the first time

In 1978, my mom took me out of school one day so I could attend a concert with her that started in the afternoon.  It was Jefferson Starship, Foreigner, Nazareth, and Bob Welch.  At the time, I knew the first Foreigner record really well, and was excited to see them.  I was also thoroughly versed in Nazareth’s Hair of the Dog record. Because of my parents, I got into rock music at a pretty young age, and this first concert was literally an epic event for me.  I looked forward to it for months, and when I told my friends at school about it, none of them had any idea who these bands were, or why I was going to this thing.  We were all about 7 or 8 and I remember wondering why no one else knew about this stuff.  It made me thankful for my parent’s interests and their willingness to involve me.

The concert was in a stadium and there were seas of people, some launching women in bikinis up and down on makeshift blanket trampolines, and the music was loud.  At night, these glo-stick necklaces came out and everyone waved them in the air, as Jefferson Starship (whom I didn’t really know at all) had quite a stage show with explosions, smoke, and lights.  The whole thing was really incredible, and I wanted more.  The bad thing about being so young is that I knew I would be at the whim of what my parent’s decided to take me to, and I would have to wait to see something like this again.

When I was old enough to start seeing music on my own, I attended as many shows as I could afford.  I have no idea how many bands I’ve seen since this time, in many different styles of music, but I owe a lot to that first experience and the affect it had on me – not only the music, but the experience itself; the people, sound, sights, and smells that I still remember to this day.  That excitement can always be found at a good concert, even now, when the things I like to see usually don’t have thousands of people in attendence.  It’s just that feeling that everyone there is about to share something pretty incredible together.  That’s what keeps me going to more and more concerts, and will until I can’t anymore.