19 Jul 1997 Wellingford

I can’t quite describe the feeling of sitting in there in the darkness and hearing those evil opening chords of Born on the Bayou, the crowd going wild, and then the lights coming up on John and his band. I’ve never seen a performer so clearly enjoy what he was doing - the looks on John’s face throughout the show were priceless.

What a surreal experience it was to finally see John playing his own songs. And I mean playing - he tore into each Creedence song with a sense of urgency, sounded like he was playing for his life, and in a way he was. It was also surreal in the sense that living in small towns most of my life, I have seen every second-rate bar/wedding/garage band cover every CCR song possible, but to finally get it from the horse’s mouth was just too much. John pressed more flesh at the stage’s edge than Elvis probably did in an average show.

(It reminded me of a block party I was at when I was six or so, and few of the older neighborhood guys were back from Vietnam in their uniforms and looking shell-shocked. I always recall that particular block party for that one reason, but I also remember the band hired for the night were Creedence fanatics, and all the kids played tackle in front of the small stage while they cut through Travellin’ Band - perhaps the prehistoric roots of slam dancing.)

I think the band had that same feel, too, of remembering all the times on the way up when they covered Lodi or Hey Tonight in some dump of a bar in the middle of nowhere, while two guys in the crowd beat the shit out of each other, or the entire audience of five ignored them. Of special note was drummer Kenny Aranoff, Mellencamp’s usual drummer, who played the entire show with a look on his face that said, "No man is luckier nor more blessed than I tonight." He was clearly the driving force in the show.

But what a show. John’s sound system was incredible - I heard every possible permutation there is on that swampy, "driving through Texas at two in the morning," county fair, shit-kicking, could be blues/country/rock, whatever sounding electric guitar. Everything he did sounded legitimate and reminded me that he took so many of these elements and made them sound easy and natural, which they weren’t before he came along.

I was left with the feeling I got when I first saw an old TV show recently on a sports channel called Home Run Derby, probably made in the late 50s/early 60s. It was held at some small, empty ballpark down South and involved two of the great home run hitters of the day having contests to see who could hit the most homers. The episodes I saw had Mickey Mantle either thrashing or squeaking by the likes of Frank Howard, Roger Maris, Eddie Matthews, Hank Aaron, etc. But the gist was that these guys hit nearly every pitch over the fence.

And that’s how John did it last night. I’ve rarely seen a crowd so awed and moved by a performance. For me it was made all the more poignant by the fact that he had purposely denied himself the sheer enjoyment of playing these songs because he was/is getting screwed out of the bulk of his royalties. And it was great to see him finally say, "Fuck it, these are my songs no matter what a bunch of lawyers say, I’ll just have to live with the record company permanently screwing me, it’s more important to me and my fans that they actually get to hear them."