best aftermath

the show last night
with pete best
was beautiful
and poignant
i found out
he played around 1000 shows with the beatles
in 3 years
a ridiculous amount

a lifetime's worth of gigs

i've been performing 17 years
and i'm only hovering around 700
it became even more obvious to me than before

why his ousting from the band

was so bitter

we got a chance to play to a lot of people

most of whom probably would never have heard

or seen us before

so that was cool
they were all very gracious
and complimentary

and seated

the noise played great
and i think we actually had one of our best
granada shows
the salimunist/mao posters were very popular

with the older beatle fans
which was funny
'cause the kids don't get the pun

pete was very soft spoken

and extremely polite

to tell the truth

most of the night

he looked dead tired
who could blame him?
they'd been up since 4:30am

to play on TV
he's in his mid-sixties

a man half his age would've been worthless

he played the drums for 2 hours

then signed autographs for 2 more

most of the time it looked like he could barely hold his pen

it was actually very touching
they're playing 27 dates in 30 days

not by comfy bus though
just a plain white van
pretty hard travelling even for younger men
i had to ask myself the question
"why's he doing this?"
maybe to get a slight taste of what he missed
all those years ago?
i guess nobody knows but pete...

at the end of the show the autograph line held almost

everyone who had attended the show
a bunch of people with multiple things made it slow going
drum heads
records
pictures
he even signed a guitar

we waited to the very end

and finally snapped a quick picture

with poor tired pete

who kindly perked up a bit when i told him my son

would someday get a kick out of this picture

bucks was talking to him about the talking heads

when jayme and i waved farewell

and headed off to get our little G

the end of another beautiful night