Yesterday was a sucky day for Jimmy and me. Work. School. Plumbing. By noon, we were ready to hide under blankets and call it a day. But alas, we had tickets to a Flogging Molly show so we put on our happy pants and headed out.
As soon as we parked outside Tremont, I felt my age. What had been a cute outfit just moments before suddenly became utterly lame; apparently, the fashions of The Limited and those of the punk world have little overlap. We walked in, past the cops already making arrests and past the door girl bemoaning the fights and predicting a long night. We fought our way through the crowd (which seemed to consist of a mass of elbows, armpits, and lip piercings) to meet our friends, who managed to stake out a great spot.
The realization of how much my life has changed hit me like a shovel to the face. Live shows for me now usually involve an acoustic guitar and the ability to sit at a table with some wine. I’ve mellowed into a comfy spectatorship. Last night was the first show I’d been to in years in which getting doused with beer was a certainty and where the scent of pot pervaded the air (which was oddly sentimental: “it smells like JMU in here!”). And it was the first show with moshing since my last HFStival (to date myself, the big acts that day were Beck, Prodigy, Local H, and the BossTones). So when the music began and the crowd suddenly became a bouncing, bumping mess, I was that old person wondering what the hell was going on. It only took about three notes before Flogging Molly sold me on the experience. They rock. Hard. Any group that includes a fiddle and accordion yet still inspires a raucous mosh pit is one to be reckoned with. These two 30-year-olds who moped through the day began to jump, to clap, to throw up the horns, to love music. We had so much FUN. It’s a great band that puts on a killer show.
One of the funniest parts of the night was when the lead singer of this Irish punk band introduced a song with a little history lesson to the American kids:
“So this next song is about Oliver Cromwell…”
“WOOOOO!!!”
“...whose life's goal was to completely wipe out the Irish…”
”Booo…”
It was a great night. Sure, I looked like a narc and couldn’t jump around long before getting a cramp. Sure, some kid kept calling Jimmy “sir.” But there was something’s about leaving a show smelling like PBR, weed, and sweat to take the sting off a day dominated by plumbing and work problems. We felt our age, but had a fantastic time anyway. After the show, Jimmy deadpanned, “I felt like I was 28 again.” At least it’s something. Like Dave King sang, “I’m a ripe old age, doing the best I can.”
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4 comments:
Wow. A shovel to the face. Really? Ouch.
Local-H!!! I saw them back when UMW was MWC. They really sucked.
I also saw Beck back then because I used to be cool(er), too.
Now I like to listen to music alone on my I-Pod (hey, at least I'm hip enough to have an I-Pod, even if it's only a Shuffle) and leave the concerts to the crowd-lovers.
But if the Arctic Monkeys ever come to Laramie, I'm totally there.
That's right, we saw Beck together back at MWC! I'm embarrassed to say that the only thing I remember from that show was the boredom of suffering through the opening act. I missed Local H... but apparently didn't miss much.
I actually remember hearing at Radford how bad Local H sucked at that show. That takes some doing.
Ah yes, Beck and his horrible opening act. I wish I could remember their name, but I do remember one guy somehow playing the violin so as to make no real musical notes, but dramatically destroying all the hairs of his bow. It was pretty terrible. At least they scored the Great Hall as a venue (although if I'm not inventing this in my old age, I recall hearing Beck say, "Let's get the [expletive] out of here" when his set was over. I don't think he was impressed with the Great Hall.
Local-H only got the Underground which held, you know, about fifty people or so. And which, in the end, included no fans.
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