him somewhere else in the order. That summer we ended up playing American Legion together. I can remember one game at North Charleston when we turned about 5 double plays. The bad news is we were still getting beat. Well, it’s getting late in the game and the bases are loaded so Coach Cadden tells the infield to play in. Brett yells into the dugout that we’re going to play double play depth in the middle. You have to understand that I was raised to do what the coach says to do… without question. So when Coach Cadden said to play in, I played in. What happened next was we had 3 guys (first baseman, me and the third baseman) playing in while Spivey was playing at double-play depth. Spivey is yelling at me to play back while Coach Cadden is yelling at Spivey to move his ass in. I’m stuck between looking at Spivey with a shocked look while also trying not to laugh. I don’t remember what ended up happening but I’m pretty sure we lost the game. It was stuff like this that made some people think Brett was just a goof-off who didn’t really care about the game. Fact is, he was one of the most competitive guys on the team and he knew a lot more than he let on. He was also a great teammate. After I graduated, we kept in touch via letters (yep kids, no email or facebook at the time… email had at least been invented but who the heck could afford a computer, much less the internet?). After he graduated a couple of years later we lost touch. I did follow him through the newspaper as he was playing baseball (in the outfield… guess I got that one wrong) for the College of Charleston. Before I forget, I can tell you beyond a shadow of doubt that Brett was the best baseball player in the area his senior year at James Island. Too bad for him most people had already decided years before that that Drew Meyer was the best player of that class in the Lowcountry, so I never felt Brett got that credit he deserved that season. Anyway, Spivey went on to play at the College and had a pretty good career there. I would like to give you stats and all of that, but because of the concert I didn’t have enough time to do the research. If you really want to know, I’m sure you can go to the CofC website and try to look it up there. But really, you probably know more about him now based on what I just told you than you’d ever find out through stats. I think he could have played at the next level but he wasn’t as tall as scouts like outfielders to be. Maybe that wasn’t their only reason, but it’s the only one I can think of. I can assure you he was at least good enough to get a shot in the Minors. Oh well…