I think it's been made abundantly clear by now who my favorite band is. I can't remember now how many posts have had to do with music, but it's been several. Hey, I'm not complaining. It's a topic I never get tired of. I'm happy to write another music post.
Music I Love was the first time I really wrote about music and what it means to me. I know it was meant to be a light-hearted post. I tried to do it that way, but for me, music is closely and forever linked to my dad. It's all the good parts of my dad, so there's that. In that post I list a ton of different bands that I've always loved. Here's a small excerpt:
There was the Steve Miller Band, Poco, The Who and The Rolling Stones. Steely Dan, Grateful Dead, Cheap Trick, Santana and Supertramp. Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison and The Cars. I listened to Blondie, The Bee Gees, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and one particular song, "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon that my father particularly liked. Kansas, Billy Joel, Dire Straits and Elton John. He introduced me to one of my all time favorite songs; "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynard Skynard, and I remember how he loved listening to "You're the One That I Want" from the Grease soundtrack because he found the piano in that track so appealing. The list of artists and songs we listened to together goes on and on and on.
So, this post is about my favorite band. That's easy. Here's another little snippet from the above mentioned post. I know it seems lazy, but I've already written it once, explained it the way I wanted to. It seems silly not to take advantage of previous effort.
Anyone who knows me at all knows how much I've always loved Duran Duran. Guess who introduced them to me? Yep. My dad. (That might be a new piece of information for most.) D2 released their album Rio in 1982. I was eleven at the time, and I had no idea who they were. My dad was a night owl who played his music loudly at all hours of the night. One early, early morning, I was awoken by a song that he was playing on repeat. It happened to be "Hungry Like the Wolf", and that was my first introduction to Duran Duran. A couple of years later, Duran Duran became my favorite band for all kinds of reasons; most of which are too hard to explain in the context of this blog. (Yes, I found them to be very attractive ... I was twelve at the time ... and I did use every picture of them I could find to wallpaper my walls and ceiling.) It mostly had to do with the lyrics of their songs. I wrote a lot of poetry of my own back then. I used their music as a form of therapy to help me through some rough times during my pre-teen and teenage years. Duran Duran are still my most favorite band today, (although I haven't collected pictures of them for at least the past quarter of a century.)
So often times, listening to Duran Duran music makes things feel all right in my world.
Part of today's post asks "Would you attend a performance no matter the cost?"
Well ... yes and no.
I live in Colorado. Most people who have been here, or know people who live here know about Red Rocks Ampitheater. It's kind of a big deal. One memorable show played at Red Rocks was U2 during their Under the Blood Red Sky tour in 1983. The video for "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" was filmed at Red Rocks, and Stevie Nicks released a sixty minute show recorded at the park. Even the Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and Jethro Tull played there. The list is truly unbelievable. I found an interesting article from Colorado.com called Best Red Rocks Shows of All Time that music lovers might find interesting. I've seen a lot of concerts at Red Rocks, myself, including Powerstation, (Andy and John from Duran Duran) back in 1984 I think it was. I was in the fourth row, near the speaker. It was so much fun. It was so loud that I lost my hearing for nearly three days. It was totally worth it.
I'd seen Duran Duran in concert several times, but they'd never played Red Rocks. In 2015, they released a new album and announced a world tour. When I found out they were going to be in Denver - more to the point Red Rocks - on September 21st, I jumped all over it.
The cost. Yes, it was expensive. Okay, it was ridiculously expensive - but it was Duran Duran. It was Duran Duran at Red Rocks. I was going. There was no way I wasn't going.
I took my bestie, Jennie, and my daughter, Maya with me. My mom bought my ticket for me as both a birthday/Christmas present. I paid for Maya's because she really wanted to come - and I really wanted her to go. It was a pricey weekend, but I had a blast. I don't regret it any of it for half a second.
So, that was the "yes" answer to the question, "Would you attend a performance no matter the cost." There's a "no" answer to the question, too.
Duran Duran, still hanging out in the US and adding more dates to their world tour, was scheduled to play with a few other big acts, (Stevie Wonder was one of them) up in Aspen, Colorado over the following Labor Day weekend. I got very excited and started figuring out the logistics of the whole thing. The more I worked at it, the less possible it seemed.
Aspen is five hours away from where I live. When I added the price of gas, food, lodging and the tickets - whoo ... those babies were insanely expensive - the price tag kept growing bigger and bigger. Then we had the puppies to worry about. It didn't take long for me to realize this concert was something I had to let go of. It just wasn't possible ... and I was good with that.
It's been more than a year since I saw them and I still feel giddy when I think about it. Saying no to that second performance wasn't that difficult to do. The only thing better than seeing them at Red Rocks would be to meet the band in person ... It's scary to think about what I might do to make that happen ...
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