#398

I gotta be honest with you about something... Jeanette dragged me to a concert last night and it blew my effin' doors off. It was fucking fantastic. (If you allude to it, you might as well say it; it was F-word awesome.) Jeanette is a believer in live music, and I'm happy she's a gentle evangelist to a person like me, who may otherwise choose the couch over the concert (after a long week). Last night – a Friday night – that would've been a mistake. To be clear, Jeanette kindly invites me; she doesn't 'drag' me. I was tired, but a trio called The Record Company made me untired. The show was at Gallagher Way, outside Wrigley Field, and the Gods of Rock said, "Let there be Rock," and from a stage, through rising smoke and beams of light, the Rock came forth, and the Rock was good, and it was poured out richly like wine at a wedding feast, and the people were quenched (because there really was wine and beer, of course) and their souls were restored, and their minds blown and faces melted, and the Rock was part blues and part punk, and it was perfect. And at least one person (me) was grateful to another person (Jeanette), and also grateful to his kids (M 'n' m) who have for several years now been musicians.... I've mentioned before, Megan is a cellist and Michael is a bassist (formerly a cellist). And since M has a bass guitar now, I took a video of a bass solo last night and sent it to him. I hope M 'n' m choose the concert over the couch, more often than vice versa. There is a time to work and a time to rest, but there is also a time to rock.

"I wanna rock!"
     — Twisted Sister, 1984

I remember three 45 records I owned when I was about 9 years old. Huey Lewis and the News, Hall & Oates, and Twisted Sister. The Twisted Sister single was actually We're Not Gonna Take It (not I Wanna Rock), but it was Rock, and it was good. My first cassette was New Edition which featured Cool It Now. Another cassette I"ll always remember buying – at a Ben Franklin store in Clear Lake, Iowa – was The Joshua Tree. Def Leppard (Hysteria) and Bon Jovi (Slippery When Wet) were a couple others. I feel bad that M 'n' m will never record a mixed cassette tape, track by track, laboriously – listening and dreaming and pushing clunky, plastic buttons – for someone they have a crush on. Nor have they, or will they ever, receive one, and know how much time it took to make it. 

A friend of mine saw Van Halen open for Journey who opened for Ronnie Montrose. Neither of those warmup bands were legends yet, obviously. What a show. And a guy next to us last night said he was at Pink Floyd at County Stadium in 1978, and "everyone that day saw God." I believe him. Such is the power. I know County Stadium was in Milwaukee back in the day, because my dad had Brewers season tickets. We lived outside Milwaukee for two years. I started school there. Then Iowa, then Illinois. But always rockin'. Or if I wasn't, I shoulda been. 

I wanna rock! Rock!
I wanna rock! Rock!
I want to rock! Rock!
I wanna rock! Rock!
Turn it down you say
Well all I gotta say to you 
Is time and time again I say no! No!
No-no! No-no! No!
Tell me not to play
Well all I gotta say too
When you tell me not to play I say no! No!
No-no! No-no! No!
So if you ask me why I like the way I play it
There's only one thing I can say to you
I wanna rock! Rock!
I wanna rock! Rock!
I want to rock! Rock!
I wanna rock! Rock!
There's a feelin' that
I get from nothin' else
And there ain't nothin' in the world
That makes me go! Go!
Go-go! Go-go! Go!
Turn the power up
I've waited for so long
So I could hear my favorite song
So let's go! Go!
Go-go! Go-go! Go!
When it's like this
I feel the music shootin' through me
There's nothin' else that I would rather do
I wanna rock! Rock!
     — Dee Snider, Twister Sister, I Wanna Rock