Revealing My Age (One Concert Ticket Stub At A Time)

One of the many datamining exercises on Facebook poses the challenge of dating yourself without naming a year, but just by naming a (presumably old) performer you saw in concert. Now, this sort of datamining won't work on me anyway. When one of my security questions asks me to name my first concert, I routinely answer [name redacted], a teen girl who threw herself against teen me because my Jerry Lewis impression apparently made me irresistible. 

For dramatic purposes, the role of [name redacted] is played by Stella Stevens

(Those circumstances worked exactly once.)

Where was I? Oh right, old concerts. It seems to me the question's premise is inherently flawed. I'm in my 60s, and I saw my first concerts when I was a teenager. My Me Decade-era shows include then-contemporary acts the Ramones and the Runaways, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, KISS and Uriah Heep, the Charlie Daniels Band, 999, the Records, Joe Jackson, David Johansen, Artful Dodger, the Flashcubes, the Fast, the Battered Wives, and classic (but still current) stars the Kinks and Bob Dylan. 

Of these, only the Runaways tie me specifically to the '70s, as all of the others remained active into the Reagan Administration and beyond. 

I also saw Herman's Hermits at a bar in 1978, minus Herm himself Peter Noone, but still the Hermits (and a mighty fine show). I saw the Animals, with all five original members, in the early '80s. I saw the Everly Brothers, Bo Diddley, Gene Pitney, Ray Charles, the Searchers, and more on the oldies circuit in the '80s and '90s. I had missed opportunities to see James Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, Del Shannon, and Rick Nelson. Listing any of those acts in response to our original question might suggest I was attending rock 'n' roll shows in the '60s, when I was a mere lad and a beardless youth. Fakeout!

On this blog, my Virtual Ticket Stub Gallery includes a 1976 Beatles concert, but that's not technically, y'know, real. I have seen A Beatle, attended a press conference for another Beatle, and I also saw the Pete Best Band, but no, unlike my friend Pete Kennedy and my brother-in-law Tony Dees, no actual Fab Four on my concert resumé. Though I guess I could make the claim anyway. I've seen all four Monkees, too, but in increments of three Monkees at a time.

So the premise is indeed fatally flawed. My daughter saw Cheap Trick. And she was not around in the '70s or '80s. I'd remember if she were. Mommy's all right, Daddy's all right, we just seem a litle weird. And old. But still rockin' and rollin'.

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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

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