by Wayne Wood

Sharon looked like the proverbial cat that had eaten the canary. She was holding a newspaper open to the entertainment section and was brandishing her best Ms. Know-it-All smile.
“I know something you’re really going to want to do and I’ll bet you can’t guess what it is,” she said.
After a brief period of unseemly begging on my part, she showed me the listing in the paper: Al Stewart was going to play the Bluebird Café the following Monday night.
Right now I’m going to confess two things that clearly demonstrate that my days as a major league hipster are behind me:
Confession number 1: Al Stewart is one of my favorite musicians.
Confession number 2: I’m usually not out to midnight when I have to go to work the next day.
I’m sure the few of you who are still reading this are shaking your heads and saying, “Who’s Al Stewart?”
But not if you are about my age, which I prefer to think of as “halfway to 90.” Those of us who are halfway to 90 went through a two or three year period as teenagers when Al Stewart was big on the radio. In fact, one of his hits was called “Song on the Radio.” There was also “Time Passages” and “Nostradamus.” But the one Al Stewart song that we all can identify is “Year of the Cat,” the one that begins “On a morning from a Bogart movie/In a country where they’ve turned back time.”
Stewart’s penchant for literary lyrics and songs about historical events led Rolling Stone to once memorably call him “The Alastair Cooke of rock.” I’m pretty sure he is the only major performer who has written songs about both the Nazi invasion of Russia and Sir Thomas More.
And I’m a big fan of his. As you can tell, I’m really a rockin’ guy.
So, on the foggy and damp Monday night in question, Sharon and I were in line outside the Bluebird Café. Let me point out here that Sharon was there strictly to accompany me. There have been many times when we’ve been in the car and I’m turning up the volume on “Year of the Cat” while Sharon puts her hands over her ears in mock horror with the plaintive moan, “Noooooo! Not Al Stewart!”
We got in just a couple of minutes before the show began a little after 9:30. I don’t know if you’ve been to the Bluebird Café, but it’s a small club in a strip shopping center in Green Hills that holds, I don’t know, maybe a couple hundred people at most. This night it was jam packed, and Stewart casually stepped through the tables and onto the low stage and began putting on his guitar.
“This is a real hip and cutting-edge crowd, just like me,” I observed to Sharon, looking at the gray hair and Dockers-clad audience.
She rolled her eyes.
Stewart looked quite a bit older than the pictures on his albums from the ’70s, of course. There are some of us who do look older than we did in 1978. At least that’s what I’ve heard.
He cheerfully and affably greeted the crowd and began with a song about an aviatrix, “Flying Sorcery,” which I mention here not only because it is one of my favorite songs, but also because just once in my life I want to use the word “aviatrix” in a sentence.
He played for about 90 minutes, took a few requests, told some funny stories between songs. He generally seemed like a nice man who happens to be talented with words and music and who, to his surprise, had a few hit records a while ago. He was comfortable and entertaining, and generally provided one of the most enjoyable nights of music I’ve ever experienced.
Of course, I’m a big fan. The acid test was, Sharon, who likes him fine but is not a big fan, also had a great time. And she wouldn’t lie about it if she didn’t. We’ve been married almost 23 years; trust me on this.
I tell myself that there is plenty of contemporary music that I like. In the manner of fossils everywhere, I like to assure myself that I am not a fossil. But in a lot of ways this doesn’t seem like a good time for music. Two Beatles are dead, Warren Zevon is dying, and individuals lacking in talent, taste, and any discernable IQ go multiple platinum.
And I’m not just some old guy complaining. I’m a guy who was out so late on a work night that when we were driving home after the show, the traffic lights along Hillsboro Road were blinking, and we had Al Stewart playing in the car. “Time Passages.”