(Author’s Note: This will probably be the longest piece I’ll
ever post on Eat Our Brains. If you aren’t a true believer in
the Blues, you may find it an ordeal. Fair warning.)

The rest of the band was already onstage, in the light.

The two keyboard players, Chris Stainton and Tim Carmon,
were on opposite sides of the stage. They both sat still, their
hands in their laps.

At center left, Doyle Bramhall II stood with his right hand on
the neck of a lefty Fender Strat. Beside him, Derek Trucks had a
glass slide on the ring finger of his left hand. The slide
hovered over the fretboard of a Gibson SG, but it didn’t dare
touch down.

At the rear of the stage, on their own riser, Michelle John and
Sharon White stood stock-still before their microphones. They
wouldn’t even breathe on them. Not yet.

In the center, where the light was brightest, two of the greatest
rhythm players in modern music were settling in. Steve Jordan
sat down at the drum kit as if he were sitting down in the most
comfortable chair in his living room. Willie Weeks, facing Mr.
Jordan, shrugged his shoulders until his Precision bass was hanging
just where he liked it. They were both ready. But Mr. Jordan
didn’t pick up his sticks, and Mr. Weeks didn’t test-thump a
single note.

The audience had applauded when the band had come out to their
stations, and the band had smiled and nodded. But now, in this
one eerie moment, the thousands of us who had gathered in the
Nippon Budokan — audience and band alike — were silent.

All of us were waiting. Listening. Waiting.

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Some holiday cheer. (The first one was pointed out to me by Steve Stirling on the VSA list.)