From this shift in popular music came New Wave. Now New Wave was something I could actually get in to. First off it was played on the radio and I could buy the records. Secondly, it didn't necessarily require shoving a hot safety pin through my nose to show my allegiance, which is always good. Especially when I was already suffering from a bad perm and maligned glasses frames courtesy of a dodgeball accident. Think: Napoleon Dynamite, except not as sexy. Well by the summer of 1978, The Cars had blown up with their debut album. Blondie was starting out well, and even the B-52's were a new and exciting act out of Georgia. Fortunately for me, a radio station in the Washington area had dedicated themselves to playing this new format. WAVA kept the new and exciting rock coming. I burned up at least one telephone calling in to win records or tickets. Soon other acts came forward such as Joe Jackson and Talking Heads. But to me, The Cars had the staying power. They were melodic and quirky, but not so much so. I could actually play their stuff without getting the obligatory, 'What's THIS crap?' from my dad on the first play through. I proclaimed that "The Cars" was one of the best albums EVER as "Let the Good Times Roll" blasted from the Sansui speakers, and my dad openly wondered if I was just a little retarded. Insert Teen Angst here.
Just about 3 months ago, I was listening to the library of songs on my home computer that I use to load my iPod. Most likely I was surfing the 'net, or goofing around on a guitar, just typical stuff we all do everyday. Find a project, put on some jams. Fine. A song comes up and Jack gives it a listen, says he's always liked it, and asked who it was by. I asked if he really liked it, and if he knew the words. He said he felt he DID know the words...or at least a big chunk of them. I reached over to my Taylor 614, tuned it up and delving deep into my huge library of 13 songs I actual know, sat down and played it for him. He sang along with great abandon, with a sense of true surprise that he DID know the words and that yes, the old man really COULD play it. Together we crossed a wonderful bridge: a song we both loved, that together we could perform. A seed was planted. The song was the punk band Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)".
Back to the following summer in 1979, New Wave had a full head of steam. By this time Elvis Costello was riding his popularity crest, Talking Heads had a new album out (Fear of Music), and the Cars delivered 'Candy-O'. I couldn't go anywhere without hearing the track "Let's Go". Not the mall, not in the car, and not at my girlfriend's house. Well mostly because I didn't have a girlfriend, but I digress. The band was huge. And they were touring.
Summers were spent in Oklahoma with mom. It was six weeks of not having to get up at 5:00am to throw papers, which automatically made it my favorite place AND time. The Will Rogers Theatre with its random double features (Mel Brooks' 'Vertigo' was second bill to 'The Deer Hunter'...talk about your ying and yang) was walking distance. The Patio, My Pi, and Beverly's were all great places to eat. And of course, it was time with mom. It was good. In contrast was the whole newspaper situation. The Daily Oklahoman versus The Washington Post. Ok, that part..was bad. I was used to the Sports section being 20 pages in Washington. Here the whole newspaper wasn't 20 pages. So I'd peruse the whole paper here and even got to the point of checking the classified as a matter of regular course. I had 6 weeks to kill, I wasn't about to miss out on knowing when the next farm auction was going to be held. One sleepy morning I flipped open the classified and saw it: Gold.
Tickets to the Cars.
Now with Jack, once he finds something he likes, the boy WILL stick with it. And in the past three months, he's been sticking with Green Day. All of Green Day. They'd pop up on a concert show like 'Storytellers' and we'd record it and he'd jam along with it. But this was different. He was paying attention to guitars and hand positions and the dialogue and the names of the performers. He was getting INTO this band. He was becoming emotionally invested. One evening as I was goofing around on my laptop, I looked up at him, and he was air guitar-ing with his eyes shut and belting out the words. But with a different intensity than before. I quietly mumbled to myself, "It's time."
The deal with the Cars tickets of 1979 was three-fold. One, it would be my first concert. Two, the tickets would have to be bought from a scalper. And lastly, it would require exactly half of my summer allowance from mom to pull it off. This was June. The show was in August. The upside if it all worked out?.. Third row center at the Civic Center...for MY band. The cost: $25. I said I wanted to do it. Foregoing golf, junk food, and shopping, I was committing to a band. I was driven to a small crumbling house on 18th street and paid the $25. In my hand was a life-changing event. The hard part was now waiting to do it.
As a parent we all want to do right by our kids and teach them the things in life they need to succeed. Study hard, play nice with others, clean your room, etc. And at the end of the day if they pick up the majority of those things we are happy. But there are also little things that he like to hope we can have someday as well, and presenting something that we enjoy a lot to them and in turn having them enjoy it is a real slice of heaven. We can force feed sports or dance or reading onto them and many times if it doesn't stick we have a real sense of let down. But when it DOES stick, when they do find that enthusiasm as truly as we do, it's a wonderment. So after seeing Jack get into his band, it became clear to me that may be whatever the cost, it would be something he and I could truly enjoy together. So I made my move. I got online and bought tickets. Good tickets. Then I made a plan.
The Cars show was opened by Nick Gilder (Hot Child in the City), and he was appropriately loud and pretty bad honestly. Then after a fashion the real show started.
Of course they opened with "Let's Go", and to this day I still get goosebumps. Rik Ocasek had a lightning bolt guitar strap and the whole band didn't move 5 steps the whole show. And it was awesome. I was deaf as a doorknob for 2 days later. Which meant I had to play the album just that much louder at the duplex we were in, and by this point mom was about to ship me off to anywhere if she had to listen to side 2 of that record one more time. Three days later, we were on a plane heading home to Washington, DC and that stupid paper route. But I had my concert t-shirt on the whole way.
My plan with Jack was to take him out of school early, and drive to Dallas on a Thursday night, see the show and rely heavily on my world class insomnia to get us home by 3:00am on Friday morning hoping he'd fall asleep on the way home. The rest of the family showed up at school to see the expression on his face when I told him he was about to go see HIS band. And it was so worth it. Little boys don't tear up at much. This little boys did. At the show he jumped, screamed, pumped his fist, yelled at authority, and got hoarse. He also got a t-shirt and wore it the whole way home.
And it was heaven to me, for together we had crossed a bridge permanently. His first concert is one he won't ever forget. Which for me was all I wanted. I wanted him to be rewarded for investing in something he can call his. Twenty years from now when he's at work, he'll be able to say his first show was a punk band in all of it's loudness and crudeness and fascination.
As we walked out of the venue after a 3 hour show, Jack leaned into me and said, "Dad, I can truly say I had the time of my life."
(in front of Green Day tour bus)
