From the Mouth of Cthulhu

OK, it didn't exactly go down as I had hoped, but I guess any rock concert you survive just makes you stronger, eh?

Background: My son, Tanner, is in a rock band: "From the Mouth of Cthulhu". This band was formed with other former members of the group "L.I.E.", and they've been furiously preparing for Monday night's debut concert with their new material. I hadn't heard any of their new stuff, and I was really excited to go to the concert. I'm not exactly a night owl -- I'm usually in bed by around 7 or 8pm -- but I'll stay up late once in a while if it means I get to see my kid rockin' the house.

Getting to the gig was more complicated than I had expected, but I'll share that story in another entry. The venue was about 2 blocks from Coors Field, so there was a lot of competition for parking places, and a lot of foot traffic as fans headed to the game. Fortunately, there was an open metered parking space just down the street, leaving just a short walk to the theater. Two bucks filled the meter to maximum, leaving two hours to attend the show and get back to the car. Cthulhu was the first act, so there was plenty of time to see the show, chat with the band a bit, and then make it back to the car before the meter maids showed up.

That's probably not a politically correct term, is it? When I was a kid, the parking enforcement was indeed done exclusively by females who had these spiffy Maytag-repairman-type uniforms and drove little boxy scooter vehicles. With their stern hats and official-looking ticket pads, they roamed the downtown streets scanning for space-squatter scumbags. If I remember correctly, you could get 15 minutes of meter time for a penny, and a couple of weeks for a quarter. But if you didn't cough up the correct change, you'd get a $5 ticket shoved under your wiper blade.

OK, maybe I don't have the specifics exactly right, but I'm pretty sure the rates have gone up since then, and using the term "Meter Maid" is every bit as much of a hangin' offense as calling someone a "stewardess".

What I meant to say was that with the meter full, the non-gender-specific parking enforcement officers would not be a concern. (Winos and change-grubbing vagrants were another story, though. I must've been asked for spare change a dozen times while waiting for the show to start. One fellow was quite specific; he needed exactly seventeen cents. At the time, I was somewhat puzzled by this, but after further consideration have realized that bumming change from suburbanites in a concert queue constitutes a particular genre of entrepreneurship—anything you can do to create differentiated brand awareness is probably an asset. Perhaps the seventeen-cent guy turns a much higher volume than the standard quarter mongers. If I were in grad school, I think I'd apply for a grant to study this topic. But I digress...)

There were already a couple dozen people waiting outside the theater. There were three distinct groups in this crowd; the parental/family group, the grungy/smelly rock/reggae punks, and the normal teenagers who were doing their best to pretend to be grungy/smelly rock/reggae punks. I was never a rebellious teenager myself, being more like Richie Cunningham than Fonzie, but I do understand the appeal of rejecting "the establishment" and "sticking it to the man" -- but I will never, ever understand the appeal of smoking cigarettes. The desire to inhale noxious gases and smell like an exhaust pipe just doesn't seem consistent with my idea of finding oneself and establishing a unique personal identity...it just seems, well, stupid. Go ahead and wear tattered t-shirts with cryptic messages about your devotion to Beezebub if you wish, and I guess I'll even support the idea of blue-eyed blonds with dreadlocks, or even getting a tattoo that I guarantee you'll hate in 12 years...but I'd really prefer that you 86 the cancer sticks. OK?

(Wait...that's the whole idea isn't it? If you can irritate a stuffy old corporate white guy like me, then you've succeeded in establishing credibility among the alternative culture, haven't you? It's one thing to not trust anyone over 30, but if you can make them gag, cringe, and keep their distance from you through your pungent aroma alone, then you've really got it going on. Well done, James Dean. A horrible and expensive addiction is a small price to pay for being cool. Good luck with that, dudes.)

Most of the time I stood over by the bus stop, away from the theater patrons' smoke. Of course, then the bus riders lit up. Oh well, I finally accepted that I was inevitably gonna smell like smoke before the night is over; might as well embrace it. Rock n' roll, man!

The sidewalks also contained a constant stream of Coors Field attendees, and that provided some excellent people-watching fun. In fact, my brother and his wife came trotting up at one point. They had already been at the game, but had taken a quick break to come over and see the band. But when I told them that the show still wouldn't start for nearly an hour, they went back to the stadium. I would've done the same.

Finally, they opened the ticket window, and I handed over my cash. Then, with ticket in hand, went to the end of the other line, which contained ticket-holders waiting in single file to be let into the building. The bottleneck was a scowling TSA wanna-be, inspecting purses and camera bags for contraband. I had already taken the precaution of having one of the band guys sneak my movie camera inside...so I got past the 1st Gestapo checkpoint without incident. Next came the ID check -- if you were old enough to drink, you were tagged with a colored wristband and sent on toward the bar. By this time, I was very, very thirsty, so I did indeed purchase a beverage. And it was tasty.

But heaven help you if you carry said beverage into the wrong zone of the theater. I sauntered over to talk with Tanner as he stood around chatting with the music fans; and almost immediately felt the cold hand of Dr. Doom close upon my shoulder. "You can't be here," said the ID Nazi. "Drinks have to stay on the other side of the fence!" OK, fine, I went back over to the other side of the fence. But the drink was consumed before the show, and without it, I could go anywhere I wanted.

But the ID/Drink Nazi morphed into the Camera Nazi and spent the rest of the show wandering through the dark, hoping for somebody to brandish a Nikon so she'd have an excuse to use her Taser. And yes, if you're wondering, I did actually start up my camcorder, but didn't dare hold it up to point at the band; I didn't want to spend the set twitching on the floor while being whomped with a nightstick. I got audio, but unfortunately, no visuals.

Because I'm the father of one of the band members, you'd think I might be tempted to exaggerate their excellence. But you must remember that I have a degree in Journalism, and am therefore 100% committed to objectivity and must give a completely honest and unbiased report. And the truth is that this band is 1000 times better than the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and the Osmonds...combined! They make Elvis look like William Hung, and the London Philharmonic look like the Hooterville Volunteer Fire Department band. They are the best musical act of ALL TIME!

As a member of the crowd, though, it was a little tough to really grasp the total excellence of the music, since I was wearing earplugs that had been hastily purchased from the Geezer Supplies rack at the local Safeway. (The earplugs I had planned to use were still in the glovebox of my car, which was nowhere near the theater. But that's another story.) I sometimes don't hear all that well anyway, and due to a combination of venue acoustics, cheap earplugs, and the fact that it was a couple of hours past my normal bedtime...well, I couldn't really distinguish any of the lyrics. (Something about cows in New Mexico...??) Nor could I really tell which instruments were playing at any particular moment, nor what notes they were hitting. I'm pretty sure there were no bagpipes on stage, so I'm not sure where that impression came from, either.

But it was awesome! The crowd cheered loudly after each song. And during the music, the dreadlocked Swedes swayed back and forth in time with the music as if they were mesmerized. Though Tanner had warned me that the rhythms were challenging and the the vocal lines syncopated, I thought that all the musical parts fit together well, and that it all flowed effortlessly and sounded good. My conclusion is that guys like Lennon & McCartney, Mozart, John Williams, and Randy Newman all just got knocked down a peg on the songwriters hierarchy. And if they ever remake "Back to the Future", I suspect that Darth Vader will choose Austin Belle's brain-melting guitar instead of Van Halen's.

I'll try to post some of the music here in the next few days. Obviously, my clandestine VHS camcorder didn't capture the same sound quality as a professional setup would, but it's all I've got at this point. Anyway, stay tuned for updates on these fast-rising young superstars, and be sure to get your tickets for their next concert.

Have a great day!