The Windy City Quartet at Mammoth Cave –Sold Out Show- Part 3

The Grand Ave Tour had been an impressive few hours of sights, spectacles and sounds, but the closer we drew to the main event the emptier my stomach felt.

My three friends, Ben, Bocheng, and Mikey, and I were scheduled to perform an underground performance as a quartet in front of the 80 others in our tour group. The only reason this was considered underground by any measure was that we were, in fact, a couple of hundred feet under the ground in Mammoth Caves. The forthcoming show had all the elements of being a wondrous one. The setting was perfect, the audience was large and excited, the promoter, our tour guide, was setting the stage. The sole problem lay in the small fact that not one of the four of the performers knew how to sing a note.

As a result of that and the fact that no two of us knew the lyrics to the same song, we figured that the performance couldn't be pretty. Yet, we were continually reminded of how pretty it should be every 15 of the following minutes as the tour guide would promote the upcoming show.

"I know this part of the cave is difficult to climb, folks, but we have quite a surprise for you later in the tour," he winked in our direction. We didn't wink, we just cleared our throats.

Our discomfort was tangible. I could see it exude from the others and I'm positive they could see it from me. To describe the looming performance as fear-inducing would be to fall just short. We were ascending a giant roller coaster as we climbed up through the cave. Ahead lie what promised to be a steep and very fast drop.

Our fear of follow-through was only amplified by our tour guide's continual reminder of the upcoming surprise as to be the consolation or even the purpose of the lengthy battle against these miles of caverns. Never in my life, even when it was due to me, had my actions ever been promoted this frequently and enthusiastically. 'Why should it now?' I asked apostrophically.

"What did we get ourselves into?" Mike asked the rest of us, "Are we going to sing?" Each of us individually had great hesitation, but together, as a whole, we just couldn't decide NOT to do it. So, forward we went as the last hour of the journey melted into a prolonged amalgam of angst and impatience. Here we were in the most carefully carved cavern system with both backbone and epochs of persistence and we trembled with restless steps. Upon walking into the next room it was clear to see why; our feelings had been given measurable weight.

"Here we have what is called the New York Hippodrome" the tour guide bellowed to the lot of us, "This is one of the largest rooms in all the caverns. It is 250 feet in width, 300 feet in length and 85 feet high. The sound here is wonderful enough, with natural acoustics, that cave owner George Morrison would have opera performances in this room for visitors from the east coast. Thousands would come from afar to watch performances in this room by some of the greatest voices of the day. You, my guests, have the same delight."

He looked over toward us, "Are you gentlemen ready?"

To see the response of us and our audience follow this blog or catch up a couple of days when I post the last part of this steamy memoir.

The Windy City Quartet at Mammoth Cave –Sold Out Show- Part 1

The four of us arrived at Mammoth Caves on a Friday.  The air was chipper and the wind cut through our jackets.  Though it was November, it was the beginning of the month, and something about heading in the direction of south gave us a deceptive sense of warmth.  We hadn’t prepared for the late Kentucky autumn.  Yet below ground, under our parked car, lay the longest cave system in the word where the temperature, regardless of time of day, season of the year or of the year itself was always a consistent 54°. 

We reared to get below the damp and chilly ground and into the damp and chilly caverns.  Ben, Mike, Bocheng and I had signed up for two different tours. We would save the lantern tour for the second day as we figured to begin our exploration of the National Park/World Heritage Site with a lengthy and general historical tour with a large tour group.

We pushed into one of the two buses that took us to a manmade entrance. Our tour guide, a young college student from nearby Bowling Green gave us a bit of information about the tour in a southern drawl.

“While we hope to have a light and cheery tour, I am obliged to remind you of the precautions we must take to ensure the safety, welfare and satisfaction of everyone else on the tour,” Bocheng looked at Michael and Michael looked at Ben and Ben looked at me and together we all smirked. “We’ve merged two tours together today, and due to the large size of our tour group, we have to be especially courteous to others and respectful to the cave. I hope you can manage this.”

We hoped so too.  Stay tuned for part two of this tale where we find out if the four of us were able to manage courteously and respect.

The Troubadour's Bane

Leo the Provençal Troubadour took great pride in his lyrical ballads.

Leo's village, Les Baux, took great pride in his lyrical ballads.

Minstrels around and jongleurs abound would imitate his style and plagiarize his words. In fact, there wasn't a line of nobility in Provence that hadn't folded under the sonorous beauty of Leo the Troubadour's notes. Once, Danish King Valdemar had commissioned a poem from Leo for his glorious Queen. To Leo, there was nothing more venerable than the high art of his compositions. To Les Baux, nothing was more august than the airy music that floated through its streets. His music gave life to the quiet village, and Leo affirmed that his quiet village gave life to all of his music. By all measures, Leo the Troubadour was a paragon.

Then, the Lyte Funky Ones came into town. Called "LFO" by the youth in the village, this new band posed giant threat to Leo the Troubadour's success. Aided by their hit song, "Summer Girls", Medieval LFO gained increasing popularity throughout the region. Enthusiasts in southern Occitania could simply not get enough of their newfound objets d'amour. These fans, 'bon vivants', began to request LFO mix tapes from minstrels in the area. They danced to LFO songs at their estampidas. Leo was outraged at the speed and slope of LFO's ascension and his own declension in the townsfolk's favor and upon the Les Baux charts.

With the heavy weight of LFO's success on his shoulders, Leo the Troubadour went back to his proverbial drawing board to write a gab. Leo toiled for months in recluse to find the perfect words to challenge LFO and to reclaim his deserved success. The challenge fueled his writing.

Meanwhile, LFO rewrote the history books with catchy and inspiring lyrics like:

Cherry pez, coke, crush rock, stud boogie
Used to hate school, so I had to play hookie
Always been hip to the b-boy style
Known to act wild and make a girl smile

And smile the girls did. Countless smiles could be seen on any street on which Medieval LFO played. LFO relished in the spotlight shone by their flawlessly crafted songs and lyrics. Because of all the fame and commissions, members of the band would commonly tell fans that their names were: Rich. Despite being so... Rich... public favor turned momentarily against the band when they collectively stole one young vassal's honey like they stole her bike.

Leo the Troubadour took advantage of this bad press. It was soon after the stolen honey incident that he released his new ballad entitled "The vexatious countenance of LFO behind the comely mask". Critics immediately reproached the single for reasons "including but not limited to: It's long title".

Leo skulked out of the Les Baux spotlight, as he famously put it; "to rue for rue's sake." Little did he know that that line, if written into a poem, would have quickly brought him fame again. Instead, he set to write an enueg about his fans. While later considered a technical masterpiece, the album, "I hate my votaries", bombed forthwith. Leo the Troubadour stated shortly thereafter; "Mine own votaries hath bequest me to fall, whereupon I shall fall; and, as such, with great weight." All commissioners dropped his services and Leo the Provençal Troubador was forced to live from the dirt.

LFO went on to write a tepid song entitled, "Girl on TV." Their follow up performance was lackluster at best due to the fact that no one really understood what a TV was. No one heard from Leo the Troubadour or from the Lyte Funky Ones again.