During my sophomore year in high school, I was not cool. I LIKE to think that very few sophomores are, but I was definitely a nerd. The guys who were cool, on the other hand, were the upperclassmen - the seniors and the juniors. Those guys had all the cool stories, did all the cool stuff, and us lowly underclassmen could only dream of being part of their legendary adventures.
So naturally, this thought occurred to me when my former schoolmate,
Vlado (one of the seniors), dropped me a line on
Facebook and asked if I'd want to go with him, Randy (another senior), Robert (a junior) and Shawn (graduated before any of us) to go see Judas Priest,
Whitesnake, Tesla, Saliva,
Trapt, and several other bands at the 98 Rock "
Rockalottapus" concert event, a ten-band head-banging show. At this time in my life, I really don't have the dough to spend on concerts, but
Vlado insisted and fronted me the ticket. And so, with twenty-five years having passed since I was that sophomore, I was getting the chance to go to a heavy metal concert with the cool guys. I wish I could have sent a temporal email back in time to sophomoric me and told him so. I'm sure he would have crapped his nerdy pants.
The big day was Saturday, August 1st. This is a concert event I'd heard about on the radio, when I've ended up on 98 Rock (when *I* was a young rocker, the station used to be 93 Rock...and we liked it!), but didn't give it much mind. Probably because I haven't actually been to a concert since about 1994. I used to be a MAJOR concert-goer during my rocker days. If there were guys with perms and makeup involved, I had a ticket. Van
Halen,
Queensryche,
Aerosmith,
Dokken, Cinderella, Scorpions...and, yes, even
Whitesnake and Tesla, two of the bands on the
Rockalottapus ticket. Concerts start to lose their appeal as you get older. You don't want to be the old guy there, for one thing. Plus, you start to look at the drunken, tattooed, screaming idiots around you and realize you really don't have much in common with them anymore. Also...it just gets to be kind of a hassle. The driving, the traffic, the parking, the crowd, the clouds of weed smoke flowing overhead, the people vomiting on your shoes, the damage to the eardrums, the hour-long lines to horrifyingly toxic bathrooms, more traffic trying to leave the venue and get home... You get older, and it all just starts sounding like a game meant for the young to enjoy. You'd rather sit home on your couch with a nice DVD and put your feet up.
But the memories are still there, and most are good ones. And you get to a certain age where all that hassle suddenly pales in comparison to the thought of reliving your glory days and feeling like a young rocker again. And when you find out it's a show that promises thousands of people your age and beyond, the idea becomes even more appealing, just as a unique time travel experiment - what do all those people you rocked out with back then look like now? I couldn't wait to find out.
So the day arrived, and
Vlado and Robert pulled to my place, ice chest in tow, to load up into my van. There was some question of not taking my van for the trip, since my air conditioning is out, and...well, it's August. I don't mind the heat, but I didn't want to have to subject these guys to it. Turns out these guys were more than willing to do so to arrive at the show in a tricked-out blue flame van. It was decided, and I was the chauffeur. Outstanding. I really hate climbing into other people's cars if I can avoid it.
Randy was picking up Shawn (whose name I knew, but I'd never really met, since he was class of '81 and I was class of '86) in Davis, and we were to meet them near
Arco Arena - a good central meeting spot on the way to Sleep Train Amphitheatre in
Wheatland, our destination - and drive our two cars there together. We ended up outside an In & Out Burger near the Arena, and Randy and Shawn arrived almost immediately after. We hung out there for a few, chatting, cracking some cold beverages from Robert's ice chest, and then finally got underway. I was in the lead. Not really knowing the directions, I was letting
Vlado do the navigating in the passenger seat, but he was also doing double-duty as DJ, getting a Judas Priest CD set up and playing. So I drove right past the turnoff to I-70, leaving Randy and Shawn confused but assuming I knew what I was doing. NEVER a good assumption. We got turned around and let Randy lead the way this time, and took the roughly 30-minute cruise there.
We showed up nice and early on purpose, so parking wouldn't be a problem and we could catch as many of the bands as we liked. We wouldn't get to see ALL of them, since there was the main show on the main stage, but also a "B-stage" outside with some of the other bands playing out there simultaneously. As we opted (of course) for the main stage, we wouldn't be seeing Saliva,
Cavo, Since October or Rehab (I know Saliva, only, amongst those bands anyway). Randy had paid extra for the VIP parking, so he got to park in the same lot as I did with my handy handicapped parking. I found a great spot right by the entrance, since not a lot of folks showed up as early as us. It turned out to be an even BETTER spot than I'd thought. After all we all got out and got more beverages happening, we noticed a minivan pull up right nearby and pull into a handicapped spot. The passengers were NOT physically challenged, believe me. This was the van from
Deja Vu, a local strip club, and it was filled with dancers who would be (we found out) appearing on stage at one point (not to strip...well, not completely...but to hose down the crowd with water guns). It's not every day you get to watch a bunch of gorgeous strippers in tiny little dresses pile out of a van, so, yeah...good spot.
After some hanging out in the heat (and it was hot, believe me. Robert with the bottled water was a lifesaver) we figured it was time to head in. We got my ticket from Will Call and flocked inside. The guys had all gotten general admission "pit" tickets. As this was probably going to suck for me, after discussing it with me,
Vlado got me a handicapped seating ticket, which is AWESOME seating at this venue, right at the rail at the bottom of the main seating with just the pit between me and the stage. We went there first to find my spot, and while
Vlado and Robert didn't have tickets for that section, a helpful security guy took their
tix from them and marked them up to allow them to sit there in chairs with me. Now they'd have the option of relaxing in nice, safe seating or braving the dangers of the pit, depending on their mood throughout the day. Awesome.
I mentioned it was HOT, right? Whew. This is an outdoor amphitheatre, and we had the hot August sun beating down on us. Randy, forward-thinking guy that he is, brought and shared sunblock. He particularly remembered this because, not too many months ago at our school's alumni event, I'd sat outside too long talking with him, his wife and others, and I'd gotten SCORCHED (I'm Irish...it happens...). As I'm beginning to write this right after getting home, I haven't taken a look in the mirror, so I'm not sure if he made it to me in time this time.
The crowd was an interesting mix, as expected. You had your aging rocker dudes, like us. You could spot them even without the beer guts or the balding, just by the fading tattoos (as opposed to the bright and fresh ones of the young folk). You had what we were most looking forward to seeing - what we referred to as your aging
skeezer MILF crowd. You know, all the girls that were hot and
skanky in their ripped jeans and tube tops back when we did our early concert-hopping, now still trying to pull it off with their stretch marks and
Botox? There were many. But I was surprised at how many young Priest fans there are out there. Part of this was a multi-generational thing. Some vets had clearly brought their kids along (sometimes their small children, interestingly...). But some young folk - college age - were clearly just there for the bands - hairy young dudes in their recent concert shirts (as opposed to guys like me, who had finally thrown theirs out or donated them to Good Will years ago), hot drunk Spring-
Breaky girls out there to shake their collective thing in the pit in bikini tops. Kind of fun seeing such a wide range of head-bangers, young and old.
We settled in for the first show. There weren't a whole lot of people there, since many were waiting to show up for the bigger acts, but we got to enjoy, first, a set from Michigan's Pop Evil. And they surprisingly rocked the HOUSE. Really enjoyed these guys, and even more, enjoyed being back in the concert environment, with massive speakers shaking my chest and blasting my ears. That brought back a lot of great sense memories. They finished and a...unique band followed. That was
Powerman 5000. I knew they weren't a typical band when they came out and all members of the band besides the Billy-Idol-looking lead singer (who calls himself "Spider One" and is actually the younger brother of Rob Zombie...but if they're actually related, shouldn't his name be Spider Zombie?) were wearing full-face sci-
fi-looking helmets (?). A mix of rap metal and industrial metal, these guys, too, really nailed it, wowing the slowly-growing crowd.
After this, I needed a break from the direct sun,
Vlado and I decided to head out into the main concourse area (with many sellers of tee shirts, beer, food, etc) and find some shade while I had a cigar. Bizarre moment there: while we sat talking, about a woman, as it turned out, some girl suddenly leaned over and said "She sucks!". Uh, what? Guess she felt like getting into the conversation, her joke being (I guess) that any woman we were talking about probably sucked. Budweiser makes for strange new friends... We got to chatting so long (us, not the drunk
skeezer, who was gone pretty quickly, no complaints from us) we didn't realize that Tesla had already started playing. Oops!
We made it back for most of their set, and it was a great time. For those not in the know, Tesla is probably the most successful thing to come out of Sacramento (granted, this isn't saying much). They hit it big during the last years of hair bands, not needing the mascara and spandex, but just good old-fashioned hard-rocking. If you know them at all, you probably remember their very successful cover of "Signs". There's always been a great deal of pride in this town - at least amongst those with rocker leanings - when it comes to Tesla, and Tesla has always appreciated it, taking pride, in return, of where they came from. Their set was a mutual love-fest. It also inspired much drunk-girl wanna-be-stripper, think-we're-on-Spring-Break dancing in the pit in front of me, so that was an added bonus to go with the music. It's always fun to wait for that moment when they exceed their capabilities in their drunken state and fall over.
A story for another time: I'd met Tesla's lead singer, Jeff Keith, backstage at a
Whitesnake concert almost exactly nineteen years ago, where I also had a nice long sit-down chat with
Whitesnake frontman David
Coverdale. The
Coverdale chat was hard to focus on, because his wife - Tawny
Kitaen, star of memorable
Whitesnake videos and several crappy movies - was standing right next to me in very tight jeans and leather chaps. Again...story for another time.
After Tesla, the
Deja Vu girls finally appeared onstage with the 98 Rock
DJs, spraying the pit crowd with giant water guns, lifting their skirts and shaking their g-stringed booties at appreciative fans. I hear they'll be appearing later for a similar performance at an upcoming Jonas Brothers concert.
At this point, Robert and
Vlado decided to hook up with Randy and head into the pit and storm the stage. I remained (you think?) and settled in for the
Whitesnake performance, which ended up being a nice flashback for me. Due to the backstage story mentioned above, seeing them back in 1990 was one of my best concert experiences, and I was a huge fan of them back in my perm days (yes, I used to have the body perm). As I'm no longer the same music fan I once was, I didn't know any of the newer songs they played, but appreciated the classics, particularly one of the better crowd songs from the hair band era, "Slow and Easy".
Coverdale is in good shape for his age, but is definitely starting to look like your grandfather in a wig. He announced that this is the twenty-fifth anniversary or their song "Slide It In". How did this information slip by the major networks? Stupid liberal media... He also announced that he'd just become an American citizen, finally (U-S-A! U-S-A!). I got a text from
Vlado, letting me know he, Randy and Robert were all crushed up against the stage. The concert hounds of yesteryear, it appeared, still had it. Rock on, boys.
Whitesnake's set saw the setting of the sun, and it was dark by the end of it, which led to me finally noticing the video screen on either side of the stage. By this time the venue had filled, with all the seats behind me filled up, as well as the cheap-set grass area behind. The pit area was clogged, and was growing more so in anticipation of the main act beginning - that being Judas Priest. Robert and
Vlado had had enough of the stage-front mashing and shoving and returned to sit with me. Besides that,
Vlado, after seeing up close how
Coverdale had aged, realized he really didn't want to see Priest's Rob
Halford in such an advanced state, preferring to hold onto his 80s memories of the infamous singer.
Here's the thing with me and Judas Priest. There was a narrow generational gap in my youth between heavy metal and hard rock. I missed the metal window. While those rockers older than me thrilled to Priest, Iron Maiden, Ozzy and
Dio, my "generation", while forced to respect such bands for fearing being called "fag" and getting our asses kicked, didn't really have the same connection to them. So while I knew some of their songs, I'd never bought any of their albums (this, as you may recall, was during the era of actual "albums"...and the glory days of cassettes), and didn't count them as one of my big influences. So while they were the headliner of this event, they weren't the big draw for me, as most of my exposure to them had been seeing their logo on the back of the jean jackets worn by the 14-years old that used to try to sell me weed outside the bowling alley when I went there to play
videogames. But I was definitely into seeing this performance, as my curiosity was high, and I've aged enough to know that such biases held in your youth are often not rooted in logic and can make you miss what others seem to see so clearly. Bring on the metal, I figured.
My expectations ended up being exceeded, much to my pleasant surprise. There was a reason this band was at the top of the bill. Thirty-five years after forming, Judas Priest still knows how to own a crowd, and how to rock quite brilliantly. My first sight of Rob with his big gut made me wince, sympathetically, a little. But he was immediately
likable. He's got this kind of serenity of the aged aura around him now, like he's genuinely enjoying what he's doing as is grateful for the chance to still be doing it. You just wanted to cheer him on. Seemed like a great guy. The crowd seemed to agree with me, and loved every minute of it.
Most of the bands I used to listen to were strictly of the head-banging-but-not-metal kind, so I hadn't really been to any shows with a mosh pit. Once formed, a wide circle in the middle of the pit, which fascinated me. How did it form? Who instigated it? Are there set rules about this kind of thing? But there it was, and it was a blast to watch, again because of the variety of fans. You expect to see young, virile white boys in these things, acting our their aggressions. But soon enough, I noticed a kid in there that looked about twelve. And a couple of young blonde girls. And guys of my generation. And at least one guy who looked like someone's grandfather. They all spiraled around, having a great time bouncing off of each other. It added a lot to the experience.
The band's performace was high-energy and addictive, with fantastic trappings of heavy metal shows, right down to lasers and a giant Nostradamus head with lit-up red eyes. Their guitarists did their patented stand-beside-each-other, left-to-right-banging sway, another standard of performances past. Rob worked the crowd - obviously not being able to be as acrobatic as he once, I assume, was - but kept the energy high and went through a couple of costume changes, the most memorable being what we referred to as the disco ball trench coat. There was much banging of heads and calling of woos, forked finger gestures thrown high, girls up on boyfriend shoulders swinging their arms.
Ah, yes, and I got to experience the encore ritual again. I've missed that. Obviously in a multi-band show, you can't accomodate encores for the early bands, so Priest would be the only one. There's that moment when they say goodnight, head offstage, but the lights are still on, so you know they're still coming back. I wonder, was their ever a time when the encore was not a ritual, but was instead spontaneous, with the band back in their dressing room, starting to take off their shoes, and a stage manager rushed back and told them the crowd wasn't disbanding, and they needed to get back out there? In our times, it's all part of the process. For this one, Rob came back out on stage riding a Harley. After more of their hits (and yet, no "Turbo Lover". What's up with that?), a banner with the Priest logo flanked by both Old Glory and the Union Jack was down, and Rob talked about how America and Britain were partners in metal (wooo!), partners in peace, and partners and war, and went on the give a heartfelt shout out to all the troops overseas.
Finally the show ended, with the band taking their bow, and that moment happened when, after they left, the stage shut down and the "house lights" went on. That's the moment when you know it's officially over and it's time to go home, but there are always those hopeful few that think if they can whip their fellow fans into a big enough screaming frenzy, the band will return. Doesn't happen. The show was at an end. We hung out in our seats, as Randy returned from his sweaty adventure up by the stage and Shawn found us, until security told us we'd need to leave. We headed out with the rest of the crowd, and again, our timing was good, because suddenly we were walking behind the Deja Vu girls, who weren't even attempting to keep their skirts pulled down. People were stopping them to take photos with them, and I was tempted to do the same, just to experience the total reversion to horny young rocker, but self-respect got the better of me. They finally headed back to their van, as us to mine.
We let the whole place empty out, standing by the van, discussing the experience and old times, sharing intell on former classmates we'd tracked down over the years. We told long-held secrets, and verified that there was one particular girl that almost all of us had made out with back in school (I'm not naming names). It was the perfect ending to the adventure, and soon, Robert and Vlado and I said our good-byes to Randy and Shawn, let them head to their car, and loaded up in the van for the enjoyable drive home (where more stories and secrets were shared). We got back to my place around 1:30 AM, and Vlado and Robert got into Robert's ride to head home, while I FINALLY had something to eat (hadn't eaten all day, by choice, for reasons you don't want me to go into), then headed out to the patio to start this blog.
It was everything we could have hoped for - great music, old concert memories, getting guitar picks as souviners (I even got a Telsa one, as a security guy had caught one and gave it to me there in the wheelchair seating), oggling both professional and amateur skanks, getting plenty of photos (all of mine viewable now by my Facebook people), feeling eighteen again and, most importantly, spending some quality time with great old friends. While I'm not much for crowds these days, I was definitely glad I made the exception, and took part in an amazing memory.
Thanks again, guys, for including me, and helping me prove that we are, still, "ready to rock".
Can't wait to tell all the guys at school on Monday...
3:00 AM. I'm out on the patio after a night out drinking with A.T. at Slingshots. He headed home, I had dinner and finished a movie ("Burn After Reading", a film that should have been titled "Burn Before Watching"), took care of some things inside, then came out to do some writing.
