You'd Think That People Would've Had Enough of PAUL McCARTNEY

But last night I looked around me and saw it wasn't so.

Last night. LAST. NIGHT. I had the privilege of seeing Paul McCartney live in concert at Wrigley Field. My companion? My amazing husband. It was a night I'll never forget.

You hear the name Paul McCartney, and sometimes it's hard to grasp all that it encompasses. It was too much for my mind to realize that I was going to actually SEE and HEAR Paul McCartney. Even as we sat in our (awesome) seats waiting for the show to begin, it still didn't quite seem real. I was going to see a Beatle, a living legend. I was going to see one of the four men who single-handedly changed the scope of pop music for ALL time. I was going to see the man that my Aunt Carla swooned over in her youth, the man my former manager and friend, Bill, ran to the record store for whenever a new Beatles single came out, the man whose group and personal song catalogs my awesome father-in-law has carefully collected and memorized over the last five decades. This is one of the few people alive who isn't a meer musician but a musical genius.

I wasn't prepared for my reaction when he and his band struck the opening chord to the Beatles classic All My Lovin'. My breath was stolen from my lungs, I slumped back in my seat, and tears started streaming down my face. Because I was sad? Maybe a little (because I couldn't see John, Paul, George, & Ringo perform this themselves). But because I was so overwhelmed at this music coming alive before me. Paul's band is, in my opinion, the top backing band in the music business. I've seen them on TV before and could tell they were good, but I had no idea HOW good. So good, in fact, that good is a dirty, low word to describe them. Lets try mind-numblingly awesome to describe them instead. The music scourged through me, went through every fiber of my being, adding extra minutes of joy to my life. And, THAT'S why tears began coursing down my chubby cheeks.

I screamed, stomped, and clapped like nobody's business through Band on the Run and Live & Let Die. I supplied horrible harmony to I Will, and when Blackbird quickly, yet quietly, followed the tears came again. Two of my all-time favorites back-to-back was too much to keep my already heady emotions in check. (Click HERE for the full setlist. You'll be jealous.) His anecdotes were sweetly told, name-dropping tales of yesterday (no pun intended): about that time watching Hendrix live with Clapton or those times plucking Bach out lightly on guitars with his friend, George. Old songs became new again: it was as if I was hearing Something for the first time. After starting out with just Paul on a ukelele and swelling into a full-on magnificent masterpiece with that amazing band breathing new life into it, Something became new and even more beautiful that maybe even Harrison could've imagined. Or Helter Skelter, which I thought I didn't care that much for, until it was played in all its phrenetic, trippy glory under the Chicago sky VERY loudly.

I hope I never forget this night. I hope I tell my grandchildren about, and they get so sick of the story they roll their eyes and say, "Not again!!!" I already practiced the story today with my daughter. When I woke her up, sleep still caking her eyes, I said, "Mummy and Daddy saw a man named Paul last night. He sang to us, and it was wonderful."

She said, "Paul?"

"Yes," I said. "Paul.