I Love Rock N Roll – Volume 2

So The Husband Dude came through for me again this year with my birthday gift. Last year he surprised me with tickets to Blondie. This year, it was tickets to Joan Jett and The Blackhearts and Heart.

You may recall that I saw Joan Jett for the first time ever at the casino two years ago. You can read about that here.

Anyway, this time it was a much bigger venue: The BOK Center in Tulsa. Where as the casino was small and intimate, the BOK Center is a 19,000+ seat arena, which basically increases the people-watching exponentially.

The Perfect Storm for a writer.

So my first reaction always upon arriving is to feel great shock at the number of elderly people in attendance at these things, at which point The Husband Dude has to remind me of the obvious.

THD: These people are all our age.

Me: Get the fuck outta here. What do you mean our age? These people are old. It looks like an AARP convention.

THD:

Me: Seriously. Florida called. They want their population back.

THD:

Ok, maybe it wasn’t really that bad. I mean, going to a rock show now is just like when I was in my teens and twenties.

Except for the gray hair.

And motorized scooters.

And the faint smell of Icy/Hot.

Like seriously…when did we get so…OLD?!? One minute I was seventeen years old and Kip Winger was actually singing about “She’s Only Seventeen” while I contemplated ripping off my bra and throwing it onstage, and the next minute I’m complaining about how late the band is starting while listening to a conversation behind me about sciatica.

Fuck my life.

And how freaking creepy is it that a grown ass man was singing about an underage girl who was “old enough for me”??? I wasn’t thinking about that when I was seventeen years old, singing at the top of my lungs to the cassette player in my ’84 Isuzu, but now it’s just gross.

But I digress…

My next observation after noticing everyone’s age but my own, was that I may have made a poor wardrobe choice. I wore my favorite pair of distressed jeans, which is no big deal, but I topped it with a gauzy leopard print halter top that I thought made me look cute and stylish. I love leopard print!

However, I started looking around and suddenly realized there were a lot of animal prints at this show.

A LOT!

Leopard. Zebra. Cheetah. I even saw a lady wearing spandex snake print pants.

Holy crap. We looked like the cast of Madagascar, thirty years later. We resembled a motley herd of jungle animals that were rescued from the circus or a zoo, milling about the animal sanctuary to live out our final days, carrying colorful overpriced drinks while wearing sensible shoes.

What happened to us???

As usual, Joan Jett did not disappoint. What can I say about the woman except that she’s sixty-two years old and still kicks the ass of women half her age. She absolutely shreds that guitar and her voice is still there after all these years.

Her audience, however…

I should start by saying that a group of ladies sat in front of us and the minute I saw them, I knew they were not hardcore Joan Jett or Heart fans. Maybe it was the Pumpkin-Spice-Latte-white-lady-haircuts or the way they looked like they had tried to be edgy by wearing some black, but then made the mistake of mixing it with gaudy QVC jewelry.

They were old enough to have been around when Joan Jett was in her heyday, but at that time they were probably wearing their jeans tucked inside their neon scrunch socks and listening to Debbie Gibson. I imagine they remember “I Love Rock’n’Roll” but not much else about The Blackhearts’ stellar career.

So Joan is working the crowd and introducing the next song. She opens by saying, “You might remember a while back I was in a movie with Michael J. Fox…”

As she finished her introduction to the Title Track from “Light of Day”, I glanced down at the basic white lady group in front of me and one of them had Googled Light of Day to…I don’t know…see what the movie was about???

I knew you weren’t a true fan, Karen. True fans were in the movie theater when Michael J. Fox and his mullet played Joan Jett’s brother. Or at the very least, they had rented it on VHS at whatever movie place preceded Blockbuster. You’re a poser. Put your fucking phone away.

And then there was Heart.

First of all…I don’t know what the hell Nancy Wilson was wearing because I desperately need bifocals and I won’t admit it but it appeared from my vantage point to be a suit (pants and a jacket) made of zebra or some other kind of animal print.

Again with the animal print.

Now we no longer looked like random elderly jungle beasts milling about. Now we were an organized herd of snakes and cougars and leopards and cheetahs, worshiping at the altar of the Grand Zebra with the Golden Mane and the Flying V.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a true super fan of theirs. I’ve admired their music through the years. I think Ann Wilson has one of the best voices in rock, male or female, but I probably have only ever owned a couple of their albums and then absconded with a couple of my brother’s after he lost interest.

The interesting thing about Heart is how varied their catalog of music is, from the 70’s to now. I’ve never fully been able to reconcile how the same band that wrote “Dog and Butterfly” saw a resurgence of popularity in the eighties with big hair, shoulder pads and synthesized radio-friendly pop-rock songs.

It’s kind of like I can’t watch Grace Slick sing “White Rabbit” with Jefferson Airplane and then reconcile that with Jefferson Starship and “We Built This City”, one of the most grotesque examples of selling out 80’s earworm bubble-gum pop songs ever.

But again, I digress.

I knew we were in for a roller coaster ride when Nancy Wilson told us they were going to take us on a “musical journey” of their careers and Ann Wilson pulled out her flute and started playing.

No, that’s not a euphemism for anything. She literally pulled out a flute and played it.

I’m not sure if I was having PTSD flashbacks of my crazy band instructor in fifth grade, but I leaned over to The Husband Dude and whispered, “I don’t think I’m high enough for this show.”

To which he responded, “You aren’t high at all.”

EXACTLY!

Alas, it was clear that some among the crowd were just here for the “stick-it-to-the-man-let’s-kick-shit-over” music of Joan Jett and not for the eight minute synthesizer solo in “Magic Man”. The last time I saw this many people leave during the headliner was when I saw Metallica and Guns n Roses on tour together in ’91. All the people who were there for Metallica couldn’t have given a crap less about GNR and weren’t putting up with Axl Rose’s drunken temper tantrums. They left in droves.

This wasn’t quite that bad, but our row emptied out pretty steadily about three songs into Heart’s set. To be fair, the only thing the two bands have in common is they they are fronted by women. Their style of music couldn’t be more different. If I had to choose, I would definitely put myself in Joan Jett’s camp, but Heart’s set definitely brought back memories of the blossoming fourteen-year-old writer I was, hiding in my bedroom and scribbling angst-filled teenage stories in my loose leaf binder. I listened to a lot of their music in those days, so it was worth staying just for that.

On our way out to our car, I was momentarily distracted from my walk down memory lane by a twenty dollar bill that somebody dropped. I didn’t see who dropped it as it was just laying there in the parking garage. I looked around but nobody was nearby enough to be the possible money dropper. I felt pretty good tucking it into my purse until I looked around and saw all the old people again.

I’m one of those old people.

Sorry, Kip Winger. She’s not seventeen anymore. She’s forty-eight. And she’s forty pounds, a C-Section, and thirty years past wanting to rip her bra off and throw it at you.

And I’m tired. Get off my lawn.

Stay weird, my friends. Normal is boring.