Hope I Die Before I Get Old.

A friend of mine just saw her first CBGB's show. I've never been. I've only known the Ramones, the Dolls, etc. by the records. Those bands didn't come to where I lived. I started going to punk shows in the early 80's when it was dying out. being replaced by Blondie and the other New Wave Trash Bands. A dilution of everything I liked about the punk scene. Rage, nihilism, and physicality. When I first heard the Sex Pistols I just didn't get it. It was antithetical to everything I liked about music. I was a musical snob from an early age. These guys were a bunch of out-of-work assholes who barely knew which end of the guitar to play. But see that kind of stuff live? It was incredible. The smell gets me still. And I didn't look anything at all like the mohawked wristband wearin' stomp your ass punks. I was a "hippy". Flannel shirt and jeans in the middle of the southern summer. I was a target in a mosh pit. One look at me and it gave the punks a target for everything they felt betrayed by. Didn't mosh much. But sometimes...i felt that belligerent. Give me a target. This takes a little explaining. I'm about as much of a pacifist as you will ever come across. Seriously. A softy. But there's a part me that reveled in the mosh. Shedding your rage and frustration in a morass of smelly, beer drenched, posers. In that time and place they were all little rich kids bused in from the burbs. Comforming noncomformists.

Flash forward a lot of years. This friend has just seen her first show at CBGB's and has run into the first sign of getting old. One of her favorite lead singers got old and fat on her. I almost took it personally when she blogged this. I'm old and I feel fat. Inside I still think I'm that 23 year old kid. My joints prove me wrong. Every morning.