I’m old.  I forget things.

Like that I bought tickets to this February concert back in September.

It popped up on my calendar as a reminder and I was all, “Yeah, I should have bought tickets to that.”  Then I corrected myself from the plural to the singular since I recently committed to focusing on – well, anything but dating for the foreseeable future.

But something was tickling the back of my brain and a few hours later, I went into the email account I use for buying stuff just to be sure.  And, sure enough…there was a flagged purchase confirmation for Adam Ant.

Ta-da.

A few days later, there I was Uber-ing over to the Revolution Hall to meet up with Little Buddy and Vulture and their plus ones.  LB brought her daughter and Vulture brought his recently christened fiance.  There I am in all my single pride.  I arrived after they ordered, and I had left myself enough time to join them for a beer while they ate.  It was inadvertently shrewd planning on my part.  I was coming from work, so it was a tight run from the airport to home to the venue.  I think the space is nice…albeit a little tight for a restaurant attached to a concert hall.

Plus, can we please start getting away from all of this post industrial cum modern design?  Or at least start employing a little better sense of the end use of the space when we do use it?  I mean, is there no such thing as a post industrial carpet design?  This place with its polished concrete floor was noisy!  That can’t be good for the servers’ legs.

And, I know I’m getting off topic and careening toward my Early Onset Grumpiness tendencies at a reckless pace, but I only bring it up since I’m writing this after standing in line at Tilt to buy a pie on – wanna guess?  Polished concrete floor.

This follows my incredible dinner with The Silver Fox last night at Danwei Canting where we made it just in time for frigging family hour.  I actually looked across the table and said to The Fox, “This place could use a carpet.”  Of course, this was right after some kids at a corner table started screaming and startled another mother, causing her to knock over a – go figure – metal chair onto the…polished concrete floor.

Yawn.

But,I think that burst of grump will serve as a nice warm up to fully appreciate what happened upstairs while we were standing in line to get into the venue.

First of all, Little Buddy’s lovely daughter is by far the youngest person around – we’re talking by a couple of decades – including the kids taking tickets.

I’m chatting with Vulture, which according to LB, we do rather loudly and animatedly when we get together.  I hadn’t realized this, but we see each other virtually every day…an actual in-person audience with Vulture is not to be taken for granted!  Gotta make the most of it.

We’re talking about tattoos.  I think I overheard someone else talking about it and I was off and running.  We discussed how they seem to be more of a body modification, like piercing, than the meaningful and thoughtful pieces of body art that were frequently still shocking to our generation…but they weren’t as overt, either.  I think the word I used was discreet.

I get on about how I’m easing my way into the acceptability of tattoos on the neck, above the collar line.  I had this really nice guy that worked for me who showed up for his interview in a dress shirt and tie, just peeking over the edge of his collar was a tattoo that looked like it had been scrawled on in prison.  Not the best first impression for a judgy old bastard like me.  He interviewed really well.  I had asked him about the tattoo, and explained that tattoos weren’t frowned upon, but in order to maintain as credible an environment as possible – since we were selling high end espresso machines – would he accept wearing his collar closed.  He said he would…and then told me that his tattoo was his daughter’s name.

His daughter who had passed away as a toddler.

So, y’know…I felt like a real jerk.

I still went back and forth about whether he should get the job.  Ultimately, he was the best qualified of our candidates, so I gave him the position.

He disappeared a few months later.

Add that experience to what I went through with The Broken Poet with his Pikachu neck tat and I think I come by my reluctance to accept overtly placed tattoos honestly.  There’s a lil example of what a Pikachu looks like, in case you need a refresher…no pics of the BP, sorry.  Although, the guy in that pic is a tasty lil nugget, eh?  I wonder what’s wrong with him.  By the way, can anyone tell me why people lose their shit over this Pikachu fella?  We’re talking about people who should be looking forward to being adults and being taken seriously…yet they won’t let go of this childish imagery.  I think it’s self sabotage, but I’d probably just bore you talking about that.  Plus, I think I’m already pretty far off topic.

Back to Vulture and I, chatting away about how out of control tattoos have gotten.  They seem to be less meaningful these days and more of a way of compensating for…I have no idea what.  I realize that I’m probably being listened to by people who are exceedingly tattooed as we stand there in line…nevertheless, I persist, moving into how when taken in the scheme of facial tattoos the neck tattoos look almost modest.

Almost.

But nothing says “Bad Judgement” like a facial tattoo, I speculate as the line starts moving forward.

We get inside and find seats.  Vulture and I somehow separated.  Little Buddy tries to steer around the leaning over people to shout at each other above the music mess that could become, but we wouldn’t have it.  There’s just enough time to get a beer at the upstairs bar before the Opening Act comes on.  The crowd isn’t too densely populated.  There’s a few seats available and the mosh area in front just has a few stragglers standing around.  It’s an all girl band, which prompts me to take a moment to text D-Slice up in Seattle, since she is in an all girl Nirvana cover band.  They are a little hard for my taste, but it’s a good opening band, getting the crowd energized with songs like the one that I can only assume from the aggressive hand gestures is called “Fuck You”.  The guitarist looked like a wuzzle (copyright:  LB) of Sia and Myrtle Snow from American Horror Story:  Coven.  Her hair was probably 18 inches long, curly and radiating outward from her head.  It was pretty amazing to watch.

The Opening Act finishes up and his Adam Ant-ness takes the stage.

Two words:  The Hat.

Here’s, also, a man that likes his tattoos.

He’s not been one to shy away from theatrical make up, either.

It all adds up to quite a stage presence.  Particularly for a man in his early 60s.  I typically can’t hear much of the words being sung at concerts, unless someone actually paid attention to what was going on at the sound check.  I get the gist of the songs being played, but mostly I just hear bass and percussion.

Still, I couldn’t not watch him perform.  He’s not a great dancer, his big move was stepping up onto a speaker at the front of the stage and bringing the other leg up into an exaggerated step class maneuver.  I mean, that’s nowhere near the jaw dropping bad moves you’re gonna see at a PAt Benetar concert, so he has that going for him.  It was just a magnetism about him that held my attention.

Well, that and LB’s comment about how much he looked like the lovechild of Capt Jack Sparrow and – god, who did she say? – Edward Scissorhands, maybe?  Maybe it was just Johnny Depp.  But she was right.

The band had two drummers.  Actually, the stage was set up symmetrically with two drum kits at the back and then two guitarists flanking Adam And.  The band members were a melange of humanity and styles.  I had heard talk that one of the guitarists had died recently and that this might have been the replacement guy’s first show.

 

On one side of the stage, you had Patsy Stone absolutely killing it fabulously on drums and Keith Urban on guitar trying too hard to look like a rock and roll guy.  On the other side of the stage you had the other guitarist…the replacement guy, who my Little Buddy took quite a liking to.  I couldn’t say I could blame her.  He was nice and sexy.  Your parents’ basic rock and roll boyfriend nightmare.  The fourth member of the band?  I honestly have no recollection of him.  It’s weird.  I totally remember how the stage right side of the situation was like caricatures of famous people playing instruments and the other side was much more normal looking…but the drummer is completely lost to my memory.  Obviously, I’m distracted thinking about the sexy guitar guy…oops.

Now, here’s the best part.  At least in my mind:

If you look closely at the picture of Adam above, you can just make out under his right eye, Adam Ant’s facial tats.

Because:  FML and my life is perpetually spent trying to answer the question “What could possibly go wrong?” in living color.