Tour Diary – Dallas, TX (June 17, 2010)

(Jason Lent has forsaken the island paradise of Hawaii to follow us around for a few months. I have happily placed the tour diary in his capable hands. It should bring a new perspective to our ramblings.)

Before I was born, two important moments in American history bookended the 1960’s. Earlier on tour, I laid in the grass on the grounds of the Woodstock Festival in Bethel, NY. Today, I stood on the grassy knoll and watched traffic pass over the white ‘x’ in the middle lane where the 35^th president of the United States of America was gunned down. Without commenting on my Catholic school education, I will admit that Kevin Costner and Oliver Stone made me more aware of Kennedy than any high school history class.

The book depository looms over the plaza and a museum has encased a recreation of the sniper’s nest in glass for tourists to visit. There was an unpleasant tinge to the idea of looking out that window so I chose to stay under the shade of a tree as an unforgiving Texas sun baked the city. I read today that the Kennedy assassination marked the American people’s loss of faith in its own government. I wish I had been around before 1963 to see what the country was like and what it lost that day.

The show tonight was somewhere in the outskirts of Dallas. I made it to the Mexican restaurant next door to the theater in time to watch Mexico put two past the crumbling French. On stage, the band put in a long night’s work with 18 songs spread across two halves. After today’s experience in downtown Dallas, ‘I Just Want To See’ hit me hard early and the rest of the night never matched that intensity. The enthusiastic crowd cheered the band into “the hits” encore of Angel and Jane before rushing to the lobby to watch the final minutes of the Lakers/Celtics game.

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