This Ain't No Foolin' Around

This morning, two hosts on our eclectic local radio station were discussing last night's David Byrne concert, a show I would like to have attended were it not for a lack of funds (I'll spare you my whining about the outrageous cost of concert tickets). Anyway, the show was apparently fantastic, Byrne having invited the Tosca Strings along on his tour and playing material spanning three decades. Listening to these two hosts go on about Byrne's genius, I picked up a fascinating tidbit. Following last night's performance of the Talking Heads tune "And She Was," Byrne revealed that the song was written for a high school friend who used to drop acid and lay naked in the grass outside the Yoo-Hoo chocolate milk factory. Betcha never knew that, eh? And how cool would it be to have a Yoo-Hoo factory in your hometown? All my hometown's produced is pornography and a handful of B-list TV stars (almost one and the same, aren't they?).

Anyway, back to the issue of overpriced concert tickets. Arugably, the biggest concert of my high school years was U2's Joshua Tree tour, which came to the L.A. Coliseum (home to the former L.A. Raiders) and for which my friends camped overnight outside Tower Records to buy tickets. Tickets we considered exorbitantly priced at $22.50. That was the going rate for a big city arena show in 1987. Fucking peanuts considering that amount barely covers cocktails at today's shows (not that, aside from a rare exception, I have any desire to attend the equivalent of a big arena show). I suppose that, to teenagers earning minimum wage ($3.35 an hour), $22.50 was what one might call a shitload of money. Not so when you consider that I could more readily afford concerts when I was earning $3.35 an hour than I can 15 years later, bringing in exponentially more. Sigh.

Meanwhile, I had obtained my long-coveted driver's license only a few weeks before the Joshua Tree concert and had yet to master L.A.'s freeways (which, at that time, were considerably less nightmarish than now, but still intimidating for a 16-year-old). Attending U2's show would mean navigating at least two high-speed, kill-or-be-killed main arteries transversing L.A. from our suburban corner of the city to the wilds of downtown. Since my '73 Pontiac station wagon was the only vehicle that could hold our huge group (my more fortunate friends drove cute, compact cars), I was naturally elected chauffeur for the Joshua Tree festivities. Yes, Bono, I practiced and perfected my incipient driving skills to watch your pale, Celtic ass belt pretentious lyrics in all your mulleted, leather-trousered glory. Surely it was my effort alone that led to your lengthy career, inordinant wealth and imagined political clout. So where's the gratitude?