10 Thing Thursday: Concert Edition

This post brought to you in honor of Guns’n'Roses being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I apologize in advance for the many earworms I am about to inflict upon my fellow Generation Xers.

1. 1988: New Kids on the Block and Tiffany at the Ohio State Fair. We waited in line aaaalllll day in the sweltering August heat, only to be told that there was no more room. That’s when my mom led us around the side and boosted us over the cattle pen so we could bum-rush an empty area of the grounds. It was pre-teen chaos. Jordan totally waved at me. (I think we’re alone now/The beating of our hearts is the only sound/Ba-bum…ba-bum…)

2. 1991: Guns’n’ Roses and Skid Row at the Polaris Amphitheater in Columbus. I was 16 and apparently entirely unsupervised. My sister was WILDLY INSANE about Axl Rose and nearly died of happiness at this concert. I knew–and still know–every beat and breath and lyric and pause of Appetite For Destruction because, kids, we used to listen to albums from beginning to end when I was your age. (I get up around seven/Get out of bed around nine/And I don’t worry about nothing no/’Cause worrying’s a waste of my…time)

Seeing Sebastian Bach in his very sexy prime in his very sexy pants was a notable experience. 18 and Life man….that shit was soulful. (Ricky was a young boy/He had a heart of gold/Lived nine to five and he worked his fingers to the bo-o-one)

3. 1992: Pearl Jam at the Newport Music Hall in Columbus. All credit to my sister for this one; she was ahead of her time. This was almost a year before Jeremy came out, and there were perhaps 200 people in the venue. Black was always my favorite. I loved how Eddie would never let them commercialize it because it was so deep and personal, man, you know what I mean? (Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay/Were laid spread out before me as her body once did/ All five horizons revolved around her soul… I was very emo, surprise surprise.)

4. 1993: Nirvana at George Mason University. I’m not even going to pretend I didn’t love Nirvana with a deep grungy passion. Nevermind was in heavy rotation in my adolescent bedroom, though I prefer Unplugged now. Kurt smashed up his guitar at this show, and I was in New York for my birthday when he killed himself 6 months later. I didn’t cry, but I could have. Photos confirm that I was wearing flannel. And Doc Martens. And NOT listening to GnR or Skid Row. (I don’t mind I don’t mind I don’t mind/Mind/Don’t have a mind)

5. 1993: Lollapalooza at Legend Valley in Buckeye Lake Ohio. The lineup included Primus, Alice in Chains, and Arrested Development, but the highlight for me was Rage Against the Machine. Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me! I know you probably feel like you don’t know me at all by this point in the list, but, Reader, I moshed.

Insert huge gap here, where I was really, really poor and sad.

6. 1998: Tibetan Freedom at RFK in DC. Before we left for this show, someone fashioned a device for smoking marijuana out of an apple. It was 9 a.m. This is the best concert I’ve ever been to. There may be a corollary there.

I only went to day two. It was a thousand degrees Fahrenheit and we bribed our way onto the lawn. Beastie Boys, Pearl Jam, REM. Radiohead! And a surprise set by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who had been cancelled the day before after a lightning strike killed a fan. No one knew they were coming out, and when they did, at the tail end of a very long, very hot day, the whole place went crazy. Of all of the good music things I’ve seen, this was the very best.

7. 1997-2005: The bar singer years. Have you heard that old trope about how you have to do something for 10,000 hours to become an expert? I have listened to guys with guitars in bars for easily 10,000 hours. I know all of the songs they play, and how they play them. For the ones I’ve seen the most, I know what they are about to sing merely by listening to them tune their guitar, even after I’ve had eight pints of beer. Or maybe especially then. They make me happy.

8. 2000-ish: Paul Simon and Luscious Jackson somewhere in Virginia. Philly friend turned me on to Paul Simon, and I love that guy. This was the first concert I ever went to where you could sit down AND hear the next day. Sadly, I kind of like that in a concert now. (And why must they all start so late?) (She’s a rich girl, she don’t try to hide it/Diamonds on the soles of her shoes/He’s a poor boy, empty as a pocket…)

9. 2003-ish: Paul McCartney in Columbus with my mom. My mom wrote to a talk show host when she was 12 and begged for tickets to the upcoming Beatles concert in Cincinnati. She arranged for box seats for my mom and her best friend. It was 1966.

My mom loves Paul McCartney like white people love wearing shorts the first day it gets hotter than 50 degrees outside. MORE than that even. So I flew home and took her to this concert a few years ago. I never would have gone to this concert on my own, but I have to say it was pretty amazing to hear Paul McCartney sing Hey Jude and The Fool on the Hill. He still sounds perfect, and he seems like a very nice man. My mother was positively swoony. (Favorite Beatles song: Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head/Made my way downstairs and had a cup/Looking up, I noticed I was late ha ha ha ha…)

10. 2009: The Mountain Goats at the 9:30 Club. My sister again. I knew no one else on earth besides her who had even heard of this band. I was obsessed with a couple of their songs, new ones at the time. I was totally shocked to see that everyone else in the sold-out venue loved the same songs I did. It’s not like these people have singles, or get played on the radio. How does that happen? How does everyone pick the same songs to love and know all the words to? That is some viral magic shit.

This is my emo anthem. I love to sing this song really loudly in my car. (Marry me!):

(Does anyone know how to embed these? I used to be able to by pasting the URL but now nothing works!)

This Year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z34jAB7QbPA

And a bonus anthem for my divorced friends:

http://youtu.be/JPy_fiv3sAw?t=24s

What was the first concert you ever attended? The best?