Bad Company Deserves Bad Company

Just like Joan Jett, I love rock 'n' roll. Put another nickel in my juke box, motherfuckers. At my age, however, I cannot rock 'n' roll every minute of every day like a young man can (and should). All I can fucking handle now is a rock 'n' roll weekend. Luckily there are still lots of rock shows to see without having to go to Graceland. The construction of mid-sized hockey arenas in every town in Canada that has a few thousand hockey fans in it guarantees at least a handful of rock shows in every last one of them. Last weekend Sonja and I took the Cadillac (the one with whips, furs and cold beer in back) up to Penticton to see Bad Company.

What band you go see is pretty much beside the point. The point is to get the fuck out of town and rock, motherfuckers.

It is not far from our home to Penticton, perhaps a three and a half hour drive if you do not stop at every pub on the way up there. Took us about seven hours to get there, a stately pace. The town of Princeton is what held us up. If we had gone just a little further off the highway, and found ourselves in  Coalmont, that would have been the end of the trip and I would be writing about drinking with the ghosts of the Coalmont Hotel, not our rocking and rolling in the Lord's waiting room aka Penticton.

Penticton is a funny little town comprised mostly of real old people who in any other century would have been long dead and the many young hands required to keep the old people's bums wiped clean as the ice at the start of the second period of a hockey game.

When we got into town the first thing we did was get ourself a drink in the first pub we saw. Run down little pub just off the beach. There we met a couple about our age having a drink with their three daughters. We were having such fun together they invited us over for dinner and spend the night in the motorhome every old motherfucker in Penticton has in their driveway if they have not had to sell it to buy a much needed organ from one of China's many organ farms. They were going to Bad Company too, as well as just about everybody else in town who had not blown all their money on season tickets to the town's much loved hockey goon squad.

Old fucker had a record player on which he played one Bad Company record after another and couple old Free albums too when I asked him if he had any. We got loaded, told old rock 'n' roll stories, many of which involved taking large amounts of drugs and vomiting, and sang along. If that was all we had done all weekend it would have been worth getting out of town for it. Nobody, it seems, plays records and gets loaded like the old days any more.

As we were falling asleep in the motorhome Sonja said, "Old fucker is just like you Beer. Drinking and playing records like it is still 1975."

Next day Sonja and I hung around the town's off track betting facility, conveniently located in a pub, and a tattoo parlour, conveniently located across the street from the pub. Some cities, like Dope City, are planned like shit. Penticton was planned by fucking geniuses.

Sonja got tattoo'd by some guy with more piercings than Custer at his Last Stand. I got tattoo'd by a woman who loves Marc Bolan even more than me. Sonja got a tattoo of the Sedin brothers holding the Stanley Cup over their heads. Smartly, she is going to wait to see which team they win the Cup for before the uniforms get coloured in. I got another devil and a few lines of that Canadian university chant about raping children and workers and the other distasteful things business students hope to do when they get older and have their own companies and people to shit on.

Then it was back to our new friends' place for a barbeque, where we met even more of their fine beer loving family. Once we were all feeling pretty good we piled into the motorhome and headed to the hockey rink for the Rock Show.

I have been a fan of all the guys in Bad Company for just about as long as rich people have been fucking over the people of Canada. Free's "Heartbreaker" was one of my first records, one I still play and love as much as ever. Forty years together on the much vomited on Path of Rock 'n' Roll. And I still remember hearing "Shooting Star," my favourite Bad Company song, on CBC radio just about as long ago. It is about Hendrix mixing downs and liquor then puking himself to death. Fuck the downs.

It was an old motherfucking crowd in the arena. Old enough to make me feel young which had not happened since the last time I walked by a graveyard. Everybody could still drink however. We lined up over and over again for our fix. I went with the cider, which the apple rich town had a wide assortment of.

Opening band was one of the fuckers from the Odds. The Odds are the Canucks' house band so on principle I hate them. He turned out to be a hot guitar player. Just him and somebody who drummed for Bryan Adams before he got in fucking line and started fucking Princess Diana. Everybody liked them.

Bad Company were terrific. The old boys were all in top shape and gave us a good loud rock show. About time I saw Rodgers in person. Easily the most polished rock singer I have ever seen. His voice is still brilliant and he had the audience in his hands the whole time he was on stage. We all sang along to just about every song. It was like church - without the God shit. They only played about seventy-five minutes but nobody felt cheated.

It was still only 10:15 when the show ended. We piled back into the motorhome and drove back to our host's home and started drinking ourselves to the Promised Land. We got drunker and drunker and louder and louder. We even danced in the back yard to the sounds of the Velvet Underground's first record.

Eventually one of the neighbour women stuck her fat head out a window and told us to "Shut the fuck up you asshole motherfuck bitch prick cocksucking shitfucking fuckshitting fucks."

Sonja does not care much for that sort of language so she shouted back, "You shut the fuck up you fat head asshole motherfuck bitch prick cocksucking shitfucking fuckshitting fistfucker."

We all laughed. Until her husband cleared the fence in his underwear wondering aloud, "Who's the loudmouth cunt who yelled at my wife?"


"That's no loudmouth cunt. That's my wife," I told him.

Next thing I knew Underwear Man and me were rolling around the yard like a couple of dogs. He caught me with a knee and a couple palm fists and I thought I was done for until my elbow caught him under his nose when his head was on the ground and it was all over.

Then it got real quiet.

But not for long.

We got real loud gonch-pulling his ass back to his porch for his wife to practice her nursing on him.

Then it was back to the party.

Coconut tequila. I do not recommend it. Unless you want to be a shooting star.