For anybody that knows me, you know that music is huge in my life. I mean, it is right up there with food-and-air important. Growing up as a kid from as early as I can remember there was always music in our house cranking on my dad’s stereo, and I was always planted right in front of a speaker listening intently and memorizing all of the words. Until I got into college and was introduced to the Grateful Dead and the Radiators, music had 4 levels for me. Way way alone up at the top level was the Beatles….stand on your tippy-toes and reach as high as you can and that is where the Beatles were at. Then below that down on Earth the 2nd level was Pink Floyd, again on a level all their own as there is no band like them then or now, and they were about head high. Then just below that in the 3rd level at shoulder height were the ‘Big Three’…the super-groups…Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and the Who. Then way below that the 4th level starts from about the waist down and that was all of the other bands in the world mucking about together.
Well a couple of nights ago me and my buddy Frank ‘The Tank’ Hoffman went and saw one of the ‘Big Three’…Roger Daltrey from the Who at the Target Center in Minneapolis, MN. The arena was cut in half making it extremely intimate and I don’t think there was a bad seat in the house. We had two okay $38 seats in the back of the arena, but by a lucky quirk we ended up with six $125 seats all to ourselves in the 8th row dead center on the floor in front of Roger! I have been to a lot of concerts with Frank, but this was right up there with one of the coolest things ever. It was an amazing show that had me mesmerized and goosebumped the entire show and left me so thankful that I got to see one of my musical heroes still performing at any level, much less at an exceptional level.
He opened with the ‘Tommy’ album performed in it’s entirety, and it was perfect. His band was energetic and right on the money, and Pete Townshend’s younger brother Simon on guitar/vocals was incredible. It was eerie watching him on stage as he channeled his brother almost to a spooky level. Minus Pete’s signature bloody-fingered windmill guitar strumming, the rest was there as Simon had all of his brother's jumps, motions, upside-down smile, nods, and grins that must run in the family. He also sang all of Pete’s vocal parts and if you closed your eyes you’d swear it was Pete up there.
After an hour of ‘Tommy’, Roger talked for a bit and then broke into over an hour of sweet classic and not-so-classic Who songs, a couple of his solo tunes, and a nice long medley of Johnny Cash songs. He peppered the songs with stories in between of his childhood, his Who bandmates, his health, and he made it an intimate feel-good mood in the arena. And for the doubters out there thinking this was just a Who cover-band…this was a kickass rocking band that had me smiling, clapping, dancing, jumping up and down and yelling for more. Frank even managed to stay awake for the entire show despite the pre-show martini’s and Jameson’s and beers we had enjoyed. I thought we were going to lose him about 2 hours into the 2 ½ hour show when Frank sat down in his chair while the rest of us were standing and screaming, but it was just a brief rest and then he stood back up. It was a great concert that left me smiling and loving life and I recommend Daltrey to anybody lucky enough to have him coming to your town.
As I was driving home humming ‘The Kids Are Alright’ and thinking about what I had just seen, I started reminiscing about the one and only other time I had seen Roger Daltrey, 29 years earlier. It was with The Who, December 7th, 1982 in Milwaukee, WI. It was supposedly their ‘Farewell Tour’ and the hype was HUGE. Everybody was talking about it and it was the concert tour of the century. Of course they have regrouped countless times since then, but it was awesome and unique at the time. At first they were not even going to come to Milwaukee, but they had an open night right between their shows in St. Louis and Chicago so the city lobbied hard to get them to come to Milwaukee. Nothing. Then our DJ ‘Tim The Rock and Roll Animal’ from 93QFM radio literally went out on a ledge to get The Who to come to Milwaukee. He ate, slept, and broadcast his show from up on the ledge of the radio station in downtown Milwaukee for like 19 days or so until the Who finally agreed to come. The city went nuts.
Tickets were going to be impossible to get though. The old Milwaukee Mecca arena only held 12,000 people, so they held a lottery run by the Milwaukee Journal newspaper where you could submit your name for the chance to buy 2 tickets. They got over 90,000 entries. I entered and won the right to buy a pair, but tickets were $17 apiece…double what normal concert tickets cost in those days. I was only in 11th grade and certainly didn’t have that kind of loot. Luckily my mom stepped up and bought them for me, god bless her.
Next it was time to pick a lucky companion. I knew this girl Cindy Burelli from French class…she was totally hot. I had been flirting with her all that fall and we got friendly, but not ‘lets go out’ friendly. I can still picture her long wavy perfectly feathered reddish-brown hair…her tight blue jeans and tight tee-shirt accentuating both her perfect ass and exquisite chest…her badass jean jacket…and her cool black suede G.A.S.S. shoes. I desperately wanted to kiss those lips and run my fingers through her beautiful hair. I had to have her. So when I got the tickets I pulled out the big guns and casually let her know that I scored a pair of Who tickets and did not have anyone picked out yet to go with. Her attitude immediately went from ‘just friends’ to ‘Omg-Sneaks-is-the-greatest-thing-since-the-dawn-of-time’, and she strongly hinted that the lucky knight in shining armor who took her to the Who concert would get huge dividends in return. It’s a date I proclaimed! I was so psyched…me, Sneaky Sweets, with freaking Who tickets in hand and taking one of the hottest chicks in 11th grade! I was a damn hero…if not in anyone else’s mind, certainly my own.
So the night of the show I went to her house, picked her up, went to meet some other friends and then we were off for the show. The concert was amazing and the two of us had fairly good seats in the lower deck, but as we were standing there I tried to hold her hand a couple of times and was thwarted each time as she didn’t take my hand and sort of brushed it aside. I was puzzled at first and then full of doubt. For the first time in the couple of months leading up to this night, the thought suddenly crept into my head that maybe I had been had. Was this chick just using me for my tickets? No! Really?! But then that question was answered definitively about two-thirds of the way through the show when she started talking to this tall, long-haired, good looking dude next to her wearing cowboy boots who was probably 10 years older than us. Over the music I overheard him ask her if I was her boyfriend. “No no!” she said smiling up at him, “We’re just friends". I was crushed.
For the rest of the night I decided to try and make the most of it and just enjoy the music, but for a 16 year old kid it was tough watching my ‘date’ flirt with this creepy old douchebag. I did my best to ignore them though and it was still one of the best concerts I have ever seen. There were two lessons I learned from all of this: 1) Girls can be pretty damn sneaky, so watch out for them and learn from your mistakes; and 2) Go see your musical heros whenever/wherever you can before one of you are dead. No matter what it costs, in twenty years you will not miss the money but you will certainly remember that night.
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