SUMMARY: Live music lives forever, whether it's played by the Rolling Stones or the Hot Buttered Grits, a lesson driven home when Mike Dewey finally ventures back into a world that always welcomes him.
Back in the Stone Age, the summer of 1975, I finally got to see my favorite rock 'n roll band.
The stadium no longer exists -- some would say the group doesn't either -- but the memories linger.
It was one of those World Series of Rock extravaganzas which were staged at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium, a vast, cavernous space that barely drew 10,000 when the Indians were playing.
But when the Rolling Stones were coming to town, 10 times that number was expected.
A hundred thousand people.
Imagine that.
I'd been a fan (or fanatic) for 10 years by that time, so that the Stones pretty much recorded the soundtrack to my youth, my adolescence and my early adulthood, though there are those who'll swear to you that I haven't really grown up yet.
They call it, derisively, the Peter Pan complex.
I call it life.
This was back in the day when rock concerts were a rite of passage, a test, a way of measuring yourself against your peers.
And then, as now, I hated to lose.
Allow me a single, short digression.
At Notre Dame, where I attended college, competitive kids were everywhere. I mean, the admissions office rejected 10 of every 11 applicants and the entire student body numbered 5,500 or so. So these folks weren't used to losing.
Everything was a contest, a game, whether it was signing up for the best classes or getting the primo seats for concerts at the ACC.
Both involved waiting in long, long lines and the smartest decided the only way to guarantee success was to camp out all night. making sure to be among the first in line when the contest began.
I remember how cold it got -- South Bend nights were nothing to sneeze at -- the time my friends and I stayed up all night, waiting to score tickets to the Elton John show.
And I wasn't even a big fan of his.
It was all about the challenge, the game, the sport.
It was important.
It was crucial.
It was key.
And that brings us back the summer of '75. This was back before the whole Who Stampede, the one in Cincinnati, where a bunch of kids got killed in a stampede that was eventually blamed on what was euphemistically called Festival Seating.
What that meant, essentially, was that once the gates opened, it was a race to find and secure the closest locations to the stage, which was usually set up in center field.
Festival Seating was more like Fight Club, but I didn't care about any of that.
That tragedy was in the dim future.
That day at the stadium on the shores of Lake Erie, well ... that was the moment, the present, the now.
Which is why I found it almost impossible to believe that my friends, with whom I'd stayed up all night, waiting outside the gates, would decide NOT to try and get as close to the stage as possible.
"We're heading up to the right-field stands," a guy said. "More shade."
True, it was going be a very hot, very humid day and the concert would probably last from noon until midnight, but I couldn't believe it.
"What are you talking about?" I said, as the line surged forward and I rolled up my sleeping bag and shrugged on my backpack. "We didn't sleep out here in this parking lot not to get the best place!"
"Sorry," another friend said. "We've decided."
"It's the Rolling Stones!" I said. "We stayed up all night ..."
But they were gone, all six of them, disappeared into that mass of humanity heading into the upper reaches of the stadium.
"Fine," I said to myself, remembering those nights at ND. "I can play this game, too."
I could tell you so much about that afternoon, sitting through Joe Vitale's Madmen and the Tower of Power, a mere 40 yards from the stage.
How hot it was.
How thirsty I got.
How alone I felt.
How reading "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" kept me going, sitting there on my small slice of acreage, my sleeping bag unfurled and marking my space, eating Slim Jims to keep me alive.
But it wouldn't matter.
I had made a choice and I was good with it.
The J. Geils Band came on around dusk and, as usual, blew the roof off the place, not that there was a roof on the stadium, but you get the idea.
Ten hours after I'd staked my claim near the outfield wall, the Stones hit the stage.
Were they great?
Was the sound pristine?
Would I trade those two hours for anything?
Those are questions for another time, another place.
Rock 'n' roll is all about passion and emotion and context and heroes.
I haven't been to a real rock concert in more than a decade.
I haven't kept up with new music since moving to North Carolina, just after Y2K.
I am getting old.
So when my wife told me that a colleague's husband's band was playing at the marina, just up the road, one Saturday night, I was skeptical.
"I don't know," I said. "It seems to have passed me by."
"You might enjoy hearing some live music again," she said, and that decided it.
And, truth be told, it was a very good show. I especially liked their 12-minute version of "Polk Salad Annie," a tune made famous by Tony Joe White in 1969.
What we call swamp music.
The band, called Hot Buttered Grits, just killed, surrounded and supported by family and friends and folks just off their boats, wandering in for a cold one or two.
I suppose it must be wonderful to have that outlet, to be able to channel your inner rocker, to bang on the drums and to make a connection with a couple of guitars and a bass, just living the dream for a couple of hours.
Later that night, as I sat out in the driveway, listening to the last baseball game of the day, I remembered seeing Mick Jagger for the first time, that hot summer night so many years ago.
Rumor has it the Stones could be hitting the road again soon.
I still have that sleeping bag, somewhere.
Mike Dewey can be emailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560.
