When Lenny hit the Town

On the 19th of December he finally arrived! His previously cancelled gig that was sabotaged by his illness and postponed until today, was replaced in equivalent style. It only made us more excited. 

Me and Eva went to grab some bite into the pub across the road from the Arena and then we have waited for Aneta in a drizzling rain. There weren´t as many people by the main entrance gates, which allowed us to get in quite easily. After being scanned over like a bunch of terrorists, we got through as discreetly as possible. As we had places booked for standing in front of the stage, we merrily run toward the front, which was the second best position closest to the stage without it being the most expensive. But boy, the waiting! We have sat there from 6.30 till 8pm, when the Arena was already filled with people, and the forerunners (whose name nobody remembers) started to play. It was so obnoxious to wait for so long and still see no sign of Lenny, that many people got upset during the band´s performance and tried to shout them out. The singer wasn´t bad, their music was quite alright, but the nervousnesss was prevaling at this point. People were unhappy and started calling Lenny´s name, so the singer got little upset and shouted back :“I love you too“. 

It had been a heartbreaking and tiring hour and a half of waiting in the united tension. While we had listened to Freddie´s Rock it (Prime Jive), which made me all the more jittery, and The Who, two of my most favorite bits of all time, the huge stage curtain kept only blowing in the wind without any signs of other movement. The only person who has ever walked out was a tuner guy with Santa´s hat on. 

And then, finally, the lights turned off, and the band walked out and….well, Lenny still kept hiding in the shadows – and then suddenly appeared in the middle of the stage like this God (which of course he was). I had had a feeling that his first song will be the one I love the most – „Dirty white boots“. There is a story tied to this one, as whenever I had sang it, I thought he sings Dirty white boobs, which didn´t make much sense, but it made me laugh when I realized he sings about boots instead. And guess what, he started off just with that. It was quite spectacular to see him in flesh. I remember having watched him on MTV when I was a kid some 20 years ago or more, when he still fashioned his long dreadlocks, and seeing him after such a long time twenty metres right in front of my eyes, still looking preposterously young and cool, I could not help but to swoon with pleasure. He was so ridiculously sexy in his clothes and with his unique, frivolous body language.  If you could put confidence in one word, concentrated into a person, it would have to be him.  I loved the way he jerked his head from time to time, it was a body language of black singers, the moves of the real soul musicians, the ones who have music in their veins instead of blood. It was tantalizing to watch him, not mentioning the way ha sang. He thanked us all for coming, and shouted out "Thank you Praha" several times- which always brought on a huge aplaus. Another songs he entertained were American woman,  It ain´t over till it´s over, Strut, Dancing till down, Sister, Let love rule (at which he made us all sing along), Fly away, The Chamber, or Are you gonna go my way. All of them were fabulous and brought us all to the boiling point. At least the front rows were all heated up. It took a while for him to lift the people up from their seats and make  them join in singing Let love rule. Czechs are just glued to their places and it´s not the first time I´ve encoutered this, they  act as if being scared to show any sing of pleasure or excitement. But I sang and screamed and danced, as if nothing of this mattered. The good one was "I belong to you", where even the shyest person got up, sang and waved their hands. After he walked away from the stage having been received with enormous aplaus, we were calling him out for another ten minutes in complete darkness, desparately shouting his name and whistling. It already seemed he won´t re-appear. But he did, and he took an ace out of his sleeve! Santana himself came on the stage and played a solo. It was a big shock, as nobody had expected surprise of such kind. Well, I guess Lenny just wanted to tease us a little! One thing is for sure, I´ll never forget this gig, it was utterly mind shattering experience, for me almost the same as if I had seen Jim Hendrix, eventhough it wouldn´t be right to make such comparisons. But tell me honestly, is there anyone on the musical scene these days, who´d make such good music and still rock in his 50´s that would come as close to Hendrix as Lenny has? I doubt it. And when he smiled, it was as if the heaven opened.....Hallelujah :)