Jennifer Moody

Somebody, somewhere along the line in my life – if I could remember who, or the circumstances, I wouldn’t be me – once said something to the effect of, “Why would I spend megabucks to go to a concert when I can buy a couple of good CDs for a fraction of that?”

I won’t even dignify that with a reply.

Hah! Who am I kidding? Of course I will. Because you don’t go to a concert for the music, you poor uncultured swine. You go for the memories. And looking back through my concert T-shirts brings them back like the swallows to Capistrano.

I truly love a good live show. There is nothing like being in a stadium with 40,000 screaming people who all know all the same lyrics you do. The energy is incredible. You suddenly find yourself thinking that joining the mosh pit would be a great idea. Klaus Meine of the Scorpions grabs his mike and howls at the crowd, “Yahhavnagdtimetonahariiiiiiiiight!” and you howl right back, “YAAAHHHH!” even though you haven’t the vaguest notion of what he said. You come out of the stadium with your sinuses bleeding and Neil Peart doing “Wipeout” on your eardrums and singed fingers from the lighter you held too long during the tribute ballad and you wish there had been just one more encore.

CDs? Feh. Feh, I say!

I’m not sure how many concerts I’ve seen. Several years ago I tried to count them but got lost at about 35, and I know I’ve seen several since. Hard to say if certain ones qualify: If they were big once, but you saw them at the county fair, does that count? What if they’re just a local favorite? What about tribute bands? What if you were at a music festival; does every single band count, or just the festival as a whole?

My first concert was Daryl Hall and John Oates’ “Big Bam Boom” tour. I was 14 and “Adult Education” was one of my favorite songs at the time. My dad (who must have lost the coin toss) agreed to drive my friend Tracy and I the three hours to Memorial Coliseum, then go have coffee or something while we watched the show all by ourselves. The unprecedented (for my family) freedom! Even better, when we arrived, the usher looked at our tickets and told us there must be some mistake, tickets weren’t supposed to be sold for the section we had. He escorted us from the rafters all the way down to the first balcony, just off stage left. We could practically see Daryl Hall’s dark roots. Swoon. At one point we SWEAR he looked at us.

Best concert I ever saw, for sheer hero worship: Paul McCartney. I’ve seen Macca three times and am keeping my fingers crossed for a fourth. The first was in Paris in 1989, during my brief exchange stint in London. I took a tour bus for the weekend that included concert tickets. It’s really funny to hear thousands and thousands of Parisians all crooning, “Nah- nah- nah- nananana! Nananana! Heyyy, Joooood.”

Best concert I ever saw, for sheer musicianship: Melissa Etheridge, during the same time period. I had sorta kinda heard of her – her first album had been released and I might have heard “Similar Features” maybe once or twice – and the little magazine where I worked as an intern agreed to let me go interview her before a concert in London. (Everyone hits London on tour. I am living ALL of my next life in London, and I plan to be independently wealthy so I won’t have to miss a single show.) She was very nice, very patient with the naive, 20-year-old, barely coherent me (sample question: “Um, so, like, who are your influences?”). And then I saw her perform.

Whoa, mama. She was amazing. We were in a smallish club, held maybe 200 to 400 people, but she performed like it was on fire and only her voice, drenching the walls, could put it out. I had never seen anyone pour out that much raw passion into a microphone. I was utterly transfixed. Today, I own her CDs only to remind myself of what she sounded like that day onstage. They can’t begin to compare.

A side note: I also got to interview the ’80s band Cutting Crew while I was with that magazine. They performed in a pub that night and invited anyone in the room who wanted to to join them onstage for their encore, “One for the Mockingbird.” Yours truly shared a mike with lead guitarist Kevin MacMichael; definitely one of the highlights of my London experience, and of concerts in general.

Audience interaction, man, that’s what I’m talking about here. Buy a CD? You might as well have told Courteney Cox to just stay home and not bother with those front-row tickets to see the Boss.

Although there is such as thing as too much face time. I recall a trip to the Lane County Fair with Fiance, circa 1995, to see Weird Al. Al sang his classic ballad, “One More Minute.” He’d just gotten to the Deep and Meaningful Pause – just after he sings, “I’d rather rip my heart right out of my rib cage with my bare hands and then throw it on the floor and stomp on it till I diiiiiie …” – and into that Deep and Meaningful Pause, with the silence so pure you could have heard a cotton candy drop, Fiance hurled this shout: “SING IT, AL!”

I wonder if the restraining order has expired.

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