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Nov. 21, 2006 In the fall of 1980 my favorite college football team, the Georgia Bulldogs, were on their way to a surprising national championship, but for one night I was distracted from my rabid obsession. I was in a car with four friends and we were smoking and toking and drinking our way to a Van Halen concert. The Augusta Georgia Civic Center hosted a number of rock and roll concerts in the early eighties--Black Sabbath-Blue Oyster Cult, Ted Nugent, John Mellencamp-Heart. Most didn't sell nearly as well as country music concerts, but Van Halen was an exception--they sold out three times in Augusta and I was there for the first one. An episode on VH1 about the history of heavy metal reminded me of this hazy memory. The Van Halen concert was general admission and my friends and I squirmed and jostled our way to near the front, perhaps the third row. I recall there were no seats or at least I don't remember sitting and the crowd was drunk and loud and rowdy. We stood shoulder-to-shoulder watching David Lee Roth energetically race and leap across the stage in what must have been a hell of an aerobic workout. Eddie Van Halen electrified the atmosphere with "Eruption" and the whole band played one of my favorites, "Beautiful Girls" to perfection. They were promoting their third album, the one with "...and the Cradle will Rock" and "Everybody Wants Some" on it. I know it's illegal, but I wish I would have snuck a tape recorder in with me so I would have a bootleg tape I could listen to twenty-six years later. Sometime early in the show, David Lee Roth sprinted in front of us and threw marijuana cigarettes into the audience. A solidly built cool dude, apparently a serious aficianado of recreational drugs, was standing behind me and he caught the joint, lit it, and passed it to me. I took a toke and the rosiny aroma floated through my nostrils. It was only the third time I'd ever smoked pot in what was to become a twelve year stint as a hard core pothead. At one point in my life I wished to be a career pot smoker though such a career, I discovered, didn't exist. But I was still an amateur and didn't really get high that evening. I passed the joint on down the line. I never attended many rock concerts after that one, much preferring to listen to superior studio versions of songs in the peace and safety of my own home or car. I did see The White (a group that looked and sounded exactly like Led Zeppelin and played nothing but Led Zeppelin), The Firm (Bad Company teams with Jimmy Page), REM (at an outdoor concert in Athens, Georgia before they were famous), and Iron Butterfly (Inna Gadda DA Vida). The Firm concert was uptight with organized seating and anal ushers who made sure we stayed in our assigned seats though there was no objection to communal recreational drug use. They did have a nice laser show, but it lacked the wild abandon of the Van Halen concert. Rock concerts nowdays are too expensive and wrinkled fossils prancing around like horny teenaged boys look ridiculous. Instead, buy DVD's of concert footage of rock stars performing in their youth. They'll bring back happy memories. ------------ About the author Mark Gelbart: My book, Talk Radio, is a black comedy about a radio talk show host who gets kidnapped and psychologically tortured by a loser. www.mark-gelbart.com Email: agelbart@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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