Pursuant to the 80’s craze hitting the last entry, and a off-the-cuff comment I just heard at work, I’m gonna relate a quick story of the first concert I ever went to.
The scene: The Worcester Centrum. If you’ve never seen the Centrum, imagine a gas-station urinal that happens to seat 20,000 people.
The year: 1987. Reagan is president, Black Monday rears its ugly head, and a girl falls into a well.
Me: Barely 12, 5th grade, in the midst of an awkward stage that lasted until roughly last week.
The show: Opening Act: Great White. Main Act: Whitesnake.
ARE YOU READY TO EFFIN’ ROCK??!!!???
Seriously, this was the coolest of the cool. My first concert. My uncle was taking myself, his daughter, and her friend to the show. It was gonna RAWK.
First sign that things wouldn’t go so well for my uncle occurred when I got stoned trying to use the toilet. I didn’t know until much later I had gotten stoned, but I could tell from the slightly panicked look in my uncle’s eyes that something was amiss. But I has zipped my fly, so it wasn’t that. I shrugged, ate three bags of Doritos, and went to my seat.
Ah, the seats. Third level, and a 45 degree angel behind the stage. I could see the buttocks of the bass player, and while many a hairsprayed lass would have enjoyed that view, I was not one of them.
Ah, Great White. This was before “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” and before they watched too much Beavis and Butthead and set entire buildings on fire, leaving mass destruction in their wake. I only knew “Rock Me”, since I watched “Headbangers Ball” each weekend, where I’d get my weekly fix of L.A. Guns, Kixx, and Stryker.
The band plays about three songs, which I don’t know, but hell, I’m at a ROCK SHOW MAN. I’m having fun. Then the leader singer decides to talk to the crowd, and, I swear I’m not making this up, says,
“Alright. The next song’s about f#cking. I don’t mean nice, sweet, making love, I’m talking down in the mud, on all fours, scratching so hard you make her bleed F$CKING!”
19,996 mouths open to cheer. Four mouths, forty-five degrees behind the stage, gape in horror and astonishment.
Know that part in the “South Park” movie when the kids hear the swearing for the first time, and they get they perfect look of horror, bewilderment, and abject joy all at once? Yea, well, three of the four of us had that face. I can relate to Cartman, and that’s just plain wrong, folks.
During the rest of the set we beg our uncle not to make good on his promise to take us home right then and there. I got tired from pleading, so I did a line of coke of the buxom chest of the girl next to me at one point and kept on arguing until we broke my uncle down.
The rest of the night is a blur to me, not just due to the heavy drug use. David Coverdale and Co. played a solid set of watered down Zeppelin riffs, disappointingly with nary a mention of mud-filled spite sex.
I came home that night with a Whitesnake T-shirt, my first rock t-shirt. It was a thing of beauty, the kind of shirt the really slutty girls wore under their jean jackets at the roller rink on Friday nights in Tyngsboro. Sadly, the shirt ran away from home. Or so said my mother.
“What?” I asked, on the verge of tears.
“Yea, I think the dog stole it,” she said, reading the paper, avoiding eye contact.
“We don’t even own a dog!” I cried.
“That’s nice dear, now go out and play,” she said.
That, most definitely, did not RAWK.