Concert Days

Twenty years ago, a friend and I (let's call him Osgood) traveled from Seattle to George (yes – George, Washington) to see James Taylor in concert at the Gorge Amphitheater. Although I haven't been to every concert venue in the U.S., the Gorge would be hard to beat for sheer breathtaking beauty. The stage was erected on the east side of the Columbia River, and is angled in such a way that when you're sitting up on the vast, crowded hill that looks down on the performers, the sun sets just behind and to the left of them. That's what the sun was doing when Taylor went into the first refrain of “Shower the People.” He couldn't have asked for better timing.

So Osgood had said when we arrived that he wanted to sit as high up on the hill as we could. I wasn't particular (though I did think it was odd), so we spread our blankets, took two bottles of beer from the cooler, and watched the performance. Taylor probably wanted to be sure that those of us way up in the nosebleed grass knew he wasn't just a small insect, so he did a lot of hopping across the stage as he played. I for one was glad, because he did look kind of like an insect, only now he looked like a grasshopper. So finally I asked Osgood why he'd wanted to sit up so high. Didn't he want to get a closer view? What he said fascinated me. He had no interest in seeing the acts themselves at concerts, he said; he was just there for the music.

This made no sense. He could stay home and listen to the music. Concerts were all about seeing your favorite performers up close and in the flesh, and being bombarded with music so loud your next-door neighbors would have called the police. Concerts cemented a singular experience in your memory forever. You could tell the grandkids you were there when Morrison was arrested for indecent exposure during that Florida concert in '68. My high school girlfriend can say that. (I was in the hospital with mono.) But if Osgood had lived there back then, he couldn't have seen that while listening to a 33 1/3 LP in his living room.

So I like concerts. I haven't seen as many as most of the people I've known, though, because as they became more and more expensive over the years, I couldn't justify the expense. They just weren't a top priority in my life. For instance, Simon and Garfunkel went on a reunion tour that stopped in Seattle when I lived there. It was a dream come true for me – they were my high school idols – but good seats went for $150 apiece. That was extravagant in the 1990s, or it was for me, anyway. I wrestled with my decision for weeks, then decided that if Simon and Garfunkel wanted me to shell out $150, they could come perform in my apartment. I would provide the stools.

In fact, many of the concerts I went to were singular memories. The first one I ever attended I went to with a friend whose mother dropped us off. We must have been around 14, so long ago that I can't remember where we were except that it was somewhere in downtown Miami. The group was Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and the venue looked like the inside of a big airplane hangar. No seats, but it didn't seem like anyone cared. BS&T put on a good show, and sometime during the last half of it, a wild thunderstorm hit the area (actually, it's a given that all Miami thunderstorms are wild, and dangerous as well). They proved to be a truly class act, though, when the show ended and the storm was still raging – they played a 40-minute encore that only ended when the rain subsided and the crowd could make a dry getaway.

My second concert would have been The Doors at Pirate's World, but I had that aforementioned mononucleosis that almost became hepatitis, and my girlfriend (let's not call her anything) went with another guy and that was that. I didn't so much care about her as the fact that I missed a great show.

I could never remember every concert I went to, much less the order, but a few do stand out.

The most fun I had was at the Show Box in Seattle, where my friend (let's call him Dave, since that's his name) and I saw Loudon Wainwright III. It was a pretty stripped-down venue at the time – Wainwright simply walked onstage with his guitar, sans introduction, and started playing. If you've never heard him, you must. He out-Prines John Prine for funny, folksy lyrics, and his songs can be meditative, even melancholy and profound, as well. He sang both kinds of songs that night, and because I was there, I got to know his idiosyncrasies – he would frequently lift one leg up behind him as he sang and then bring it right down again, and his tongue would sometimes leave his mouth more as a tic of some kind than just to wet his lips. It was a show free of pyrotechnics, mosh pits, even a backup band, and it couldn't have been more enjoyable.

The performer I've seen most often is Amy Grant (three times). I know, not exactly edgy, but edgy isn't always my thing. Her shows are mainly aimed at a Christian audience, though as she ventured into pop a few times, her followers became a mixed bag. But they were all believers when it came to music, and I think she has a great voice and writes some powerful lyrics.

The worst concert? I went with someone to the Gorge to see ZZ Top, and they put on a great show. I appreciated them more there than I had on CD. But the first act, oh, my – Ted Nugent. I have no memory of what he sang or what it sounded like. But I do remember him pacing the stage between numbers and shouting “No s***!” over and over. And over. That was it for his onstage patter. Well, there was one moment when he stopped to say a few choice words about Saddam Hussein, I think it was, then turned around and shot an arrow into a giant banner of Hussein's portrait that hung above the stage. (I'll bet most of us had been wondering what that was doing up there.) Maybe that's why I enjoyed ZZ Top so much. They could have been Alpine yodelers and I would have still been relieved. (That's not to take anything away from ZZ Top. They're better than yodelers any day.)

I saw Paul Simon twice, without Artie. First time, he shared the bill with Bob Dylan. They each did their own sets, but in between they sang a couple of duets. You might already suspect this, but it's impossible to sing a duet with Dylan. You're singing the melody as written, and his voice is somewhere else doing other things. Maybe he's just too unique to keep up with. I thought it was a massive understatement when he was introduced as “Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan.” How about, maybe, “Living legend Bob Dylan”? Maybe Simon had something to do with that. Simon was pretty subdued that night anyway and didn't interact with the audience at all. He was much livelier when he returned a few years later with Brian Wilson, joking with the crowd and even flinging water from a bottle at the front row. Wilson, though – what years of drugs and deep depression have done to him are a crying shame. His song intros didn't always make sense. At one point, he told us to look up at the rafters as he sang the next song so we could see angels flying around. He added that he was perfectly serious. I was gullible enough to look. I don't know who made up his band on that tour, but the sounds that came from those speakers was pure Beach Boys. Total time machine.

You might have assumed from the title of this piece, “Concert Days,” that those days are behind me. Well, never say never, I always say, yet the last concert I attended was in the Tacoma Dome in 2000. I swore afterwards that I would never go to another show unless I knew it had the potential to be as powerful for me as that one, and none has.

I'm talking about the Boss – Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

I admit I was a diehard fan anyway, but still – three hours, and Bruce never left the stage. The others did briefly sooner or later, but what everyone said about his shows was true – he just went on and on and on, the Energizer rocker. His wife Patti Scialfa wasn't in the band that night due to illness, and that was my only regret. He sang from atop the piano at one point, but that was the only moment when he proved his age – he climbed up instead of leaping up. (But who even noticed?) They played their biggest hits. Bruce sat on a stool and did an acoustic version of “Born in the U.S.A.” (A seriously inebriated drunk one row down from me kept shouting, “Where were you born, Bruce?” but his voice didn't carry, thank goodness.) I'm so glad I got to see Clarence Clemons, too. The finale consisted of “Born to Run,” “Bobbie Jean,” and “Thunder Road.” I only realized then that we'd all been on our feet the entire three hours, and something about that finish brought tears to my eyes. Maybe it was the role those songs had played throughout my life or maybe just finally being able to see Springsteen sing them in person, whatever – something shook me to my core, and I went home knowing I'd finally been to the mountaintop.

Is there anyone I'd still like to see? Sure – I'd like just once to be in an audience singing “Hey Jude” along with Paul. But I don't even own a calculator capable of computing those ticket prices. I got to see Arlo Guthrie once, Arlo and his grown son, and that was magical, but I never did get to see him in concert with Pete Seeger. I'd pay as much as I could to see them together today (R.I.P., Pete). That's about it for concert wishes.

OK, geezer time. I enjoy seeing concerts on TV (well, when I was watching a lot of TV – see a previous post), but some things I'll never get used to, I guess. Altamont cast the first pall over what a concert could turn into and promptly ended the Woodstock era. More than ever before (Altamont notwithstanding), there seem to be so many violent incidents at concerts these days. Not all, of course – it's not like you have to fear for your life when you attend one – but those things were much rarer when my concert-going was at its peak. I also think that MTV removed much of the mystique of concerts. I was used to seeing my favorite bands not just in person but in some cases for the first time at all when I saw them onstage. Now (or at least when MTV was still in the music biz) bands have to live up to their videos. Maybe the most affecting indication of the passing years is the fact that matches we once held up in solidarity with our musical heroes are cell phones today. Say what you will, but the glow's just not the same.

Feel free to share your own concert memories with me. I'd enjoy that.