Let All The Children Boogie: concert flashbacks

Not all that often, just now and then, I spend the day with classic rock radio stations on AOL. I promise I haven't lived in the past musically for the last 30+ years. There's a lot of songs and bands I've barely thought about since I originally collected the albums, and the greatest thing about internet radio is the next arrow to skip through songs I don't ever need to hear again. Just as often I rush over to turn the volume up, loud. I usually have to take these trips down nostalgia lane when my kids aren't home or they tell me to turn it down, MOM!

(On a related note, did you ever consider what boomer nursing homes will be like? "Dazed and Confused" blaring on hallway speakers. Old guys with walkers playing air guitar to "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." Some former bar band singer putting "Smoke on the Water" on repeat until his neighbors storm the room to make it stop.)

Always, one song can lead to many more, and many memories. Today that song was "Rebel Rebel." My very first live concert, at the Toledo Sports Arena was David Bowie, during his Diamond Dogs tour. I was 15. We loved Ziggy Stardust . I can probably still sing most of the songs on that album by heart. As long as no one's in the room.

That may very well have been the best concert I went to, right then and there. He had no opening act. The lights went out and there was Bowie. He played and we went wild, perched on our seats in that hot, smoke-(of all kinds)-filled concert hall. Later he took an intermission and came back onstage to the opening notes of Space Oddity. A spotlight picked up his face, hovering in midair. As he sang, he floated down in the light, until the whole stage lit up and we saw he was actually on sort of rock version of a cherry picker. Great stuff!

I don't remember all the concerts we went to, and even when I know I saw someone, I can't remember much of the show. I saw Queen (and thanks to google I can even pinpoint the date: 1975: Tue 11th Feb - USA, Toledo, Student Union Auditorium.) I can remember Freddie Mercury on stage, his cape flying around him as he stomped around the stage. He was an amazing performer.

(What's somewhat amusing or perplexing now is that in spite of my taste in bands during high school, I had no conscious awareness of homosexuality at all. Were Bowie or Freddie "out" at all back then? If it were discussed anywhere by anyone it went over or through my head. What a lonely time it must have been to be gay in those days. Not that there was even "gay" or "out.")

Over the years, in order of memory, not occurence, I saw Jackson Browne more times than I can count. We borrowed a friend's Jeep and wore our long skirts to see Joan Baez at the Masonic. I saw Dan Folgeberg during his "Twin Sons" tour with Tim Weisberg, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Bob Seeger (twice), saw Simple Minds in Ann Arbor in seats so high up I spent most of the concert in the hallway to avoid vertigo. More recently, I saw Counting Crows, and took my (then) 15 year old to see Mest at Howards Club H in Bowling Green. She had a great time. I wore earplugs.

I of course didn't see more bands than I can list but my most regretful close call was almost seeing U2 at their Live at Red Rocks concert. I was living in Denver when the concert schedule came out. I was on my way back to Ohio and nearly postponed the trip for that concert.

And another thing: Stairway to Heaven is a truly great song.
And Free Bird always sucked.