One Concert Away
It occurred to me last night, as Jen and I reminisced over dinner and an evening celebrating our 23rd wedding anniversary, that my own life would have been completely different had I gone to that Bruce Springsteen concert in Pittsburgh that I had tickets for back in the summer of 1975 (August 9th, according to this), before I headed off to the University of Chicago for my abortive one month-long stint as a student there.
Had I gone, I’m sure I would have fallen in love with the Boss and so, would have bonded with all my classmates in the dorm at U of C who were so similarly smitten with him that they blared “Born to Run” all day and night from the component stereo systems in their rooms; consequently, I’d have felt much more at home there and would probably have stayed, graduating after four years in 1979 before heading off to law school where my focus in corporate litigation would have seen me become a successful Hollywood agent, leading, of course, to a serious cocaine habit in the 1980s and no doubt, by this time, three failed marriages and a heart condition to go along with a string of kids in whose lives I never really took part.
As it was, I was the oddball who listened to King Crimson and Tangerine Dream and never really fit into the Windy City scene and by the time I finally did see Springsteen at the LA Forum in the fall of 1984, I couldn’t see what the big deal was all about especially when compared to the Talking Heads at the Hollywood Pantages during their Stop Making Sense tour.
In point of fact, I’m not entirely sure that life does work this way, but it’s amusing to wonder how differently things might have turned out if I hadn’t given those tickets away; no regrets, to be sure, especially in light of these last 23 years of joy.
Had I gone, I’m sure I would have fallen in love with the Boss and so, would have bonded with all my classmates in the dorm at U of C who were so similarly smitten with him that they blared “Born to Run” all day and night from the component stereo systems in their rooms; consequently, I’d have felt much more at home there and would probably have stayed, graduating after four years in 1979 before heading off to law school where my focus in corporate litigation would have seen me become a successful Hollywood agent, leading, of course, to a serious cocaine habit in the 1980s and no doubt, by this time, three failed marriages and a heart condition to go along with a string of kids in whose lives I never really took part.
As it was, I was the oddball who listened to King Crimson and Tangerine Dream and never really fit into the Windy City scene and by the time I finally did see Springsteen at the LA Forum in the fall of 1984, I couldn’t see what the big deal was all about especially when compared to the Talking Heads at the Hollywood Pantages during their Stop Making Sense tour.
In point of fact, I’m not entirely sure that life does work this way, but it’s amusing to wonder how differently things might have turned out if I hadn’t given those tickets away; no regrets, to be sure, especially in light of these last 23 years of joy.
posted by Professor Dave at 12:08 PM
1 Comments:
Ooops, happy anniversary! I thought about it on Friday, then completely forgot by Sunday .... I'd like to have a slice of the blueberry tart with lemon crumbs on top, that was the 3rd tier of your wedding pie! The Springsteen show I shoulda gone to, I think, was the one in the high school gym in Youngstown. I think it was - somewhere just over the border into Ohio from Pittsburgh, that all my friends went to to in '74 - I never saw him till 1984, either, and I thought he was OK - the epiphany was that the super cool, arty, girl I knew from the silkscreen collective sat in front of me and totally rocked out to good old rock & roll by the Boss - never expected it of her ... personally, I'm more of Nils Lofgren fan - he was in Bruce's band by then. Love, deb
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