Hi All! Busy week with a lot going on! Anyway, there is one thing, though, that was a bit special. I saw a concert on Saturday. Specifically, I saw Rick Wakeman.

OK, if you do not know him, here is a little info. A lot of people recognize him as the keyboardist in the band Yes’ “classic” lineup. He played with the band off and one for a couple of decades. A few may even know one or more of his several dozen solo albums, like “Journey to the Center of the Earth” or “The Six Wives of Henry the VIII”. or you may have heard him on over a dozen David Bowie songs, including the piano on “Life on Mars” and the mellotron on “Space Oddity”. Still others may have only heard him on the Cat Stevens song “Morning has Broken” – yeah, all of that uncredited piano work that only he could play.

I once did a blog post where I compared him with the other Rick W (Rick Wright of Pink Floyd), but more than that, some have recognized that some of my synthesizer solos are highly influenced by Rick’s synth solos. Not all of my solos, but on occasion…

Anyway, besides doing a fantastic job playing the keyboards, including all of the songs mentioned above, he told off color jokes and little stories. He has a great sense of delivery, so even the jokes that might not otherwise be all that funny were hilarious.

But story teller and jokester aside, the reason for seeing him is that he can play keyboards like no other human, playing the bass part of a song just like the bass player did, the vocal part like the singer did, the guitar part like the guitarist and his own keyboard parts, yet doing all at the same time – he has to have more than 10 fingers! It is amazing. And beautiful.

Oh, and I had front row seats,though they were far off to the side.

Anyway, it was a great night out and I really enjoyed it.

So that is my smile for the week is seeing Rick Wakeman in concert.

What made you smile?

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Come on, I’m sure you smiled at least once last week.  Why don’t you share it?  I hope you can join in!

Here is list of “rules” and guiding ideas.  If you don’t have time to read it right now, just remember that this is an exercise to spread positivity.  Don’t smile about the misfortune of others.  Don’t smile in a way to excludes others.  Make sure a 12 year old can read it.

To join in, write a post to share your smile and then leave a comment on this post with a link to your smile.  Or, if you prefer, do a pingback to this post (pingback = have a link from your post to this one) (Note – pingbacks have been very inconsistent – please leave a comment :) ).   You can post any time until next Sunday evening (to be simple, I will say midnight GMT, which is 7 PM Sunday for me).  Note – I am no longer compiling the smiles into a weekly post as I used to – Sorry, I do not have time.