Sonja and I had tickets to see DOA and a couple other bands at Steepleton Bandstand on Friday night. I am a geezer and Sonja is well on her way to becoming one but we still like to blow it out on Friday nights instead of getting drunk in front of the fucking television every so often.
When I got home from work however I could see our plans had changed. Sonja was already home from work herself, was on the couch and not looking happy.
"I have the fucking flu," she snuffled.
On the table in front of her were a pretty box of tissues, a bag three quarters filled with snot loaded used ones and enough medication to eradicate ebola in Africa for the next 100 years.
"Obviously I am not going anywhere tonight. You go on without me," she rasped at me like a creature out of a late Friday night television creep show.
Sonja is a lot of things but best of all she is a sport.
I got washed up, ate dinner, had a couple triples and headed out to the rock show.
Got there early enough to have a word with Joe (the guts of DOA since 1978 in case you are not up to snuff on your punk rock history) and meet the new guys in the band before they sound checked. My first impression of them, a long hair on drums and a recently homeless guy from Steepleton on bass, was positive but they were both clearly out of their minds - you would have to be to join DOA, everybody but Joe that has been in the band for more than five minutes having now been planted, if ceremoniously, in the punk rock graveyard.
Joe was clearly still sad about DOA's latest addition to that punk rock graveyard, as am I. Only the slow ticking bomb of time and a fair amount of liquor can get a man over that shit.
The joint soon began to fill up with Steepleton's hard core never say die rock 'n' rollers. People talk a lot of shit about my city that we do not give a shit about because we may look (and smell) like a pin dick hick town but we are just as Rock City as Detroit ever was.
Two of the early arrivals were a couple women I know from my gym. More than half my age they are. Tonight was going to be fun after all. I motioned them over and got them each a drink. It would be expensive keeping those drinks filled as the night progressed but it still ended up being cheaper than keeping something cold and fizzy in front of Sonja all night.
"Aren't you a little old to be out rocking on Friday night Beer?" the one wearing a t-shirt that said SHUT UP AND FUCK on the front and the back said to thank me for the drink.
Her friend, wearing black leather pants that did not need the words SHUT UP AND FUCK printed on them in big letters let out a little "hee hee" about that. Like us old people are only here for their amusement.
I am old but I am not dead yet.
Like I do to most everybody I meet I do not know real well I asked both my new punk rock buddies who their first concert was. One said Britney Spears. The other the Backstreet Boys.
I fucking near puked.
"Unless you count the time my parents took both of us to see Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman to the hockey rink when it opened," one of them added when she saw the look of nausea on my face.
Saved by the bell sisters.
Band called the Injectors started things off. Brilliant they were. Noisy as a head saw hitting granite embedded in a tree.
Next was the Jolts. Even more brilliant. And even more loud. Like a foreman tearing a new one for a lazy trainee on a Monday morning after his beloved sizzleless Canucks had lost a pair on the weekend.
DOA were brilliant too. Played all my faves and something I had never heard from them before - "Brand New Cadillac." They were even louder yet. Louder than the next Stanley Cup Riot.
Everybody had fun and there were not any fights. Like a punk rock night in 1979 before the skins fucked it up for everybody. Made me proud I joined the fight to save rock 'n' roll from disco, urban cowboys and itself when I was still a bored teenager.
It is called the Spirit of '76. Get yourself some, motherfuckers.
It's free, liquor not included.
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