June 21, 2007
I attended an Earth, Wind, and Fire concert a couple of years ago with some girlfriends.
Earth, Wind, and Fire is an R&B funk/pop group that has clearly found a Fountain of Youth that's bypassed me. They're one of those groups that cross the age continuum of music appreciation. There were people at this concert ranging in age from 2 to 200, with me somewhere in the middle.
The concert was on a pier in Seattle, and because we were outdoors, I wore sensible shoes with soft socks, long pants, and an overcoat to ward off the chill, not generally what youngsters wear to concerts these days. It was an outfit that would have worked equally well for camping in the Olympic Mountains with your girlfriends from college. It was an ensemble for someone who did not plan on baring her midriff, and who had no designs whatsoever on flashing her breasts after too many beers.
It's festival seating at these, and we came fashionably late and hung out in the bar and around the sidelines, but then the pounding music moved me in ways that herbal tea cannot, and I found myself being pulled to the stage as if my walker was magnetized. And faster than you can say "hot flash," I was standing in front of speakers as big as side-by-side refrigerator/freezers, thinking: "Oh man! This is so cool." And also thinking: "This could give you a heart attack!" The reverberation at point-blank range must be deadly for people with congenital heart defects. My chest was throbbing, my breasts quivering in their sensible bra, the cellulite in my thighs popping ...
And then some people moved out of the way and I shifted left and I ended up right in front of the stage!
I was so happy and excited that I briefly considered flashing my breasts in spite of my outfit and the difficulty of disrobing. After careful consideration, I did not. I could just see the headlines:
"Concert-goers pummeled into unconsciousness."
"'They came out of nowhere,' dazed man says."
Then people began waving their hands in the air, and I did the same, my upper-arm wingspan creating gale-force winds in Tacoma, and I heard something pop in my right shoulder. I've had problems with this shoulder on and off for years, and anyone looking at me might have wondered: wide smile or grimace? I'm just not sure ...
I was undaunted and moved through the pain. I mean, my God, I was at an Earth, Wind, and Fire concert with good friends, we were outdoors in Seattle and it wasn't raining, I could no longer hear my knees cracking over the high-decibel music, and I could still — after a fashion — boogie.
After a few songs I realized that I had unwittingly broken an age barrier. The people crushed around me at the lip of the stage were not my peers. These people were half my age!
So I propose a new version of the old "Boogie 'Til You Drop" T-shirts, one for those of us who fight chin hairs and can still rock:
"Boogie 'Til You Pee A Little In Your Pants."
Comments
LeeNYC (anonymous) says...
Oh, yeah. I know how that feels, and it's been a long time since Woodstock. Going to see them in Boston in Sept. Very exciting. Also seeing Dylan next week in Bethel, NY and hope to see Steve Miller Band in July in PA. Still love concerts, even though my knees lock if I still down for too long!
June 24, 2007 at 9:50 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
rockandrollgrandma (rockandrollgrandma) says...
Great story. Loved it.
June 28, 2007 at 12:30 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
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