Commentary: Imagine That, A Dragon Ate My Free Bird

I tell ya, kids today. They're soft.

No respect for tradition. No appreciation of history. No sense of propriety. I mean, really, what is this world coming to? I fear for the future.

I know, I'm getting a little worked up here, but when you see time-honored traditions and bedrock principles being cast aside, well, it's just almost too much to bear.

You see, the lovely Mrs. Smith and I (and I almost hate to say this, since it may very well illustrate my own hand in this debasement) took the kids to a concert.

I bet you can already see where this started going wrong. You don't go to a concert with your parents. You tell your parents you're spending the night at a friend's house, and both of you sneak out to go to a concert. Or you beg and plead with your older brother to tell your parents he's taking you camping and then promise him your allowance until the end of time or to do all his chores until you're 60 to get him to take you.

I mean, I can just imagine my father stopping by my room one night in his Air Force dress blues and suggesting "Let's go see that Alice Cooper fella. Seems like an interesting sort of guy." I can also imagine him saying, "You know what we ought to do? We ought to shave our heads and go hang around the airport, chanting and banging tambourines." No, wait. Actually, I can't.

But there we were, trekking off to see Imagine Dragons at the Bank of Oklahoma Civic Center in Tulsa, Okla. I mean, what kind of name is "Imagine Dragons"? In my day, bands had names that made sense such as "Molly Hatchet" and "Steely Dan."

As for the band members themselves, well, in my day they had the common decency to be dissolute bums who couldn't read music, or, for that matter, their own frequently suspended driver's licenses and covered for the fact they couldn't remember the lyrics to their own songs by playing really loud.

They didn't attend the Berklee College of Music, they weren't Eagle Scouts in their youth and they didn't speak fondly of their charity work with a nonprofit that provides money to the parents of children with cancer or of their two-year Mormon mission trip to Nebraska, all of which various members of Imagine Dragons have done.

Nebraska? Couldn't they have at least gone to Marrakesh?

Of course, it gets worse. For one thing, there's the venue. Actual concerts are held in decrepit municipal arenas best suited for livestock shows and demolition derbies. Or, actual demolition. The acoustics are supposed to be terrible, the bathrooms subhuman and the parking, such as it is, located miles from the building and in the middle of a clash between the Bloods and the Crips.

Rock concerts are not supposed to be in beautiful, state-of-the-art facilities such as the BOK in Tulsa with actual operating lights and ticket-takers and security who don't look like their idea of fun would be to pepper-spray you. Just because.

That's why when we speak of the music venues of our youth, we use words such as "character" and "charm." In reality, we should be using another "c" word -- "condemned."

Speaking of character, what kind of character is developed when the band starts on time, thanks you for coming and the only smoke in the arena comes from the fog machines? Whatever happened to suffering for someone else's art?

Next thing you know you'll be telling me you can reach a point in your life where the joys of your youth and middle age collide and you're still able to share that with the ones you love. You may even suggest the last great concert anthem wasn't "Free Bird."

If you grew up below the Mason-Dixon Line in the '70s or '80s, you probably would buy a theory that, if there were a country made up of 16- to 18-year-old boys who had just scraped together enough money to buy a crappy car, its national anthem would be Lynard Skynard's signature song.

Rock concerts, tastes, voting habits, hair color or even the actual existence of hair may change, but put a 50-something Southern man in a car on the interstate by himself, and when that song comes on the radio, he'll be screaming out "I'm as free as a bird now, and this bird you'll never chaaaaange." Then he'll drive home to eat dinner before he mows the lawn or takes the kids to baseball practice. Which is OK, too.

Play it pretty for Atlanta ...

Commentary on 02/27/2014

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