The culmination of many years of wishing, for me. Seems it was about a year and a half, maybe two years ago that I was on the road somewhere and happened to actually READ one of my junk emails, which turned out to be about coming concerts in Denver, and: Bob Seger was coming to town. I was buying tix a few minutes later—and paying more for them than I’ve paid for some trucks I’ve owned. But, I mean: Bob Seger. Back when I was . . . I’m thinking I must have been twelve, maybe thirteen, my first job was hoeing weeds around the risers in one of my uncles fields. $3.25 an hour, the sun so close I could reach up with my hoe and touch it, but, what I hadn’t even expected was that my uncle would hand me the keys to this old brown Nova he had behind the house, and tell me I could drive over to that field myself, if I thought I could.
I thought I could.
Yeah, it was only one pasture away, but still, I was DRIVING. Even better? On the scary way there, I saw a cassette in the dash, waiting to be pushed in. Because I was all grown up now, I reached forward, nudged that tape in, and what came up was Bob Seger’s “Still the Same.”
I haven’t been the same since then. Seriously. I was infected. The first Seger album I would own (cassette), would be Nine Tonight, which I’m pretty sure I stole from that same uncle. I wore that tape out, man, and I still listen to it at least once a week. There’s that lead-in where Seger says this is something off the new album, he’d like to play it here tonight, and then “Against the Wind” starts up, and . . . it’s hard to even put into words: so many times I’ve closed my eyes, imagined being in that audience, hearing that song without having ever heard it before.
So, last night, hearing Seger on his last tour ever, hearing “Still the Same” and “Against the Wind” and so many of the rest—it felt like coming home. And my daughter was right there beside me. Her first concert. Almost the same seats I’d been in for my son’s first concert a few years back, Springsteen.
It was magic, it was forever, I’ll never forget, I’ll always still be there:
And now my daughter’s pics and videos. In thumbnails that should lead to the full file, if I do it right. Pics first:
And we’ll see how many of these videos I can get this post to hold:
Which, these are all cool and all, but, as it is with live shows, with bands: you kind of need to be there, too. We were. Along with a whole Pepsi Center full of fans singing along. And, no, he never did “Get Out of Denver,” even though he did, for the next gig, but still, here it is, right off the vinyl, sounds like: