40 Years of Boz

I have been fairly fortunate in that there’s not much left on my rock concert bucket list. A full Bruce Springsteen show is about the last of it—having seen him during John Kerry’s Madison presidential campaign rally in 2004, only a few feet from the stage, was merely an appetizer. I’d still like to see Fleetwood Mac, but only if Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie are part of the group, and in recent years. they have not always been.
Boz Scaggs was atop the list for a long time. He played an unusual gig in Madison in 2006, appearing on a bill with Ben Sidran, Leo Sidran, and Jorge Drexler in a show that was half-music, half-conversation. I saw him with Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and Michael McDonald as part of the Dukes of September in 2012. But a full Boz show remained a bucket-list item until the summer of 2015, when he played Potawatomi Bingo and Casino in Milwaukee. Just this week, Boz played Potawatomi again—and I was there again.
I have been a Boz Scaggs fan for 40 years now. This week in 1976, his first big hit, “Lowdown,” was riding high on the singles chart, from the album Silk Degrees, an album no self-respecting fan of 70s music should be without. In September 1976, Boz performed “Lowdown” on Saturday Night Live, and it was pretty great. You can see the performance here.