Athena’s First Concert Tee
Posted on July 15, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 47 Comments
Because you never forget your first.
Yaz, incidentally, were spectacularly good. I’ll write more about that later.
In the meantime, I just got home and I’m tired (five hours of driving with a bored nine-year-old in the backseat will do that to you). So off to reconnect with spouse and then possibly a nap. Be back in the somewhat near future.
You made your daughter sit in the back seat? I guess maybe airbags and all that. Too bad, I used to love sitting up front with my dad on long car rides, helping with maps and stuff.
5 hours seems to be just a little fast to make that drive. I’m just saying. It usually takes me about 4 to hit Indy.
I was a late bloomer, musically and concert wise. My first concert tee was a 25th anniversary of the Who tour.
Stars in your “Daddy” crown. All my father ever had to say about my music was “I don’t call that music, I call that noise”. (although the year that I came home from college, having discovered Glenn Miller and Swing, gave him pause..)
Although I didn’t get a t-shirt, I still remember my first almost 30 years later.
In 1980 my dad took me to see Elton John at the Forum in Inglewood, CA. We paid $15. For *two* tickets! I even remember that the opener was someone named Judy Tzuke.
There have been literally hundreds (1000+?) of shows since then, but I still remember my first.
I am still a concert tee virgin, and it had never occurred to me to feel ashamed about that until now. I hadn’t even really known this was such a standard thing, but I suppose going to very very few concerts will inhibit your perspective like that. Congrats to Athena for getting off to a much more excellent start.
My first t-shirt was Journey, Raised on Radio… I’ve still got it, in a box, as a momento. I also remember my date grabbing my hand and saying “COME ON!” and we RAN out of the old Omni (now Phillips Arena) and managed to beat the rest of the traffic out of the area…
No, you don’t forget.
My first concert was Kansas in 1983, I think. Yes, I bought a shirt and wore it the next day in school. That’s what you do. Kids still do that, right?
My dad tortured me by forcing me to go to Donnie and Marie Osmand at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo…and then to a Captain and Tennille show. That guy’s pornstache always scared me. It would just come and go as if by its own will. My dad now wonders why is got really into heavy metal after that. I think it was to damage my hearing to a point that I would never have to hear Muskrat Love ever again.
Opps, I forgot to be mean. Yaz Sucks. That is all.
1979, winter. The old Chicago Stadium. First trip driving into downtown on my own. Jethro Tull with UK as the opener. The T-shirt no longer exists, long having fallen apart, and I’ve grown six inches since then (height — don’t ask about girth). The car trip home was another adventure, but that’s a story for another time.
The next concert T is still around, my wife wears it, it’s a Tom Petty from a show the radio station gave away every ticket to. The summer after that show, vacationing with the parents, a girl in a shop in Michigan offered to trade any shirt in the souvenir shop for the one on my back.
I don’t have any concert tees either Cubik, something that my dad is horrified about but then he could have spent more time when I was younger educating me on this so I’d have an interest now huh? Most of the concerts I’ve been to I didn’t know who was playing because my friends bribed me with the “I’ll buy you a drink if you come with” line and I’m easy.
Damn it.
I’m jealous of a nine year old.
She’s the coolest nine year old in rural Ohio.
Can’t say I ever bought a concert tee, but if memory serves, the first concert I ever went to was in the mid-80’s. Mom and I saw the Statler Brothers. My next concert I believe was Heart. My most recent, if you count late 80’s as “recent”, was Ricky Van Shelton.
Oh wait, no I take that back. my MOST recent was a few years ago when I went to see Ricochet.
I’m glad you and Athena had some proper father/daughter bonding time together.
The first concert I went to didn’t even have T-shirts. At least I don’t remember them, but being 10, I may have just missed the T-shirt table. And some of the people I work with may not think so, but John Denver in 1970 or 1971 was cool.
Her WNBA T from some weeks ago is much better message-wise…I hope the wNBa still has them when my babyniece grows up a bit…
Okay, spectacularly good I’ll believe, but are they worth spending $50 a ticket, which is what it will cost me to go see them on Sunday here in DC? I listened to You and Me Both on my commute yesterday and while all the “hits” I remembered were still amazing (especially “State Farm”), it turned out I’d forgotten the rest of the album for a pretty good reason, it was just sort of blah. Were there really enough of the great songs to fill out a whole show, or are they maybe doing material from Moyet’s solo career, or even Erasure as well?
Crunchbird:
They basically play every Yaz song ever made. The live show makes even the blah songs pretty good entertainment.
Bobson:
Not every t-shirt needs a message, I think.
Five hours to Ohio sounds right to me. I drove it from West of Chicagoland in six, in a Mom-van.
My first concert was Muddy Waters. I went with my mom. It was in my high school, so they didn’t have all the merchandising. But, damn, the class before ours made a killing for their class-fund. Which sucked, really since his son was in _our_ class.
PS I like the wallpaper.
And the best dad award goes to…. John Scalzi. Way to go, man! My first concert was with the bad kids to see Iron Maiden at the Toledo Sports Arena (sadly, ’tis no more) and it was truly awesome.
Off to “reconnect” with the wife? *Snort* That’s a nice euphemism that I’d not heard.
You know, I’m not sure they sold t-shirts at my first concert. And even if it would still fit me, would I really be brave enough to walk around in a Donny and Marie t-shirt? Eh, maybe.
Wow, I wish I got to see Yaz… I did see Erasure in NYC a few years ago at least…
Hmm, I don’t have any concert t-shirts and I’m not ashamed at all. Mostly because I can’t see shelling out $25+ for a t-shirt –I’d rather buy the CD. The last concert I went to was Jonathon Coulton in June and before that was Blue Man Group last October. My first concert was Dr. Hook back when they did “Cover of the Rolling Stone”.
I saw weird Al last week in Atlantic City with my wife. A great show to bring kids to, There were a lot of them there also. Very energetic and kid friendly.
John@18:”Not every t-shirt needs a message, I think.”
Yah. My wife and I just saw Tom Waits in Knoxville for more money than I’ve ever before paid for a show, but she wanted it for a graduation present and … damn if it wasn’t the best show I’ve seen in a long while.
She bought the t-shirt which was an image of an oil spill that TW took a picture of that looked like a rose. On the back in *very* small letters it explains. She’s already had a couple of people comment on the shirt and that they were at the show as well. It’s a cool filter.
Sometimes the “added value” of conversations started is worth the extra $$$
Hmmm. My first concert? Rush, – “Fly By Night” tour 1977. I think it was $9 at the door – general admission seating (well before The Who in Cincinnati).
Crazy days indeed.
Athena has your smile, John. Just noticed. And oh, welcome home :-).
I have my first concert t-shirt. Explosions in the Sky.
Yaz … wow. That brings back memories. Alison Moyet does have a great voice.
Though I think if I’d gotten *my* hands on an actual working time machine and was able to take my child back in time 25 years for a concert … I’m not sure I would have chosen Yaz as the concert I’d attend :-)
U2 and Springsteen were all sold out?
– yeff
Fortunately, it wasn’t Hannah Montana (check your e-mail for amusement…). If it had been, I think those votes might have been for “worst dad.”
My first concert t-shirt was The Who on one of Keith Moon’s last tours (PDQ Bach didn’t have t-shirts, and I didn’t buy one for BÖC’s Agents of Fortune tour). I ran through quite a few t-shirts after that — Tull, Dire Straits, etc. — until I went on active duty and stopped wearing t-shirts (except unprinted white or brown ones under the uniform).
The way that girl’s growing, she’s going to be too big for that shirt inside a year. Do you find you’re going to the store more often for food?
I still have my Crowded House tee from their first swing through Austin.
The last concert I saw was Dethklok, and there were a couple kids there not much older than Athena. And at least one kind of horrified-looking mom.
Yaz, as in Alison Moyet and Vince Clark? I didn’t even know that they were around anymore.
My first concert was Bruce Cockburn at the Ontario Place forum in Toronto…my Sunday school class actually went, and it was the first time that I’d ever smelled pot. While I think that our caretakers probably enjoyed it more than I did, I still got a kicking t-shirt that one of my daughters still wears. I think that it cost $4.
Who the f… are Yaz? Oh, Alf & Vince, Yazoo as they are known in civilised places. Only you. Canvey’s pride.
No T shirts on sale at Duke Ellington gigs, but we’ve got loads of Iron Maiden, Rammstein, Slayer, Metallica T shirts in the house.
Alan Kellogg:
The t-shirt is large, and I had actually bought it for myself (she sort of co-opted it), so I think she has room to grow.
My first concert t-shirt was the 1985 Monsters of Rock tour, with Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken, Metallica and, uh, Kingdom Come. I wore it till it dissolved.
Liz @ 34: Did the kids have to sign the pain waiver?
Yaz is touring? As in Alison Moyet and whatshisname that went on to co-found Erasure?
For the love of little tiny fishes… bit by bit, they sell our childhoods back to us.
Matt Greenwood: I didn’t have to sign a pain waiver, thus I support Equal Opportunity Pain. OTOH, if I had a kid, I wouldn’t have wanted zie in that pit.
First concert was Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot in NYC in ’71 or ’71 with the family – we’d spotted him on a trip to Niagara Falls several years earlier taping a segment for Canadian TV and have followed him ever since. No tee there.
First adult-on-my-own concert was ’73, John Denver in Greensboro (NC) with a couple friends from the university. Followed closely by Elton John a couple months later. If I had a tees they’re long since gone.
Took a friend’s then 14-year old to his first rock concert in ’93 or ’93, his parents c/wouldn’t go, they told him he could go if he asked a responsible adult, so he called me…told him I’d be glad to go if he bought my ticket…show was Metallica in the long-gone Atlanta Omni…he got a real education that night and I bought him his first concert tee.
Wow, the older Athena gets, the more she looks like you :)
I was at that show! You’re right, they were spectacularly good. Alison’s pipes haven’t faded a bit.
I didn’t go to many concerts when I was younger, but I took my son to see Sting do his Dream of the Blue Turtles tour when he was about 16. No T-Shirt because I’d scraped up the money for tickets by finding all the loose change in the bottom of my purse. Last year for Christmas, he returned the favor by taking me to Las Vegas for Elton John’s Red Piano concert. Front row seats and drinks at $24 each. The kid’s doing okay – I only hope Athena makes you as proud. We had a great time both then and now.
John Scalzi, #37
Ah, the “Wear Daddy’s Shirts” phase. The age where a girl just has to have daddy’s smell nearby. Gives them a feeling of security. Does she take over your chair when you’re not in it?
John,
Yaz was awesome. Saw them July 10th at the Orpheum in LA. They had a decent DJ playing some New Wave/Disco/James Brown to warm up and was actually pretty entertaining and they were introduced to the crowd by Richard Blade.
Didn’t buy the T-shirt… Don’t know why…
I was surprised that they let folks into the show with cameras, so all I had used to take pictures was my cameraphone.
So, where did they play in Chicago?
Was it a small venue too?
–Dennis
They played at the Chicago Theatre, which I think is maybe a couple thousand seats.