Caetano Veloso - FANTASTIC! Dating... not so much

One of the bright spots in my week was the Caetano Veloso concert at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. I saw Veloso 3 years ago at Royce Hall when he was touring upon the release of A Foreign Sound. That concert was great. It was the first time I saw Veloso and I remember being so excited to see one of my all-time favorite musicians live. Wednesday's concert in some ways was even better. Veloso, who is well into his sixties, is a lively performer, and by the end of the performance he was running around the stage. At one rather scary point he tripped on a speaker at the front of the stage, but immediately got up again, picked up where he had left off, and dashed across the stage. Something that I don't remember him doing at that Royce Hall concert was singing some older songs from his repertoire, which he did at this concert. It was wonderful - I sang along to most of those songs. This may be random, but I kept thinking, maybe unfairly, of the Jorge Drexler concert that I went to back in March, and how different that concert was. For one, Drexler didn't like when people clapped along to his songs, with very few exceptions. He actually kind of singled some dude out when he tried to clap along to one song, and was like, "you could at least do it on the beat" (!). And as far as people singing along to Drexler's songs, he said straight up that it was fine to sing along with the chorus, implying that it wasn't cool to sing with the rest of the lyrics. And, AND, when I lined up to get his autograph right after the concert, he was really weird about me speaking Spanish to him, and kept trying to speak English to me, even though he had no problem speaking in Spanish to some Chicanos that were right in front of me who were no less American than me - but that's another story. Or the same old one. Anyway, I was wondering why Drexler and Veloso could be so different. They have certain similarities that I'm going to oversimplify being the music amateur that I am - they love to experiment with different musical styles (especially traditional forms from Latin America), they're both gifted lyricists and composers, and yes, they both come from Latin America. But, Veloso, even with all of the highbrow aspects to his music and his intellectual street cred, still loves to entertain. He revels in it. Maybe it's because Veloso is over 20 years older than Drexler, and has been performing almost as long as Drexler's been alive, that Veloso may feel he has less to prove and just enjoys performing for its own sake, and actually loves it when people sing along to all of the lyrics in his songs . Drexler may also be more introverted and may always be protective of his songs, no matter how old he gets. I just find it interesting how differently two musicians can relate to their audience.

The annoying part of the week was some predictable romantic disappointment. Dating is weird, and frustrating. It can be fun at times, and it's nice to meet new people, but I'm kind of over meeting guys who have absolutely no idea what they want, and then waste my time up until they figure out that they don't want to spend time with me. And while they're figuring shit out, they take you out for dinner and say stuff like, oh you're so great, I like spending time with you, I was really excited about meeting you, you're so pretty, let's do something on Friday - and then Friday rolls around and they haven't called in two days and they give you a call at 8pm after you blocked out time that night for them and then you were like, fuck it, I'll hang with my friends instead, and they call you at 8pm, and when they call you still hope like an idiot to see them again because you had such a great time two days before and they say no thanks, I'm staying home, and oh yeah, I'd kind of would like to be friends because of bullshit reason #203. And you think to yourself, hmmm. OK. Have a nice fucking life. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, and thanks for ceasing to occupy space in my head and in my schedule.

It's not really that surprising. I expect to be disappointed, and I'm surprised when I'm not, but why is it that people have to be so damn predictable? Why can't they keep surprising me until I'm no longer surprised?