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Pittsburgh again. We seem to have played here a lot over the past few years. Which is ok, because I kind of like this town. It has its problems but it seems to be slowly re-inventing itself. Beautifully located: tucked away in the Allegheny hills at the headwaters of the Ohio River. There is some great architecture. A very supportive radio station (WYEP). It also has an amazing history dating back to the 1700s when the French built Fort Duquesne, which was in turn captured by the English and renamed Fort Pitt and finally by the Americans who finally transformed the area and its resources into the engine that helped build the industrial giant that this country became in the 19th and 20th Century, you know, the good ole days….or maybe I’m attached to this city because of the childhood memories I have of lying in my bed in Montreal and listening to Pittsburgh Pirate games on my radio. On certain nights when the weather conditions were right and all of the planets were properly aligned, I would lie there and listen as the play-by-play would drift in from Three Rivers Stadium (this was back before naming rights robbed the little romance left in sport.
If I ever win Powerball I’m going to buy the naming rights to all the home fields of the sports franchises that I dislike and call them things like; The Loserdome; or Choker Field; or WeSuck Arena…..but I digress). I still have an image of Willie Stargel lumbering to the player in his engineer style cap (he’s not wearing a batting helmet in my memory) and….what happens next is gone, but for the sake of the story, lets say that he whacks it over the centerfield wall.
It was another new venue for us tonight. Kind of a weird place, a jazz/disco venue on most nights of the week. But the staff was very accommodating and the room sounded surprisingly good. It was another excellent audience. We were a little bit logy in our playing, but the show had some nice moments.
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