If It’s Too Loud, You’re Too Old (and That’s OK, Stay Home)
Live music is a very personal experience
Live music is a very personal experience
Concerts are weird once you’re a person of a certain age, and for me that certain age was 35 or so. I probably went to more concerts between 1985 and 1991 than I’ve been to since. The late 80s were a fantastic time for farewell tours by the bands who had owned the 60s and much of the 70s.
Groups like The Who and the Stones decided that 50 was as old as rockers should be, and they were determined to leave the scene with terrific fanfare. By the mid-90s they had reversed that opinion, of course, but as someone who had agreed with their assessment of aging rockers, I declared my avid concert-going over by the time my second daughter was born.
The atmosphere had gotten a little stale and the music had indeed gotten too loud which, according to tee-shirts, bumper stickers, and pop culture generally designated me as too old.
I was fine with it. I felt as if I’d gotten my licks in as a young man and always had been offended by old people at concerts pretending they still were teenagers except for the having fun part. I didn’t want to be one of them, which was something I decided as I approached my 19th birthday.
A Rude Awakening
One of the best shows I ever saw was The Kinks in the Garden State Arts Center, circa 1989. Some of us had slept out for the tickets, which, for me, was one of the magical parts of going to concerts. The Arts Center (eventually re-christened in the name of corporate vanity) was a small outdoor amphitheater at the time.
Taking exit 116 off the deserted Garden State Parkway, we rolled into the nearly-empty parking lot in the pre-dawn twilight. It had been stifling during the previous day, but the overnight cool took some of the edge off without producing a chill.
We were second in line behind some aging hippies who, if my math is right, were likely not too far from either side of 40. Running into former hippies happened a lot.
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Camping out for tickets to Dylan, The Who, even Eric Clapton was always in mixed company, and I could take or leave the glory days vibe the aging hipsters radiated. It made me pity them a bit.
Sitting on concrete outside of ticket-sellers all over the greater NY/NJ corridor, I never met a single old person who hadn’t been at Woodstock or whose parents refused to let them go (but they still had the unused ticket at home).
The guys we hung out with waiting for Kinks tickets were pretty much the same. One of them was of the still-have-the-ticket variety, but they were pleasant and we passed the four or so hours talking about different concerts we had seen and the adventures they included.
When the box-office finally opened, we scored second row tickets, a personal best.
Camping out never guaranteed great seats. One notorious TicketMaster agent in the area would print off tickets for the best seats so he could scalp them later on. Being first in line there was as meaningless as trying to buy tickets over the phone, using speed dial to try and avoid the Please Call Back message or (worse) the dreaded busy signal.
Over the course of those few years of rabid concert-going we learned that the fix was in and it was easier to just hate TicketMaster and get the best seats we could manage. More often than not, we’d just scalp.
The Show Must Go On (Sedately)
Sitting in the second row, ahead of all these ancient middle-aged Boomer veterans of Woodstock, these if-you-remember-the-60s-you-weren’t-there hypocrites, I discovered that dancing and standing during the show was frowned upon. As we endured shouts to sit down, I shouted back that we were at a rock concert.
The derision didn’t bother me, and it certainly didn’t make my friends and I sit down, but it did solidify a notion that would eventually reduce my concert-going significantly: If you didn’t come to jump around, stay the fuck home.
I wasn’t a 40-something pretending to be an angst-ridden teenager...I was a wage-slave father of four who didn’t know how desperately he needed to scream along to heavy metal for three straight hours.
The staid atmospheres that crept in as the Boomers got crankier and The Stones had bi-decade farewell tours turned me off of big shows. Ticket and parking prices spun out of my range, or beyond what I was willing to pay to see live music.
I didn’t get the joy that other people seemed to. It got harder for me to participate in the mass euphoria. I got self-conscious, opting for lawn seats, where I could sit or stand as I pleased for a reduced ticket price.
At the risk of sounding like someone nostalgic for family nights around the Philco, concert-going lost its luster for me once camping out for tickets was banned.
By the mid-90s, ticket sales moved first to phone only and eventually online. I would see a concert if the opportunity presented itself, but as I raised my family the will to endure concert-going logistics left me.
Plus I was old and didn’t want to dance around like a fool while a 60-year-old in snakeskin pants plucked teenage girls out of the audience.
Diamonds and Rust
I had never been to a heavy metal show as a kid. I loved Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and a couple of other groups, but by the time I was old enough to both buy tickets and drive to shows, my brief Motley Crue dalliance had faded and the hair band revolution was in full swing.
The androgynous hyper-sexuality bothered me less than the ham-handed innuendo dripping from lipsticked mouths. It seemed childish and, once I put it in those terms for myself, I couldn’t see it any other way.
Plus, I found older bands more appealing.
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The first heavy metal show I saw was at the invitation of one of the friends with whom I camped out for Kinks tickets. He loves music and loves going to concerts. He’s one of those people with a preternatural ability to tap into that energy.
The show was at the (now) Corporate Vanity Arts Center and featured Black Sabbath (fronted by Ronnie James Dio and performing under the name Heaven and Hell) and Judas Priest, among others. I attended the show ironically and noted on several occasions that I might have been the only of the 10,000 or so people there not wearing black.
The folks at Corporate Vanity had very strict rules, the first of which was no camping out for tickets followed very closely by no tailgating. You had to have a ticket to get into the parking lot (unless you said you were going to the box office). They couldn’t have riff-raff hanging around in the $10 per-car lot enjoying the Jersey evening metal ambiance for free.
Rob Halford makes his living proving, night after night, that he will never be too old.
The place was almost unrecognizable to me. There was a maze of plastic gating that separated the cheap lawn seats from the “real” paying customers. There were also those over-enthusiastic post-911 security guards to enforce company policy out under the stars while confiscating contraband.
The vibe was more pantomime rebellion than controlled chaos, like getting permission to misbehave a little, but everyone seemed happy to comply.
I made snarky note after incisive observation about the entire production until Rob Halford, the lead singer for Judas Priest, took the stage on a Harley Davidson. He was thin for me but fat for him, shaved bald and wearing a goatee.
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He looked too old to still be rocking. Dressed in what could best be described as a chrome leather biker jacket with silver fringe that caught the light, he dismounted and launched into the opening song. I can’t recall which song it was, but I recall the sea-change.
The pre-show antsy-ness evaporated and people started to lose their minds. By the time the band played the opening riffs of Breaking the Law, I was losing mine. His voice was strong and clear. Rob Halford makes his living proving, night after night, that he will never be too old.
The euphoria picked me up whether I wanted to go or not, but I wasn’t a 40-something pretending to be an angst-ridden teenager, which was my genuine worry. I was a wage-slave father of four who didn’t know how desperately he needed to scream along to heavy metal for three straight hours.
I still hated the way Corporate Vanity homogenized the venue. I was still unduly proud of my red shirt in a sea of black. But while the music washed over me, there was no “I” so it wasn’t an issue.
It’s Still Too Loud, Sometimes
Although I don’t have my friend’s superpower of being able to give myself over to the experience, what I’ve learned since is that the value of going, for me, is getting caught up.
It’s so much harder to be the unselfconscious 50 year old dancing until he’s out of breath than it was to be the snarky 19 year old calling out the hippies sitting, arms folded, waiting to be entertained.
I saw Iron Maiden in Georgia just before the apocalypse and if it turns out that it was the last heavy metal concert I ever see, it’s a good one to go out on. It was in a different amphitheater in a different state.
I wasn’t yet 50, but I already was telling people I was. I danced until I was tired and then I sat in the grass, noting the impressive heat of the southern evening and enjoying the music as the more-energetic continued to dance and to bang their heads.
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