Go to the show

I recently attended my first rock concert at the tender age of 43. There had been a handful of concerts in my teens and twenties, but alternative or pop and I’d missed Pink Floyd when they toured in the late eighties. I remember talking about getting tickets with my best friend, but we had no real plan or money and it’s just as well because I would have been the kid who never made it out of the parking lot. Besides, late eighties Pink Floyd got everyone but Roger Waters in the divorce, and he was the one I liked best.

When we heard Roger was touring again, Joe and I decided we had to go. My finger hovered over refresh in the moments leading up to presale. It was like Black Friday at Walmart, I guess, not that I’d know but I do know to get what you want and get to checkout. I had no idea what ticket prices would be, but was pretty sure $14 couldn’t be right even though that was what the ticket site listed for our section.  $14 was like 1967 prices, but with the clock ticking I either thought this is our lucky day or I’m not missing out again like in 1987 and clicked and paid $28 for two tickets. Naturally this came to nearly $100 after the usual fees, but still. Cheap.

Shortly afterwards, the concert venue sent out a smartly worded, slightly apologetic email that basically said sorry guys, those tickets were really supposed to be $146 and you must have known deep down $14 wasn’t right because we charge more than that for a soda. So anyway, we’re charging the difference to your credit cards. But here’s a voucher for free parking (a $25 value!). p.s. The person who made that very costly typo is hanging by his middle toes as we speak. 

I barely had time to tell if I was disappointed or relieved when I got another email that basically said sorry guys, remember how we said we were going to charge the difference to your credit cards? Our legal team told us we couldn’t but we weren’t going to anyway. It was a joke, haha! You can keep the free parking though because we’re laid back cool like that. 

Months passed and I occasionally peeked in at our super-cheap tickets to make sure they hadn’t vanished or been hallucinated. I have never been more excited to attend a rock concert, which would have been true even if I’d attended dozens or any before. Joe and I brushed up on our late 70s to early 80s Pink Floyd – which, totally not necessary, as I’d burned those songs deep in the brain (along with a fair amount of pot) during my formative years – and gave Waters’ new album a spin and really liked it. Spoiler alert: he has a hard-on of hatred for Trump. No matter where his fans fall on the political spectrum, no one seemed to take it personally at the concert.

So picture this bit of karmic comeuppance: Picture two seats on an aisle. Great! No ‘scuse me’s on your way out to visit the mens or ladies room precipitated by, based on what I observed of fellow concert goers, pretty much continuous trips up and down the stairs to purchase large beverages to drink and/or spill on my head. Now picture those aisle seats, which are angled towards the stage but front row to the aisle. To see the stage, you have to crane past all the bobbing heads traveling up and down stairs with drinks. They are still good seats though. They are reasonably close to the stage and being front row to the aisle, we get to watch a blissed out dude stop and stare up at the ceiling for a full minute. I don’t do drugs anymore, but his joy was infectious. We could see all the cool floats, art and levitating platforms Roger Waters and his team worked so hard on, plus Roger himself looking beautifully angry on the jumbotron. He’s almost 74 years old, some sort of god I think.

When Pink Floyd did their last tour as a still-together band, they erected a giant wall, brick by brick, between them and audience and then tore it down as part of the show. 1980 Roger Waters wanted to keep the wall up and play the rest of the show that way – with a physical barrier between him and his fans – and I think 2017 Roger would have done it if he’d still felt that way. The years have not softened his political views, but he’s made a kind of peace with fame and fans. He just seemed happy to be up there putting on a show. We all just ate it up.

The show closed with Comfortably Numb, which is everybody’s favorite, I know, but it’s really mine. I’m pretty sure everyone in the audience sang along except for the lady in front of us who’d turned around before the show started to ask my six-foot-five husband to stop bumping the back of her chair with his knees because it was making her nauseous, but that was only because she’d already slipped out. Comfortably Numb would have brought us together, I’m sure. You can dance to Pink Floyd. I didn’t know that before but I saw it for myself and now I’m a believer.

I wonder if I will ever go to another rock concert again. Maybe if Judas Priest comes to town, and then I won’t feel bad if I never make it past the parking lot. It’s fun making childhood dreams comes true, even when we’re a little too old to enjoy them in the same way.

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