From Cornerstone 1995

This next song, we have a serious dedication tonight.  Now, I've made some jokes about this guy in the past.  This is a song called "Easy Listening".  I used to dedicate it to the patron saint of easy listening, Mr. Barry Manilow.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, very funny.  Well, anyway, I've had a little bit of a change of heart.  In fact, I even went so far on our fall tour...I guess you could say it was sort of in a mocking tone...to when the concert was done, we put on one of Barry Manilow's songs right after we finished.  Some would say it was a tribute, some would say we were making fun of the guy.  All I can say is that an incident on the last night of the tour changed my life.  I had purchased the CD.  The last night of the tour we all had to pack everything up, had a bunch of extra people on the bus, so I crammed everything into my suitcase.  I was the last one on, of course.  The bunks were full, the bay and bins were full.  So I opened up the bottom bin, I crammed the suitcase in as tight as I could, and shut the bin door.  Off we went, back home.  When we got there the next morning, I opened up the bottom bin, and pulled my suitcase out of it.  Brand new suitcase, too.  Ballistic material, bulletproof, fireproof, sweatproof, maybe not smellproof, but everything else.  I pull out my suitcase, and there is this burning sensation coming out of the suitcase.  And I look in it and realize that the bin light had somehow stayed on all night.  The lightbulb had burned through three layers of ballistic material, two wadded-up sweaty concert shirts, burned right through them.  And the only reason it didn't set everything on fire, the whole bus goes on fire and we all die in a fiery inferno was because it came to rest on this Barry Manilow CD.

(Audience starts chanting "Barry!  Barry!  Barry!")

So when I say that this next song is dedicated to Mr. Barry Manilow, I mean let's show a little respect for the Manilow man!

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