Partying with Patricia Barnstable Brown

[michelej1]

This woman gives a Derby party every year and in this article she talks about some of the highlights. It's amazing to think that they just got up and performed off the cusp, when they weren't even really a band together anymore, in 1996.

From the Kentucky Courier Journal:

http://http://www.courier-journal.co...036/-1/CJEXTRA

What musical groups have performed at your party?

Brooks & Dunn, George Strait, Kid Rock and Fleetwood Mac. That’s fun for me because it’s my assignment for the night. If the guests haven’t had a big conversation with me, they know exactly what I’m doing. I am spontaneously putting on a show.

* * *

What other moment was magical?

I guess it was in 1996 — I guess it's because it's one of my favorite groups, and somebody else may have a different favorite group: Stevie Nicks had come a couple of years. And she called and wanted to know if the whole band could come. Mick and Christine and Lindsey. I'm like, "Yeah, are you speaking?" because they'd broken up, and they didn't like each other, and they weren't speaking. So my goal — because everybody jumps on stage, all the singers doing this and that — my dream was that I'd get all the members of Fleetwood Mac and that they would sing. So then I went up to Stevie at the party. I thought she was the one that could make this happen. "No, no, no," she said. "I've got to relax first." So then I went up to Mick Fleetwood. I said, "You've got to help me with this. You've got to get everybody, and you've got to get them on stage." And so he did. It's something I wanted really, really bad. I looked up, and I said, "Oh, my gosh. Fleetwood Mac. They're singing Rhiannon," one of my favorite songs. I thought, "Is this for real?"

What also adds certain energy to the party is that my guests know certain celebrities are coming to the party, but none of us know if they're going to sing. So there's this anxiety, anticipation. They're looking at me. I don't know if they're going to sing. It's not a paid performance. It's with a house band. They haven't rehearsed. They don't want to sound bad.

My sister's very good at that, though. She'll get a couple up on stage and I'll look up. And this is one of my shocks: Gene Simmons is standing up there with his sunglasses on, with a leg up on top of an amplifier, singing "Love God," and I'm wondering how my sister pulled that off. I thought, "That is the work of Cyb at her very best."

They start to see what's happening, and I've had some musicians slowly go further, further back into my neighbor's yard. Now everybody's like, "We want to help out. We want to be a part of it."

And then you have the unexpected people like Jimmy Fallon. We knew he could sing. But it was like, "Come on, come on, there are people on stage. I've got to do something." So he got up there and did a head-spin kind of something. It was so unexpected. It was hysterical. It was some kind of bizarre physical routine.