I won't bother with set lists, because even if I knew the song titles (which I don't), it wouldn't really matter, because pre-recorded songs take a backseat in PH's show. He played a quick intro song, backed by a bongo player of indeterminate origins (nobody knew who he was, or where he'd come from, including, it seemed, PH). Turning his attention to the crowd dancing in front of him, he asked for requests, and a woman in an aqua dress pantomined "Seven Circles".

This seemed to get his creative juices going, as he then got one young couple to get up on stage to be married by him. After performing the song (which was a wonderful song, the highlight, musically), he had the crowd form a human archway from the edge of the stage to the back of the festival grounds. I can't remember the last time I had such a big goofy smile on my face, or remember seeing so many people with big goofy smiles. When the young couple raced crouching through the human archway, all I remember is seeing (that's right) big goofy smiles on their faces

After this show of sappiness, PH immediately played a slow depressing song to calm the crowd down. He asked for volunteers to come up to the stage to dance, and the woman in aqua practically did cartwheels running up to the stage. From this point on, she did strange little interpretive dance moves on the stage, which PH would coach from time to time. She got a little annoying at times, waving at friends in the crowd and the like, but it didn't seem to bother PH.

The interim bongo player had to leave, so PH had the crowd pass up a red cooler which he was going to mike, but Karen Savoca (who had played a set earlier in the morning) stepped in to play some real bongos. She was from New Jersey, so he made a few jokes about that, and dropped another spontaneous song about New Jersey and Colorado.

At one point PH looked around for some water, and the woman in aqua ran to get him some from backstage. As she handed it to him, a section of the crowd shouted out in unison "Aqua Woman!!" The pun seemed to surprise and please PH to no end, as he then sang a spontaneous song about Aqua Woman, which is how he (and everyone else in the crowd) referred to her until the end. After the show, when she walked by, people would stop and stare - "That was Aqua Woman!"

He had another spontaneous high, singing about inner children, which segued into getting several kids up on the stage, to sing the "My Best Friend is a Salamander" chorus. This was great - since they had the lyric sheet from his album, they were instructing him what the next line of verse should be, even stopping the song a few times until he got it right. In the end, he had the until-now-sedate crowd on it's feet screaming, to simulate a raucous rock-concert entrance for the kids. It was a sublime moment.

For his encore, in typical fast-to-slow fashion, he sang a slow quiet song about a woman he had met stricken with ALS called "The Woman With the Strength of 10,000 Men", and left the crowd with a bittersweet glow in the late-afternoon sun. We were so bowled over we didn't even stay for the actual headliner (I honestly cannot remember who it was supposed to be). Frankly, we were awestruck by what we had just seen. We had never heard of Peter Himmelman before, yet he had had brought down the house playing perhaps three conventional off-the-record songs and performed a marriage.

At most of these outdoor festivals, there's usually one standout, one real surprise that makes you just smile. Typically, it's an unknown who surprises the crowd like a jolt of electricity. Last time it was Laura Love who just wowed the crowd with her energy and her voice. She was a virtual unknown at that time, but has graduated to Telluride in recent years, and seems to have lost a bit of a spark as well. PH, on the other hand, is anything but unknown, holding the penultimate headliner spot. And yet he still surprised the crowd. The spontaneous songs were so well done that if you didn't know any better, you'd think they were rehearsed and polished in a studio.

In anyone else's hands, the antics onstage would have degenerated into slapstick, but Peter Himmelman had the ability to dig deeper into the hat and pull out pure magic. Maybe I'm deluding myself by thinking that he doesn't do the exact same chaotic set at every show, complete with a woman in aqua, but it really seemed, well, special. The set was a collaboration, a unique melange of sun and crowd and music, a living thing born into flight, and softed into the summer night.

Aw hell, I guess you had to be there.

Randy - 5/2/99