First Concerts

December 14, 2019

Last year was a benchmark year for the Hanson-Young family.  We took our daughters to their first concert.  And we’re not talking Barney and Friends at the State Fair.  We’re talking the big time, Taylor Swift at Fedex Field in Washington DC.  Tweens as far as the eye could see.  We’re talking two straight hours of the loudest, high-pitch cheering of all time.  These kids had the bleachers swaying.  My girls lost their minds, they had the best time ever.  And I enjoyed going to a football stadium where the men’s room stayed dead empty the entire night.  I had the whole place to myself.

Every time I looked over at my girls watching the show in wonder, it made me think about my first concerts.  I have to say it plurally because of the circumstances of the events, because there were two of them.  My bestie Vince and I were in middle school and we wanted to go to our first concert.  But we couldn’t agree on what we wanted to go to.  We both listened to lots of different styles of music, so when we both made our suggestions, we both easily said yes to each other.  My concert suggestion came up first, New Edition and the Fat Boys.

Seeing as this was our first concert ever, my dad had the most embarrassing suggestion ever of being our chaperone.  As expected, the last thing we wanted was to be under guard of a parent at a concert.  Especially since he had no idea who New Edition or The Fat Boys were.  To make it absolutely worse, Dad found out that the concert was at the Meyerson Symphony Center where the Dallas Symphony Orchestra performs.  From that moment on my dad made the decision that I had to go in church clothes.  I was mortified.  There was no way to explain to him that this concert was with our generation’s version of the Jackson 5 and a hip-hop group.  All he could hear was “Symphony Orchestra”.  After a week of begging and pleading, he allowed me to wear jeans.  But a dress shirt and church shoes were still required.

When we got to the concert, I remember getting out of the car and looking at my church shoes and groaning.  But once we got to the entrance, I never gave it a second thought.  Once inside we saw hundreds of kids walking arounds laughing and excited.  I remembered coming here on a field trip to see the Symphony Orchestra, but this was an entirely different scene.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to say this was the biggest group of Black kids this Symphony Hall had ever seen.  I don’t recall seeing another white kid there other than Vince, nor another adult in there other than my dad, nor any other ties or church shoes other than mine.  Vince and I saw a couple other friends from school, but didn’t even bother asking my dad if we could go say hi.

As soon as we got to our seats, a bunch of kids on the other side of the floor seats started screaming in the Aisle.  We looked over and saw them walking and hopping around a big guy in the center of the group. It was one of the Fat Boys!  Out of nowhere, they were on the stage and the Human Beat Box throws down a beat for Stick Em, and we all went nuts.  It was my first time seeing someone famous in person.  It was a very stripped-down performance, just the three of them and a DJ.  Which is all you really need for a hip-hop show.  But they were so much fun.

Once they were done, the place was abuzz.  Guys in every corner were showing off their beat boxing skills and spitting their own rhymes.  The look on my dad’s face trying to understand what they were doing was priceless.

Dad: What they be saying?

Me: They’re rapping, Dad!

Dad:  Why they spitting in their hands like that?

Vince and I had a good laugh over that.

Not much later the lights went back out again, and the crowd raced back to their seats cheering.  The spotlight comes on and New Edition jumps out on stage wearing silver sequin suits.  They go right into Cool It Now.    All of the girls are screaming, the boys are singing along with them.  They go into Mr. Telephone Man.  The boys in the crowd are doing the dance steps.  Even though my dad was standing there with us, it was still a great show.

Since our behavior was so stellar for the New Edition show, both of our parents felt it was okay to let us go to the next show on our own.  Boy, did they have it backwards.  Where the New Edition show was no where near the size of Taylor Swift that my girls went to, the next show definitely was.  Our next concert was The Texxas Jam.  For those unfamiliar with the legend of The Texxas Jam, we’re talking an annual concert of nearly 80,000 stoned and drunk people in the summer heat of the Cotton Bowl for an all-day hard rock festival. The year we went, the lineup included Scorpions, Deep Purple, Ted Nugent, Bon Jovi, and Night Ranger.  If there was ever a concert we should have had an adult with us, this was it.

My mom and I went to pick up Vince at his house.  I could tell Vince’s mom was a bit nervous.  Vince’s mom was a tiny Italian woman with a thick accent and highly emotional.  She kept looking Vince over and feeding us advice as we tried to walk out of the door.

Vince’s Mom: Keepa together!  Watch outta for you wallets!  Don’ta go to dee bathroom alone!

Vince:  Stop Mom!  Leave us alone, we know what we’re doing!

Vince’s Mom:  Don’t tell me!  I know whata goes on at these concerts!  I went to Neil Diamond!

It took Vince and I a good five minutes to stop laughing at that proclamation.  The ridiculousness of comparing Neil Diamond to Scorpions and Ted Nugent was more than we could explain to her, so we didn’t bother trying.

Around noon, Mom pulled up to State Fairgrounds where the Cotton Bowl was inside of.  She only had enough time to say she’d be back at that same spot at 10pm to pick us up before we hopped out and took off.  We spotted the line to get in and slowing got inside in about fifteen minutes.  Unlike the New Edition show, we didn’t see a single other person there our age.  It was full of rough looking grownups, all holding a beer and most with a cigarette.  There were a few groups of older high school kids there too, but they were in bunches sticking close together.

We ran inside all excited and snaked our way through the crowd toward the nearest ramp to see inside the stadium.  We reached the top and found a sea of teased hair, acid-washed jeans and early onset sunburn as far as the eye could see.  Directly across from us was a huge stage with some unknown opening band trying to make a name for themselves.  It was amazing.  We ran back down the ramp to the concession stand and got in line for a Coke and a hot dog.  The concession lady gave us the strangest look as we placed our orders.  I don’t know if it was because there was a Black kid at this show or two middle schoolers with no adult.

We walked all around looking for our section and finally found it.  We walked up the ramp and found our seats.  If this was a football game, we’d be right on the fifty-yard line halfway up the lower section, and the stage was in the endzone to our left.  Band Unknown was finished by the time we got to our seats.  So, we just sat there chomping our hot dogs and giggling with excitement as we watched the crazy crowd in the floor seat scurrying around acting like idiots.

Next thing we knew bon Jovi jumps on stage.  The crowd went nuts, pumping their fists and spilling beer on each other as Bon Jovi blasted She’s a Little Runaway.  As they continued their set, we noticed some strange behavior in the back of the floor seats.  People were gathering and looking down at the ground.  Suddenly we see a guy stand up with a girl passed out over his shoulder.  He quickly took her out of the stadium.  As Bon Jovi finished their set twenty minutes later, we saw paramedics rushing through the crowd to another girl passed out, then a third person halfway across the field.  Both of them were taken out on stretchers.

PA announcer:  Ladies and gentlemen! Please make sure you are drinking plenty of water and staying hydrated!  Thank you!

Even with the announcement, people were still coming back to the stands with more beer.  Finally, the concert staff brought out these huge water hoses and drenched the people in the floor seats to their delight.  Vince and I gawked in teenage glee as girls jumped on guys shoulders and got their t-shirts soaked.  It looked like a ten thousand people having an orgy.

Next, Ted Nugent struts out on stage.  Everyone jumped up and roared.  Ted grabbed his guitar and let out a screaming riff that had the crowd cheering feverishly. The band kicked in and they were off.  People around us in the stands started sitting down to enjoy the show.  Vince sat down, so I went to sit too.  Then I noticed this big Hell’s Angel biker looking guy sitting behind me had his legs stretched out across my seat.  Obviously, the reasonable thing to do is to let him know and ask him to move his feet.  But no, he was pretty scary looking.  So instead, I faced back to the stage and kept dancing to the music like an idiot.  Song after song I’d look back and see his feet still in my seat, so I kept dancing.  I must have been the only one in my whole section that stood there and danced the entire set Ted Nugent played.  Talk about sticking out like a sore thumb.  Even Vince was looking at me weird.  When Ted went into his grand finale of Cat Scratch Fever, everybody stood up again to cheer.  His feet were gone, I quickly say back down, raising no issue.

We took time during punk ass Night Ranger to go to the bathroom and get concert t-shirts.  We knew it was going to be the last chance we’d get.  Because out of every band there that day, the big one Vince and I were waiting for was the next one, Scorpions.  They were the hottest rock band that year by far.  You could tell the younger people in the crowd felt the same way.  Right before Scorpions came out, there was a major increase in weed smoke clouds appearing as the sun finally set.  Scorpions came out and there was a rush of people toward the stage.  Vince and I stared in awe of the power resonating between the band and the crowd.  They fed off of each other to make for the most incredible performance.

Once Scorpions was done, we noticed the crowd started to thin out a little bit.  Most of the younger people didn’t seem to have much interest in Deep Purple.  To be honest, neither did we.  But seeing some people leave we also saw some in the stands head down to the floor section.  It would be crazy of us to not go down there just to see what it was like.  By the time we got down there, about a quarter of the people had left, but who cares.  We made it down to the floor of the Texxas Jam. 

Not long after we walked the floor a little bit, the lights went off, a purple glow came from the stage, and a but of middle-aged people still there started cheering.  Deep Purple came out and started their set.  It only took about two songs for Vince and I to realize we don’t know these songs and lose interest.  Which was a good thing.  I looked at my Mickey Mouse watch and saw it was ten til 10pm.  We raced out of the stadium and through the State Fair, just in time to see my mom pull up to the exact spot she left us.  We gabbed the entire way home, excited to sport our concert three quarter shirts to school on Monday.

It was an interesting time to be a Black kid that liked different styles of music.  The variety was wide and difficult to explain to people.  It was not uncommon for me to get weird looks from older people not expecting to see someone like me listening to the stuff I was blasting.  Today, it’s like no big deal.  Bands of different styles play together, record together, tour together. And that’s great to see.  Too bad though that shows like the Texxas Jam are a distance thing of the past.

-TGY-