It was a triple bill with Cheap Trick, Joan Jett, and Heart. But other issues loomed large.
Really? A Concert Review
We weren’t going to go. Big concerts have lost their appeal.
We like to be close up, where the sound is big and clear, and you can see their faces. But the good seats have gotten so expensive that we usually boycott, no matter who it is (well, unless it’s THE Who).
Some things in life are just a matter of principle.
But we were given some free tickets by a dear friend who couldn’t go. Cheap Trick, Joan Jett, and Heart at Raleigh’s Amphitheater at Walnut Creek (whose actual name changes constantly from one bank or telecom company to another).
So we went. I went because I wanted to see Joan. Something about that tune “we can stay together, through any weather”. I’ve been married 40 years, and when I’m in the right mood, it brings tears to my eyes.
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And because her guitarist wears black Chuck Taylor high-tops. I saw him rockin’ em on TV had to get some. Shades of youth gone by. (They were the best athletic shoes around back in the day—NBA in fact—but compared to modern sports shoes, they are crap.)
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Joan was good, but she seemed tired. Or maybe she just wasn’t in her element. Perhaps she still yearns for the hot, sweaty punk club in New York City with a stage 2 feet high. Maybe now, seeing a vast sea of aging yuppies with wiggling booties going “wooo!” with their hands in the air like they just don’t care, just doesn’t light her fire.
I feel ya, girlfriend.
Cheap Trick opened, and was great. They did their thing with plenty of antics, checkerboards, and midrange.
Heart headlined and was brilliant (and foxeeee!). If I had known they were this good live, maybe I would have gone to see them a long time ago.
But that’s enough for the music stuff. There were more important issues to deal with that evening.
We arrived fashionably late, and staked our claim at the front of the lawn area. You know, the the oh-so-party grassy part behind the sheltered seating, 2.6 miles from the stage. It wasn’t hard, there were big open spots in the grass all around.
Immediately, we wondered about all the frowns and rolling eyes that surrounded us. Then we figured it out.
Our folding chairs were not to proper concert specification. We seemed to have totally neglected the fine print, which clearly states that lawn chair seats can have “seats no higher than 9 inches off the ground”.
Ours were 15″.
Boy, were we embarrassed.
It’s not that we don’t sympathize. With everyone in low chairs, it can be nice to see the stage without standing up. But we hadn’t been to a concert in a while, so we just didn’t know about the latest protocols.
(I think we actually have some little 9 inch chairs of the proper size at home. But even if we had known, those little chairs lack the drink cup holders in the armrest. So that wouldn’t have worked.)
We begin to assess the tense situation. We didn’t want to be the selfish ruffians in 15 inch chairs blocking everyone’s view.
But wait!….aren’t folks allowed to stand up? Uh, yes. Wiggling fannies were in our faces all around us. Can you see through folks when they stand up? I don’t think so. Not in a normal state. And even if you could, you can’t see anything 2.6 miles from the stage anyway.
And what about 6 inch chairs? What if you are in a 6 inch chair, and some tall guy is in a 9 inch chair in front of you?
Oh The Humanity. It’s a living hell. The possible scenarios and complexities of guaranteeing everyone a good view while remaining seated on the lawn began to fog my mind.
So, did we fold our illegal chairs up and sit on the ground?
No.
But we were worried that the chair police might get wise to our caper, and initiate a crackdown swarm. Then we began to wonder aloud, “what’s the deal with this 9 inch stuff?” “Really?”
At this juncture, it would behoove us to try to understand why a chair height specification at a rock concert seemed odd to us. After all, it was obvious that most of the crowd were our brethren…the Baby Boomers. We are famous. Look us up.
Baby Boomers were the folks that invented ROCK. We ripped seats out of theaters, painted our faces at Monterey, wallowed in mud at Woodstock, rioted in Chicago, stuck it to The Man, middle-fingered The Pigs, sat in, flipped out, tuned in, turned off, burned cards and flags and stuff, and jacked our stereos up so loud they disappeared in clouds of smoke, all while tipping up hard liquor, inhaling all manner of substances into our sinuses, smoking weed like a forest fire (the stuff that killed Elvis and Janis), and telling anybody and everybody who even ventured a second look at our hair down-to-our-titties to f*ck the hell off. (See, I can’t even say “fuck” anymore.)
Yes, we were the Baby Boomers. The Rockin’est Generation. We were proud. Yet humble. Very cool.
But I digress. Back to the present concert situation, and the grassy knoll…uh…lawn.
So we must ask….what the hell happened to our rowdy “anything goes” identity? What’s up now, with a 9 inch maximum chair seat height specification, the rolling eyes, and the impending doom of a chair-police crackdown?
Have we been shot down from dizzying heights of glory into a bunch of whining, entitled babies, too lazy now to raise our fat asses out of proper 9 inch seats to achieve the view that we desire, this view we legally purchased with our platinum credit cards … this view that we now think we own and control, and are entitled to?
It seems so.
But there’s more. (And this is the really bad part.)
At the venue’s beer counters, it seems we could only purchase ONE BEER PER PERSON.
I know. Tell me about it.
“Why is this?” I ask. The guy behind the counter does not hesitate.
“If somebody walked away with 4 beers, they would probably be over the legal limit soon.”
(We must assume, by “legal limit”, he means blood alcohol content here, not the limit for flounder or trout on the NC coast. We must also assume his fictitious 4-beer buyer is somehow prevented from having a designated driver, and he is is going to guzzle all 4 beers himself, and not share any with his friends. Plus, I only wanted 2, not 4, but that’s OK. 4 does make a better example.)
I readily, yet riskily, retort, “Well, couldn’t it be that he’s taking those beers to his friends, in the spirit of community?”
I did not have to wait for The Disclaimer: “Well, it’s the law. There is nothing I can do about it”.
I wanted to tell him how, not 2 months ago, we were in the capital city of the mighty United States of America, watching the powerful Washington Nationals dismantle the Pittsburgh Pirates. (The Nats are 9 games up now.) In DC, they not only sell you as many beers as you want, but they provide you with a nice sturdy little cardboard box to help you carry the beers safely back to friends and family.
But I didn’t share this little tidbit with the beer counter guy. There were folks waiting behind me.
But maybe there is a bright side to the 0ne-beer limit. Maybe it is the key to solving the problem of public intoxication. Even if we must grow old in beer lines stretching to the horizon like the Great Wall of China, wouldn’t that make our sacrifice worth it?
Also, I had to realize this was NC. We are not exactly what is considered “cutting edge”. I mean, my friend had actually panicked when he had to use the bathroom and realized he had forgotten to bring his birth certificate.
But seriously. How can this be? Even in backwoods NC. Lawn chair seat height specifications? One beer per customer? Is this not a ROCK CONCERT? Where’s the mayhem…the depravity…the mud?
Who is it that can possibly be making rules like these? Oppressively politically correct regulations now encouraging us to be overly-entitled?
Then is struck me. I knew who. I won’t say their name. But their initials are “Baby Boomers”. (Or maybe its “Boomed” now.)
So I paid my $12 (yes, per beer!) and, saddened by the time wasted, by my generation’s fall from glory, and shuffled off to share my “hard-one” beer with my friend.
