Stung

A guy I've been chatting with on AOL, a cigar guy from DC, asked me to go with him to a Sting concert on Friday night.

Downside: I met the guy only briefly at a party, what would it be like spending a whole night with him? Sting? Isn't that like soccer mom music? Could I have a future with a Sting fan? I'm sort of owing somebody who takes me to a concert, right? I mean, it's not like he sprung for latte or something?

On the Other Hand: I'm good for conversation with just about anybody. I like his early stuff. It's a concert! I love concerts! Yeah, and when I was solvent, I would have had no problem springing for a concert ticket.

So the equation balanced and I said yes.

A concert!

I was of the generation that reached the terrestrial apex of concert going. There was a whole thing about concerts. A whole subculture. There were Rules!

Rule Number One: Make buying the Tickets an Ordeal. As in, sleep over night in a sleeping bag outside of the Ticketron outlet. Here in Bucks County, that would be Kenny's Bookstore in Doylestown. In college, the place at the mall in Reading.
Rule Number Two: Travel in a Pack. You need to buy a block of six tickets. And figure out which of your friends to take with you to share the concert experience, from beginning to end.
Rule Number Three: Be Prepared. Oh yeah. Obtain--either by purchase or having someone making you a tape--the entire oevre of the artist in question. Listen to the artist in question obsessively.
Rule Number Four: Pick a Favorite Song. The Favorite Song should be relatively obscure. Something that doesn't get played on the radio. The point of the Favorite Song is when you go to the concert, the event will center on whether or not the artist in question plays the Favorite Song. Note: Do not have as a favorite song the same song as someone who you're going to the concert with, or else that means you're a couple and the Favorite Song becomes Your Song, the song that you'll listen to over and over again when you break up.
Rule Number Five: Let everyone know you're going to the concert. One effective way to achieve this is by writing "(Artist in Question) Rules!" on the paper bag cover of your schoolbooks. Your parents are not included in everybody if they're going to be a problem. If this is the case, tell them that you're spending the night with one of your fellow concert goers so you two can study for your midterms. That always works!
Rule Number Six: Get drunk on beer at the concert. It's never a problem buying beer at concert venues, or at least it wasn't back in the day.
Rule Number Seven: Your entire concert going experience will be organized around the Artist in Question playing your Favorite Song. Stay glued to your seat. If the Artist in Question plays your Favorite Song, yell to all your friends, "Omigod! This is totally my Favorite Song!".
Rule Number Eight: Flick your Bic! Whether you smoke or not, you have to bring a Bic lighter with you to the concert. When the Artist in Question says, "Thanks so much, Philadelphia! You've been great! G'night!", this is your signal to ignite your Bic lighter and hold it over your head, with your arm extended, until the Artist in Question returns to the stage.
Rule Number Nine: Buy Zee Tshirt. In my day, concert tshirts were printed on black and white (contrasting sleeves!) baseball shirts. You would wear the shirt As Is on the first schoolday after the concert. Then, you'd wash it with a lot of bleach or something to fade the design somewhat to give the impression that it's all you ever wear.
Rule Number Ten: Find out whose touring and start the cycle all over again.

Concerts I've seen...

• The B-52s. My first concert. Of course, I didn't tell anyone I was going with that this was my first concert. I saw them several times after that. A kid in back of me in line pierced his own ear with a safety pin, bled profusely, and passed out. Cool! It was at the Philadelphia Zoo, a truly great concert venue. Most of the friends I met during the first semester of my freshman year at college I met because they saw me wearing my B-52s concert tshirt.
  
• The Ramones. Amazing show. I only knew Rock'n'Roll High School before the show.
  The Go Go's. Oh yeah. Saw it with the gang I used to work with at Mother's Restaurant. Most of us were homos ('Skidmarks On My Heart' was the Favorite Song of one of my fellow concert goers). The median age was 30.
  
• The Stray Cats. Everybody liked Brian Setzler, but I liked Slim Jim Fantom, the bassman.
  The Eurhythmics. Before there was Annie Lennox, there was the Eurhythmics. My friend Eva and I found great thrift shop clothes to wear to the concert, for Eva, a pink pillbox hat and a matching pink cape to go with it. So we were Jack and Jackie Kennedy that night.
  
• The Clash. Yeah. I saw the Clash. With my sister. She liked the acapella group that opened, 24 Caret Soul. I made the tragic mistake of following up my really big cup of beer with a really big cup of Pepsi. That night, I had the worst gas I've ever had in my life. It was nightmarish.
  
• Elton John. With my college girlfriend. (It's a long story what I was doing with a girlfriend in college.) He took a swig of water and spit it out all over one of the tech guys. The songs he wrote with Bernie Taupin are still among my favorites.
  
• Tina Turner. Wearing my Tina Turner concert tshirt guaranteed conversation with every African American I encountered. ("Awright! Goddess Tina!") This did great things for the expansion of my multi-cultural experiences. And it provided an anomolous bonding moment with my stepmother when she said, "I think she does the best 'Proud Mary' better than anyone else." The fact that a seventy-year-old woman had heard of not only Tina Turner but Proud Mary floored me a little bit. I brought her back a keychain.
  
• Bruce Springsteen. The Born in the USA Tour. At the Spectrum in Philadelphia. Best concert ever. Just amazing.
  
• Billy Idol. When Billy Idol came crawling across the stage towards the audience through the haxe from the smoke machine, I got such a hardon. I wanted to fuck Billy so bad.
  
• Stevie Nicks. Uh. Yeah. She did some of the Fleetwood Mac stuff.
  
• Black Flag. Oh man. There was this punk scene in Philadelphia in the 'Eighties that was funfunfun. I've always liked Henry Rollins, the frontman, until he opens up his mouth.
  
• Husker Du. Yep. Saw them, too. And more than fifteen years later, I found myself sitting and talking to Husker Du's frontman, Bob Mould, at the Factory Cafe on Christopher Street. That was nearly a loose-control-of-my-bladder moment. Bob Mould's two solo albums, 'Workbook' and 'Black Sheets of Rain' were the soundtrack of my life in the early 'Nineties.
  
• Big Audio Dynamite. Very cool. Way cool. They're still rocking my iPod.
  
• Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians. A quirky British guy. He had a song about frogs, I think.
  
• 10,000 Maniacs. Oh yeah. I saw Natalie Merchant so many times. I still love her. And Robert Buck was one of the greatest Rock guitarists of all time. There are many, many Natalie songs that will make me choke up automatically.
  
• REM. REM was--and is--totally my band. But it used to be that because I liked REM, I didn't have to worry about being cool. But, then they got popular. Saw them a lot. Like, a whole lot.
  
• The Cranberries. A cub I was dating took me to see the Cranberries. But I broke up with him when he told me how he wanted to suck on the lead singer's feet, thus revealing himself to be both bisexual and a foot fetishist.
  

And now, Sting. I liked Sting. It was a good concert, very high energy. And the Tower Theater is a great venue. I last saw the Eurhythmics there. Sting did bring out the soccer moms, but they were sweet. Their husbands made a lot of trips to the lobby for beer though ("Okay, I'll go with you to the Sting concert, but you're the designated driver that night.") There's a lushness and expansiveness to his music I liked a lot. So it was a good night.

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