Rock On
When I stopped working and moved to Kentucky, I became disconnected from the world of music, because I was no longer spending every morning in the car listening to the radio. I’m sure that if I had moved to Kentucky as a country music fan, I would be about as hip and up to date as they come. Since I am not a country music fan, I spent most of my time in the car in Kentucky listening to an 80s station. When that went off the air, I would listen to the same CD over and over, because I never remembered to bring an alternative into the car. I’m sure it didn’t help that while we were in Kentucky we eventually had three children who could speak and thus voice their preferences as to what entertainment was provided in the car and in the house. The HP was no help, since he disconnected from music sometime in the 70s, and has clung to the hits of that era as long as I have known him. He occasionally will toss out some mangled version of a line from a song that is currently on the radio (which is more than I can do), but he likes his music old. When he is not listening to music from the 70s (or 60s or 50s), he listens to Frank Sinatra (or Frank Sinali as the children call him).
My very first concert (that was not the Beach Boys or Wayne Newton on the 4th of July in Washington) was that hot, groundbreaking band from Down Under. AC/DC? No. INXS? No. Midnight Oil? No. Of course I am talking about Men at Work. Who else could it be now? When I was a freshman in high school, my good friend Trudy arranged for about 13 girls to see the concert at Merriweather Post Pavillion in Maryland and then come over to her house for a sleepover. I suppose this was a good concert to start with, since it gave me a chance to learn right from the get-go about bands that only have one hit. Without exception they are going to make you beg to hear it as an encore. This concert also gives me the winning answer when people are comparing stories of the first concert that they went to - few people (and those people are described in the next paragraph) can claim a worse show as their first concert.
Did I learn my lesson about going to the concerts of one-hit-wonders? No, I did not. When I was a freshman in college, my first friend Christina invited me to spend Columbus Day weekend at her house, since I couldn’t travel from Massachusetts to DC for a long weekend. The only plans that she had committed to that weekend were to attend a concert with her sister who had graduated from college the year before. I am not sure what exactly transpired between those two sisters, but I guess it can stand as a testament to the bond between siblings and what you are willing to do with them. In the first few weeks of college, Christina had tutored me in the music of OMD, Erasure, Depeche Mode, and all sorts of other New Wave bands. The concert that she and I attended with her sister did not involve any of these bands. No, the concert I saw on Columbus Day weekend 1986 was a one-hit-wonder even worse than Men At Work. If you were alive during the 1980s and you wrack your brain long enough, you can probably come up with it. Give up? It was Aha (or A-Ha or AHa, I’m not sure what the proper spelling is). Take on me (Take on me) Take me on (Take on me)...
That concert was a horror show. The entire theater (somewhere in Hartford, Connecticut, but I don’t care to ever revisit it) shook from the time we arrived until the time we left with the screams of 14 year old girls. Christina and I just looked at each other and at the screaming teenies around us and wondered why her sister had thought this was a good idea. I believe Aha was a Norwegian band that didn’t speak any English, but they didn’t need to speak English. If they had stood on stage filing their nails and whistling, the screaming would not have diminished. Just when we thought our evening couldn’t get any stranger, two screaming girls in wheelchairs fled the handicapped section in front of us and rushed the stage. We were briefly worried for their safety, but in the end worried for our own, since if any of the frenzied fans had seen the look of confusion and disinterest on our faces, they likely would have rushed us too. I don’t remember if Aha saved their hit for the encore (they did not have any equipment that could amplify noise louder than the screaming girls), but I think they sang it at least twice.
The other concerts that I attended in college were not much better. The Spring Weekend committee that was in charge of booking the big campus concert was apparently composed of students who hated music and wanted to save money. For the first three years they decided that the most economical choice was a band that clung to the following career trajectory: Each one had: 1) peaked in the early 80s; 2) gotten used to fame and spending lots of money; 3) plummeted in popularity; and 4)was thus desperate for a gig to pay the bills. Freshman year it was Squeeze, sophomore year it was Kool and the Gang, junior year it was The Hooters. Senior year we had Ziggy Marley who followed a slightly different trajectory – never peaking, never caring about money, and thus willing to play for peanuts at a small school in New England. College was also my first introduction to the mania of U2 fans (much like Bare Naked Ladies fans and Dave Matthews Band fans), how they continually one up each other (I liked them from their first album. Well, I liked them from a concert they did while they were still in high school. Well I liked them from when they were singing nursery rhymes in kindergarten), and how they become slightly nutty in their quest for concert tickets. I did not get to see U2 in concert in college, mainly because I was unable to spend a week sleeping outside the Worcester Spectrum, and thus was branded as a fair weather fan.
In the early 1990s, my concert going luck turned around. My sister and I saw every show that came through Philadelphia, and as a result had a chance to rate the tours of many, many, long forgotten bands, including: Ziggy Marley, Gin Blossoms, Cracker, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Stereo MCs, Belly, Matthew Sweet, The Posies, X, Velocity Girl, Screaming Trees, Soul Asylum, Spin Doctors, Smashing Pumpkins, George Clinton & the P.Funk All-Stars, The Breeders, A Tribe Called Quest, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, L7, Boredoms, Courtney Love, Lemonheads, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Midnight Oil, Grant Lee Buffalo. We also got to see some people who did find fame and success, including: INXS, Iggy Pop, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, The Who, Eric Clapton, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, Beastie Boys, and REM. We spent all of our extra money on concert tickets, and had a blast every time, even in the pouring rain.
These days, I don’t think I’d go to a concert unless it was in a bar or I was taken there by limo and deposited in a sky box with a bar included – I just feel like I’m too old and too disconnected. I also feel like I’m too poor. Although the WHFStival still seems to be a bargain, all of the geezers that I would go see are charging so much money that I can’t go just on principle. Why do they need so much money? I thought they were all off the drugs. Sadly the next concert I attend will probably be as a chaperone for my girls who want to go see some horrific boy band in six or seven years (wait a minute, note to self: make cool Aunt Kate or cool Aunt Erin take them). At least when they are older, I won’t feel too afraid to let them go to concerts on their own (although the HP will likely need sedation). I saw pretty much everything that can happen at a concert during my concert going days (well, no shootings) and while the media may emphasize the craziness, even the drunkest, most drugged out attendee is usually there for the music and unlikely to bother other people who came for the music too.
Clearly my pop culture lapse happened at exactly the wrong time, when the world of MP3 players and IPods was just around the corner. I actually have an MP3 player and it is full of songs from the last century. I don’t know how I could ever catch up on the five years of music I missed. I continue to follow the bands I knew from my younger days, but all of the CDs that have come into my possession in the past five years (with the exception of Christmas music and children’s music) were purchased by the HP as gifts for me. Then again, my parents went with us to concerts (Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton) when they were in their 50s, and really enjoyed them (even more on the occasions that they had hearing protection). Maybe 20 years from now my kids will convince me to head out to the arenas once again.
My very first concert (that was not the Beach Boys or Wayne Newton on the 4th of July in Washington) was that hot, groundbreaking band from Down Under. AC/DC? No. INXS? No. Midnight Oil? No. Of course I am talking about Men at Work. Who else could it be now? When I was a freshman in high school, my good friend Trudy arranged for about 13 girls to see the concert at Merriweather Post Pavillion in Maryland and then come over to her house for a sleepover. I suppose this was a good concert to start with, since it gave me a chance to learn right from the get-go about bands that only have one hit. Without exception they are going to make you beg to hear it as an encore. This concert also gives me the winning answer when people are comparing stories of the first concert that they went to - few people (and those people are described in the next paragraph) can claim a worse show as their first concert.
Did I learn my lesson about going to the concerts of one-hit-wonders? No, I did not. When I was a freshman in college, my first friend Christina invited me to spend Columbus Day weekend at her house, since I couldn’t travel from Massachusetts to DC for a long weekend. The only plans that she had committed to that weekend were to attend a concert with her sister who had graduated from college the year before. I am not sure what exactly transpired between those two sisters, but I guess it can stand as a testament to the bond between siblings and what you are willing to do with them. In the first few weeks of college, Christina had tutored me in the music of OMD, Erasure, Depeche Mode, and all sorts of other New Wave bands. The concert that she and I attended with her sister did not involve any of these bands. No, the concert I saw on Columbus Day weekend 1986 was a one-hit-wonder even worse than Men At Work. If you were alive during the 1980s and you wrack your brain long enough, you can probably come up with it. Give up? It was Aha (or A-Ha or AHa, I’m not sure what the proper spelling is). Take on me (Take on me) Take me on (Take on me)...
That concert was a horror show. The entire theater (somewhere in Hartford, Connecticut, but I don’t care to ever revisit it) shook from the time we arrived until the time we left with the screams of 14 year old girls. Christina and I just looked at each other and at the screaming teenies around us and wondered why her sister had thought this was a good idea. I believe Aha was a Norwegian band that didn’t speak any English, but they didn’t need to speak English. If they had stood on stage filing their nails and whistling, the screaming would not have diminished. Just when we thought our evening couldn’t get any stranger, two screaming girls in wheelchairs fled the handicapped section in front of us and rushed the stage. We were briefly worried for their safety, but in the end worried for our own, since if any of the frenzied fans had seen the look of confusion and disinterest on our faces, they likely would have rushed us too. I don’t remember if Aha saved their hit for the encore (they did not have any equipment that could amplify noise louder than the screaming girls), but I think they sang it at least twice.
The other concerts that I attended in college were not much better. The Spring Weekend committee that was in charge of booking the big campus concert was apparently composed of students who hated music and wanted to save money. For the first three years they decided that the most economical choice was a band that clung to the following career trajectory: Each one had: 1) peaked in the early 80s; 2) gotten used to fame and spending lots of money; 3) plummeted in popularity; and 4)was thus desperate for a gig to pay the bills. Freshman year it was Squeeze, sophomore year it was Kool and the Gang, junior year it was The Hooters. Senior year we had Ziggy Marley who followed a slightly different trajectory – never peaking, never caring about money, and thus willing to play for peanuts at a small school in New England. College was also my first introduction to the mania of U2 fans (much like Bare Naked Ladies fans and Dave Matthews Band fans), how they continually one up each other (I liked them from their first album. Well, I liked them from a concert they did while they were still in high school. Well I liked them from when they were singing nursery rhymes in kindergarten), and how they become slightly nutty in their quest for concert tickets. I did not get to see U2 in concert in college, mainly because I was unable to spend a week sleeping outside the Worcester Spectrum, and thus was branded as a fair weather fan.
In the early 1990s, my concert going luck turned around. My sister and I saw every show that came through Philadelphia, and as a result had a chance to rate the tours of many, many, long forgotten bands, including: Ziggy Marley, Gin Blossoms, Cracker, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Stereo MCs, Belly, Matthew Sweet, The Posies, X, Velocity Girl, Screaming Trees, Soul Asylum, Spin Doctors, Smashing Pumpkins, George Clinton & the P.Funk All-Stars, The Breeders, A Tribe Called Quest, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, L7, Boredoms, Courtney Love, Lemonheads, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Midnight Oil, Grant Lee Buffalo. We also got to see some people who did find fame and success, including: INXS, Iggy Pop, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, The Who, Eric Clapton, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, Beastie Boys, and REM. We spent all of our extra money on concert tickets, and had a blast every time, even in the pouring rain.
These days, I don’t think I’d go to a concert unless it was in a bar or I was taken there by limo and deposited in a sky box with a bar included – I just feel like I’m too old and too disconnected. I also feel like I’m too poor. Although the WHFStival still seems to be a bargain, all of the geezers that I would go see are charging so much money that I can’t go just on principle. Why do they need so much money? I thought they were all off the drugs. Sadly the next concert I attend will probably be as a chaperone for my girls who want to go see some horrific boy band in six or seven years (wait a minute, note to self: make cool Aunt Kate or cool Aunt Erin take them). At least when they are older, I won’t feel too afraid to let them go to concerts on their own (although the HP will likely need sedation). I saw pretty much everything that can happen at a concert during my concert going days (well, no shootings) and while the media may emphasize the craziness, even the drunkest, most drugged out attendee is usually there for the music and unlikely to bother other people who came for the music too.
Clearly my pop culture lapse happened at exactly the wrong time, when the world of MP3 players and IPods was just around the corner. I actually have an MP3 player and it is full of songs from the last century. I don’t know how I could ever catch up on the five years of music I missed. I continue to follow the bands I knew from my younger days, but all of the CDs that have come into my possession in the past five years (with the exception of Christmas music and children’s music) were purchased by the HP as gifts for me. Then again, my parents went with us to concerts (Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton) when they were in their 50s, and really enjoyed them (even more on the occasions that they had hearing protection). Maybe 20 years from now my kids will convince me to head out to the arenas once again.
posted by Shannon at 10:43 PM
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