THE BEATLES MEET TAYLOR SWIFT

Do you remember your first concert? Of course you do. I just love starting my blog off with a question. I went to my first rock concert with my best girlfriend. We were in junior high school and it was... wait for it... Rick Springfield. He was breaking hearts on General Hospital as Noah Drake, and the hearts of women and teens as a rockstar/actor. Who cared about being Jesse's girl? We all wanted to be Rick's girl. The whole thing was eerily appropriate because the album tour that he was promoting was for his record "Living In Oz," and that is most certainly where I was (romantically speaking, that is). My fantasy life with Rick was nowhere close to reality. I was living in Oz. Too funny. That was a pretty great album and I knew the lyrics to the whole thing. That always makes a concert better if you can sing the entire album end to end. Anyway. I grabbed a photo of Rick and I found it here if you want to check it out.

My ex-husband took his teenage son to see Taylor Swift last year. My ex is a big fan of concerts, in general, and saw this as a good bonding experience for him and his son. I think that was likely true. My ex really likes concerts. He finds pretty much everything about the experience appealing. So, I was surprised by his review of this particular concert experience.

Me: How was it?

Him: Loud.

Me: (shocked) Really? (didn't think this was possible)

Him: Wish I'd brought ear plugs.

Me: (about to faint) Wow. Were you that close to the speakers?

Him: No. It wasn't that. It was the shrieking. The room was full of teenagers and pre-teens who never stopped shrieking. I thought they'd quit once she started singing, but they didn't. It was one long shriek festival. I've never heard anything like it.

Me: That is awful.

Him: It also made me feel old.

Me: That sucks. (All reminders that make you feel old bite big time.)

Him: I'm not used to being completely surrounded by kids that are 18 and under at a concert. It was strange.


Now, I didn't get that exactly right. But it was close. All I could think about was footage that I had remembered seeing from the Ed Sullivan Show when The Beatles performed live. I grabbed that awesome picture here and it has a cool article to boot. They were fantastic, of course, but it was the constant screaming from the audience that fascinated me. When I decided to write this blog, I had to go back to youtube to see if I remembered it right. Oh boy, did I ever. It is only three minutes, but it is three minutes of people in musical bliss. Just remember to cut the noise on my infernal music player at the bottom of the page and then turn up the volume and press play to watch it here:



The thing is that I can wrap my brain around three minutes of screaming. Taylor Swift comes out and sings for anywhere from 90 minutes to 2 hours. Who can scream that long? I can see shrieking your way through that first song. All that adrenalin has to go somewhere. But, after that, don't you want to actually hear the concert you bought the ticket to come and see? Here's a thought: how about singing along with Taylor? Put those vocal chords to some good use.


You're probably wondering why I care.... well, H-girl had a birthday back in January and decided that what she wanted was to see Taylor Swift in concert. Since she isn't old enough to get to go to a concert with a friend, her father said he'd take her, and she could pick one other person to go. She chose me. On the one hand, this is *really awesome news.* I mean really awesome news. H-girl and I have not been connecting. When she was younger, I was the person that she brought all of her stuff to and we were really close. Even when I lived in Florida, I felt more connected to her than I do now. People keep telling me not to take it personally, because she is that way with everyone, and it is a phase, and she is a tween, and all sorts of other things, but still... It sucks. Her brother is one year older and we get along better than ever. Go figure.

Anyway, for anyone new to reading my blogs, I have migraines. Bad migraines. Noise is not good for migraines. Really loud noise can be really bad. The thing is that I really want to make a bridge here with H-girl, and if Taylor Swift is the bridge she is offering, well you take what you can get. I really hope that none of the kids around me (as in directly beside or directly behind) go on a shrieking bender because I might have to pull out the "mom card" on them even though I am not their parent.

What is this mom card you ask? In this case, it would look something like me getting right up in their face and shrieking until they stopped. I would then very politely say, "Yeah, it is annoying. So, please stop." That really isn't my style. I would be applying one of the Roseanne rules of parenting. In this case, it is: "The person who yells loudest, wins." Case closed.