British Invasion

So I’ve got my ticket for the Rolling Stones tomorrow night. And I’ve got my motel room reserved, since they’re playing in El Paso. So now I’m ready to get another hole punched in my little ticket of music history.

I believe the Stones may be the only British Invasion band still touring, and the only one I’ve seen other than the Kinks, who I’ve seen twice. The Stones passed through Albuquerque a few years ago on the Bridges to Babylon tour, and I debated buying a ticket, and then decided they were geezers and past it, so I didn’t go.

Then I saw the concert video, and said to myself, Holy Shit! Geezers they are not! Whatever it was they once had, they still had it.

So let’s hope they’ve not degenerated completely into decrepitude in the last few years.

I will be interested to see if there’s anyone in the audience without grey hairs. Probably not, since younger folks couldn’t afford a ticket. The whole concert experience may consist of geezers playing for geezers.

I’m told that Young People don’t go to these sorts of concerts at all. (They’ll go to dance clubs, of course.) But their whole musical education came through MP3 files, and the very idea of hearing live music in a concert setting is far beyond alien.

Or maybe it’s just that they can’t afford the ticket prices.

Apropos geezer musicians, I heard Rod Stewart on a talk show the other night. His voice is completely gone, poor man, and the voice was the most distinctive thing about him.

I also saw Ray Davies on Austin City Limits. He’s promoting his first solo album. (The first that isn’t a soundtrack, anyway.) His voice is also gone, but his songwriting is as sharp as ever.

I’m just another tourist checking out the slums
With my plastic Visa drinking with my chums
I dance and swing while ABBA sing
And I flash my Platinum
To the sound of Livin’ La Vida Loca
Yes, Livin’ La Vida Loca

That’s pretty incisive, I have to think.

I also have to think that the album would be improved by Dave Davies’ guitar. But the last I heard of Dave, he was promoting a book about how aliens had talked to him back in the Seventies.

(Here’s a hint, Dave. A lot of us heard those aliens in the Seventies. We just know better than to write a book about it.)