While a good deal of the month of July was encapsulated in a heat wave as bad as New Jersey has had in a while, for a few nights the Mendham Borough Park Summer Series cooled things off considerably, providing needed relief.
Starting in mid-June and continuing through the beginning of August, Mendham Borough Park hosts music acts and movies every other Sunday night, with an occasional Wednesday night thrown in. Situated just over a quarter of a mile from the iconic Black Horse Pub at the corner of Main St. and Mountain Avenue, the park is a bucolic setting that serves well for a family outing on an invitingly warm summer evening. Be it a concert or a movie, one can't go wrong lounging in a beach chair or on a blanket while the various melodies fill the Mendham air.
As many have said, Dick Cavett possibly the most well-known, "There are so few coincidences in life." Be it fantastic planning or the stars aligning as referenced by Mr. Cavett, it was perfectly fitting that Fab Forward Band played the night of July 28th, not long after the release of the Beatles-themed movie 'Yesterday'.
'Yesterday', which has taken the country by storm, tells the story of a twelve second worldwide blackout that wipes the existence of The Beatles from history and the minds of all people, except one young struggling solo artist. It creates a world in which The Beatles music never existed. Yikes! Being the only one on planet earth who knows the Beatles music and is able to play it, the soloist takes advantage of the situation and is declared a musical genius. Strange days indeed! Most peculiar mama!
Fab Forward Band is a Beatles solo cover band. They play the hits of John, Paul, George, and Ringo that were recorded after that fateful day in 1970 when the greatest band we will most likely ever see, officially parted ways. I attended Fab Forward Band's concert the night of July 28th and they were amazing! They bounced between the solo hits of John, Paul, George, and Ringo (not necessarily in that order), with humor thrown in on several occasions via spot-on impersonations of Ringo's "Peace, love and happiness" echoing from the back of the gazebo.
Playing hits such as "Jets", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Imagine", and everything in between, the crowd of close to two hundred people were entertained for an hour and forty-five minutes that felt like less than half of that.
For the last song of the night Fab Forward Band decided to honor the 50th anniversary of The White Album by blasting out a perfect rendition of "Revolution".
On more than one level, the adage of 'time flies when you're having fun' seemed especially prescient as the evening wound down.