Elizabeth and I don’t go to a lot of concerts. Or, Elizabeth and I go to a bunch of
concerts. I don’t know which of those
two statements is more true; it probably depends more on the perspective of the
other person involved in the conversation, in this case, you. I’d say we average about 3 concerts a year, which
has been pretty consistent over the 22 years we’ve been married. 3 concerts a year doesn’t seem like a lot,
thus validating the first statement; but if you add up all those shows over the
years, we’ve seen somewhere between 60-70, which I think fits the technical definition
of a bunch.
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Foo Fighters |
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Paul Simon |
It’s important to understand that Elizabeth and I aren’t
extreme personalities; as a rule, we don’t like extreme sports, we don’t watch
extreme television, and we don’t do extreme things. We’re big fans of the golden mean, of
stability, of routine. To us, extreme is
putting the kids to bed and then…watching
a movie, or if we’re really out of our minds, having sex. The fact that
both of us will be asleep before it’s over tells you just how horribly pathetic
we are, both at determining what qualifies as extreme behavior, and also in carrying
it out. Perhaps you can imagine just how
daunting the prospect of back-to-back concerts appeared to two such small, hum-drum
individuals.
Some of you are probably thinking, “What’s he making such a
big deal out of going to a couple of shows for?
I rock and roll all night, and
party every day.” To you, my friend, I
say kudos; however, you’re probably not 43 years old, with two young children,
and don’t have to deal with the challenges of coordinating multiple schedules,
resolving overlapping commitments and lining up childcare, the combined
logistical complexity of which easily rivals the early Apollo missions. And not
just once, but twice in a row. Put a man
on the moon, puh-leeze.
Others might suggest, “If it’s such a big deal, why go to
both? Just pick one, and sell your tickets to the other one.” Sound advice for
the middle-aged, to be sure. Just one
small problem: which one? You see, Elizabeth loves the Foo Fighters. I think I can say they’re her favorite band
to see live. I came to realize this the
first time we saw them, about seven years ago, when the band’s amplified din
and Dave Grohl’s screaming were drowned out only by the unearthly howls and
brain-piercing shrieks coming from my wife’s mouth. I had never heard anything quite like
it. You’ve probably seen that
black-and-white footage of the early Beatles performances, you know, where they
show all the girls in the front screaming as though someone had just handed
each of them the Publisher’s Clearing House grand prize check.
I always thought that was some kind of psychological phenomenon, some kind of group-think response to being in an emotionally charged environment with a crowd of weak-minded individuals, who just kind of get caught up in the fervor of the moment. Someone screams, and before you know it, everybody’s screaming. I now know better. I now believe every woman has a primal scream inside her, and I also know that I don’t want to be anywhere around when it goes off. WithElizabeth ,
I knew I would be getting that scream one way or another, the only difference
being that one of the ways would be partially mitigated by really loud music.
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Seven crazy women, and one small, petrified boy. I feel you, dog. |
I always thought that was some kind of psychological phenomenon, some kind of group-think response to being in an emotionally charged environment with a crowd of weak-minded individuals, who just kind of get caught up in the fervor of the moment. Someone screams, and before you know it, everybody’s screaming. I now know better. I now believe every woman has a primal scream inside her, and I also know that I don’t want to be anywhere around when it goes off. With
Besides, when you’ve been together as long as we have, you
develop a kind of mental map of the other person’s mind. You gain an ability to see, with a fair
amount of clarity, exactly where the areas of common ground are, and also the
hills on which your loved one is willing to die alone. When it comes to the Foo Fighters, my mental
map told me we’re not just talking about a hill, but a mountain. A mountain with a fortress on top, fortified
by archers, cannon, and frothing cauldrons of boiling oil, all waiting to drop
on the chump who’s dumb enough to challenge that gate. Picture Minas Tirith from the Lord of the Rings, and you’ll have a
pretty good idea of what my map of Elizabeth ’s
mental terrain looks like when it comes to the Foo Fighters.
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Minas Tirith lives! |
Meanwhile, I’ve been waiting all my life to see Paul Simon perform. Literally.
The story goes that while pregnant with me, my mom went in for a routine
checkup. The exam proceeded uneventfully,
until the doctor began moving the stethoscope erratically around my mom’s belly,
like he was trying to pinpoint something but couldn’t. He cocked his head slightly and furrowed his
brow, but didn’t say a word. This
understandably concerned my mom. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Just a moment,” the doctor replied curtly, grimacing and moving
the stethoscope’s round silver disc again.
“I can’t quite get it,” he mumbled to himself. A few more minutes of frantic movement and
listening followed.
My mom was becoming increasingly alarmed. “Doctor,” she said, pushing herself up to a
half-sit around her bulging belly, “What is it? Is there something wrong with
my baby’s heartbeat?”
“Shhhh!” he said sharply, moving the scope once again. “It’s almost as if…It couldn’t be… This is
highly unusual…Must check the literature…” He abruptly left the room, and
returned a few minutes later with two more doctors, and several nurses. They all took turns listening while my mom
lay there in escalating mortification.
They spoke in hushed, mysterious tones, engaging in a very animated, but
silent, discussion. My mom was just about to explode with anxiety when her
doctor turned to her and said with amazement, “We’ve never seen anything quite
like this before, Mrs. Thorson. I wanted
confirmation before I said anything, but we all hear the same thing. It’s Scarborough
Fair.”
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If I knew what they looked like, I might never have come out. |
At ten, I found a Paul Simon cassette tape at the library
and checked it out. It had all the great
early solo hits on it: Mother and Child
Reunion, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,
Kodachrome, Me and Julio down by the Schoolyard, and my absolute favorite Simon
song, Slip Slidin’ Away. I spent hours listening to that one song, over
and over, with one minute breaks in between while my lunchbox-sized cassette
player rewound the tape.
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Isn't that 'Columbo?' |
Once before in my life I waited too long to see a band I yearned
to see in concert, and ended up missing out forever on the opportunity. Queen was my favorite band through most of my
teenage years, until I discovered the Kinks anyway (those British bands and
their cheeky names). They had a
long-established reputation for legendary live-performances, of which I was
well aware. They came through Phoenix on tour in ’82. I probably could have gone, if I had really
set my mind to it; my older sister was a fan as well, and I remember talking
about the upcoming concert with her, and the possibility of us going together. However, at fourteen, the steep price of a
concert ticket was almost impossible to cover with my meager paper route proceeds,
plus I would have had to talk my mom and dad into it, and besides, in the
recklessness of youth, I thought I had all the time in the world. I ended up passing on the concert; and as it
turned out, they never came back. Queen
did two more tours after that, but neither one had a U.S. leg, and in 1986, they stopped
touring altogether. Freddie Mercury
contracted AIDS, and died in 1991. When
I heard the news of Freddie’s death, I was angry at myself all over again for
not trying harder to make that ’82 concert.
I remember stepping outside into a sunset so blazing that everything was
completely engulfed in red, raising my fist to the setting sun, and vowing: “As God as my witness, I shall never go
Queenless again.”
What exactly I meant
by that, I’m not entirely certain, but I think the gist of it is that I
shouldn’t take for granted that there will always be another opportunity to do
something I really want to do. It’s been
almost thrity years now, and I still
regret not seeing them perform when I had the chance, regardless of the difficulties. There was no way I was going to let Paul
Simon become a Queen.
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Fiddle-dee...oh, screw the fiddle, where's the guitars? |
That didn’t sound right, did it?
Incidentally, Queen eventually reformed, with Paul Rodgers
of Bad Company taking over lead vocals.
They began touring again, even playing a concert in 2006 at Jobing.com
in Glendale . I didn’t go to that one either. As much as I love and respect Brian May,
Roger Taylor and John Deacon, it’s not Queen without Freddie.
Obviously, there were some deep emotional forces driving my
desire to see Paul Simon, forces which precluded a compromise on my end. Ultimately, we had no choice but to man up to
the fact that, for those two nights, we were going to throw caution to the wind
and act like irresponsible teenagers.
Thank goodness I could rely on the recent examples of my students to
help me recall what being an irresponsible teenager was like; it’s been so long
I’m not sure I could have done it otherwise.
We made all the arrangements, endured all of the hassles precipitated
by our foolhardiness, and before we knew it, our two-day concert season was at
hand.
So, how did it go? Well, it turns out that we had a great
time at both shows. Of all the things
that could potentially have gone wrong, very few actually did. I could try to entertain you by inventing a
cavalcade of funny and bizarre incidents or silly predicaments, but the truth
is that everything just kind of fell into place. The Foo Fighters rocked the house as very few
bands can, and Paul Simon, even at 70 years old, was nearly everything I could
have hoped for. Because I was there as a fan, and not as a
professional concert reviewer, I don’t feel comfortable critiquing the shows as
a whole; but, for what it’s worth, I can relate a few personal observations.
Foo Fighters – US Airways
Center , Phoenix AZ ,
16 October 2011
The first thing you need to know about a Foo Fighters show
is that if you prefer to observe musical performers from the comfort of a seat,
this is not the place to be. Standing is
the default position. At many concerts,
performers will encourage the audience to get up periodically, either with hand
gestures or by direct request. Dave
Grohl (lead singer) never asked or indicated; he didn’t have to because no one
ever sat down to begin with.
See...even they admit it. |
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This is Dave screaming and/or cursing. |
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Dave thinking about screaming and/or cursing. |
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Taylor is on the far right. Doesn't he look nervous? |
The band performed two massively cool covers during their
show. One was Pink Floyd’s In the Flesh?, which sounded
spectacular, complete with searing guitars and stomping drums that would have had
Pink blushing. Taylor even sang Waters’ vocals. How that man can do any singing while he’s
actively engaged in annihilating his drum kit is an unexplained phenomenon. They also did a spot-on version of Tom
Petty’s Breakdown. In a way, these covers seemed like strange
choices, a couple of non-sequiturs, not really there for any particular
reason. But I love it when a band
salutes another band by taking the time to get the sound just right. The respect and admiration show through, and
for me, that’s reason enough.
Dave must have liked something about the Phoenix crowd that night, or maybe he was
just over-caffeinated. If Dave likes
you, watch out; you’re in for a long night.
Early on, he warned us that he liked us, and was going to play, in his
words: “for a long !$%@#$* time!” He
also seemed impressed (or was it confused?) by the especially warm and extended
reception the fans gave Pat Smears when he was introduced. Pat had been a guitarist going all the way
back to the Nirvana days, and had been part of the Foo Fighters before leaving
the band several years ago. This marked
the first time he had played in Phoenix
since returning, and the audience’s appreciation was enthusiastic and
sustained. Whatever the reason, they
played for almost three hours, including extended encores.
Oddly, I heard that pop sensation Taylor
Swift performed here about a week later and was “smitten” as well by her Phoenix audience. She apparently tweeted some very
complimentary things about the fans here relative to other places (sorry you
had to follow us, San Diego ). What’s going on here? Are we particularly starved for entertainment
here? Is it desperation? Did we suddenly develop a reputation for
being a good concert city, and someone forgot to tell me? It made me wonder if there’s a list somewhere
of good concert cities, and if bands sit around and talk to each other about the
relative righteousness or suckiness of playing in different cities. I would love to hear a conversation like
that.
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Now Pat's the one on the far right, but Taylor still looks nervous... |
One final note:
Elizabeth and I invited my brother-in-law with us to see the show. He wasn’t a huge Foo Fighters fan to begin
with, but I owed him a concert for taking me to see Green Day’s American Idiot tour several years
back. I had a big obligation to repay
that particular debt, as it was Green Day that helped me hang on to my sanity
while the country around me was losing its collective mind in the years
immediately after 9/11. He really seemed
to enjoy the show, which obviously made us feel good about inviting him. The fact that, a week later, he told me that
he had been looking into the remaining tour dates just “to see if he could
squeeze another one in” may not sit that well with my sister, but for Elizabeth
and me, it was pure validation that we had done something right. Mission
accomplished.
Paul Simon – Comerica Arena, Phoenix AZ ,
17 October 2011
There’s something inherently unfair about asking a
70-year-old-man to follow the raging onslaught of electrified power that is the
Foo Fighters. It’s an apples and oranges
situation, to be sure, and not just with the performers themselves, but in the
energy level and overall vibe of the audience as well. When you’re 43, and referred to by other
patrons of the show as a “youngster,” “nipper,” or my personal favorite,
“little shaver,” you’re in a distinctly different crowd. Standing was not only discouraged, it was
considered potentially life-threatening.
“If I have to stand up for more than two minutes at a time,” I overheard
some elderly person say, “my thrombosis will kill me dead as a doornail.” Like I said, apples and oranges.
While there was a definite drop in the energy level, it
wasn’t as sharp as you might think. The
only time during the show it was a distraction was when Paul would play one of
his oldest hits. Mother and Child Reunion comes to mind, or, unfortunately for me, Slip Slidin’ Away. These songs lacked any real spark at all, and
came out as listless, light jazz blobs. But
can you really blame him? He’s been
singing some of these songs for almost 40 years; who wouldn’t feel like
throwing up if they had to sing Me and
Julio down by the Schoolyard for the ten million and oneth time? Although I still wish he had; that song
didn’t make the set list. Anyhow, the
juice would jump immediately anytime they played a song from Graceland , or anything more
recent, which was the vast majority of the show. Paul had no problem keeping up with the natural
exuberance of the band with any of those songs, and his voice sounded pleasingly
trim through all of it. He sounded like
the old Paul Simon, and by old, I mean young.
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This is what Paul Simon's voice looked like. |
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This is the look I'm talking about. |
Musical moments that stand out: Paul covering George Harrison’s Here Comes the Sun, which not only
sounded great, but the way he sang it made it somehow sound as though he had
written it and it had been his song all along (almost surreal); his stark,
simple version of Sounds of Silence,
made famous (again) by his performance of it at the 9/11 remembrance ceremony
at ground zero; Late in the Evening,
which is my second-most-favorite Simon song, during which I unapologetically dropped
some pretty ugly white-guy dance moves, (we had moved to the top row on the concourse by
that point, so I wasn’t blocking anyone’s view) ; Hearts and Bones, just because I love hearing that song being
played and sung.
Here's the video of Paul singing at the 9/11 ceremony.
So, that’s my tale of two concerts. I’ve done a lot of talking here; now it’s
your turn. How many concerts do you
see? Who’s on your list of performers or
bands that you absolutely feel you must see before you die and why? Do you have any great concert moments you
want to share? Is there a performer or
band you regret not seeing when you had the chance? C’mon, don’t be a Paul Simon; share a little.
About 5 years ago, my husband Dennis surprised me on my birthday with tickets to see Crosby Stills & Nash. Having seen other acts from the 60's and 70's in recent years, my expectations weren't very high. I have to say, we were pleasantly surprised. There were no younger singers doing the vocals. David Crosby was phenomenal. Stephen Stills was still fierce in his anti-war singing. Graham Nash still hit the high notes like when he was with the Hollies. They had been a must see for me and I am glad we waited.
ReplyDeleteIt's always a gamble, isn't it, seeing a performer/band that's getting on in years? Are they still passionate about what they're doing, or are they simply padding the retirement account? Do they still believe in what they're doing, or have the words and songs gone empty for them? Do they even have the physical tools anymore to be on a par with the material?
ReplyDeleteBut it's such a hopeful thing when you see someone perform who does still find great passion in what they're doing, even after all those years of doing the same thing. It's tremendously inspiring.
Elizabeth and I saw Earth, Wind, and Fire last spring for the first time, and we had all the same questions about whether it was worth it to even go see them at this point (they were celebrating their 40th anniversary as a band on that tour). But they put such energy, passion, and talent into the show that by the end, we felt grateful that they had given us the opportunity to see them. I love it when that happens!