Reminisces: My first punk rock and roll concert.
My Dad's musical taste pretty much stopped at the White Album. They had a slight augmentation when my cousin Adjoa brought him Bob Marley's Exodus on cassette at some point in the 70's. Nonetheless there has never been much diversion from the "movement of Jah people picking up the rice in a church where a wedding has been" sphere, ever since.
In 1978 I was 7 and my sister was 9. The tune of the year was Ian Dury's "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" which my dad loved. It had the quirky out of the blue quality that dads and pub punk rockers the world over were digging.
So, My Dad though it would be a great idea to take me and my sister to see him in concert at The (local) Coliseum.
Like most major or first events in ones life, I can remember this well. the excitement, the anticipation, the weeks long build up (I seem to recall it being an Xmass pressie). We got there way too early. We hung around amongst the punks and the rockers and a bunch of people who knew my dad but didn’t expect him to be there. Equally they didn’t expect two gappy kids to be there; getting primed for the mosh pit. We checked out official Ian Dury merchandise (I can picture to this day an analogue square wristwatch with "Blockheads" written on the watch face).
Perhaps there was a band before. I can’t remember. But I do remember the moment when Ian Dury And The Block Heads came on. At the time I didn’t appreciate that the lead singer’s punk swagger was the result of childhood polio but, with backdrop of smoke and the lights and the crowd, this was momentous.
He didn’t start with "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick". He didn’t start with a song. He started with a story. A long drawn out diatribe. I just did a quick lyric search for it but couldn’t find the song. So, to paraphrase five minutes of live punk rock and roll into one paragraph of typo-laiden Blog:
He came home from somewhere. He walked into his house. He looked around. He went into his bedroom. There was a woman on his bed. She shouted - I don't swear in this Blog so this is a quote – She shouted, "Fuck Me!".
I remember looking up at my dad. He looked concerned. This wasn’t what he was expecting and it certainly wasn’t what me and my sis were expecting. Where were the comical references to
We didn’t stay much longer. We definitely didn’t stay to hear my Dad’s favorite song of the decade.
That night held the moment that I knew there were things and events outside of the adult world
I was familiar with.
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