Rock On

I went to my first Rock and Roll concert in many years last week. It was in an arena setting, Brown University's Meehan Center, the unfrozen hockey rink. I went with my wife, and my teenage daughter. It was her first such concert. We, her parents, were the among the very eldest present and she at 14 was among the youngest. There were three bands, the first named "OK, Go" and the last, the one we wanted to see, calls itself "Wilco." It was Spring Weekend at Brown, a Thursday night kickoff to a wild weekend, no doubt. The concert ended at 12:30 after two encores. It was a great concert. Wilco and especially its lead singer slash song writer Jeff Tweedy, was fantastic. Kind of quiet after the incredible volume of the first two bands, so much better and more subtle. Sophie was mortified to be there with her parents, but when the lights went down, she seemed fine. We were all blitzed by the decibel level. Deafening, literally. She was so excited to tell her schoolmates about it the next day. I think the novelty of going to a rock concert with one's parents may have been cool once she got past the thought of it, The Horror. Her classmates may have thought: I wish that my parents would have taken me--no way that was going to happen. Well, that's the fantasy, from a parent's perspective only. One schoolmate, a junior, attended the concert and he have to leave before the encores which were the best part of the concert, by the way. So our little teenager grew a bit in the hipster quotient, and became a little bit more self confident. And we have all been humming or singing Wilco songs for a week now, morning noon and night. "Thanks, Ma," for listening to WFUV all those years, and thanks for noticing that Wilco was in town on that telephone pole, and for insisting that we go see them.