Musical acts like to make reference to where they are playing to make us feel more connected. Sometimes they are clever and get the crowd laughing and feeling the effort.

It can backfire. Acts who played the Mississippi River Festival on the Illinois side of the river across from St. Louis could never figure out they weren’t in Missouri.

Even worse was when we lived in Kansas City. You would be less than impressed when at a Missouri side of the line venue someone would say “Its great to be here in Kansas.” Then you would go to a show in the Kansas side and hear about the joy of playing in Missouri.

All this came back last night when we went to see War on a nice fall night in a concert at a garden.

The leader was exhorting us to be louder to sing along with Cisco Kid with “I can’t hear you Colorado Springs!”

After the always polite Fort Collins audience corrected him he preceded, either through travel fatigue or old age, to keep saying Colorado Springs.

After the last time he said “I can’t hear you Colorado Springs!”, I would have loved to yell “No shit. That’s because it is 150 miles away.”