I had an unpleasant memory from my past as an avid concert-goer. Being at the Cog Factory downtown wearing a flannel shirt and sweating profusely and smoking at the same time. It was very common for me to smoke while I was at concerts, so much so that I remember trying to sneak some into a Widespread show at the Pershing Auditorium in Lincoln. The place was pretty fierce about allowing tobacco products in whatsoever and they were doing full-body pat-downs. There I was right outside the gate and beginning to sweat. I thought, I'll put them down in my socks, because they'll never find them there. I was thinking/ hoping/praying that the feat would work for me. So concerned I was with getting to have something I could smoke with me that I was risking being pushed away from the door of a concert I had spent thirty dollars to get in the door. Nevermind that I was risking my health on a daily basis.
NOW, look--- I'm not on an anti-smoking campaign because having a fear or downright contempt of the institution as a whole is neither fruitful nor productive in terms of wanting to continue a long period of abstinence. I did that the first time I quit back when I was 19 or 20 (yes, I WAS attempting to QUIT at that age) I started to go the militant route on it, decrying anyone who made the conscious decision to smoke at all.. needless to say within and before two months I found myself smoking again just as much as ever before and had to eat a lot of crow from the big stink I made. So I'm doing my best not to be a hypocrite but I will say that I am not missing it now... The actual thought I had was of how many articles of clothing ended up with burn holes in them, and a countless number of times I was actual burned by other people's scalding ash. In the middle of a concert (God how did they justify tearing down the ashtray shrine that was the Ranch Bowl, the nexus of most rock n roll shows in the Omaha area) it was the most startling experience to feel a hot cinder burning its way into your skin, only to turn around and see some grease monkey with long curly scraggily hair and virtually no face standing there in concert pose one leg out with knee bent, head swaying to the music and cigarette in their mouth.... OK, see now even THAT is a bit of a stereotype because God only knows: you have to be trash to smoke. Not entirely true as I found in my suburban experience. There was a time when it seemed like everyone smoked. Conversely, there can a time when everybody was seeming to quit. I'm glad I made it out alive, at least for now. Without dying from an aneurysm while banging my head to the Poster Children at the Cog, or moshing to Fugazi at the Ag Center in Lincoln.

I know that now I can pretty much enjoy a concert as a chance to loosen up, exercise, get pumped up and let my blood flow freely. It's a little more freaky than it used to be, because I feel somewhat out of place, no drink, no smokes. I'm not sure what sold me to the idea that I needed those as props to get through the whole experience, one of the more profound among all human experiences, seeing another person shredding a guitar on stage and a whole group of them making unearthly noises that pierce the skin and wrestle their way to our insides. Music has saved me time and time again, just like Mike D. said on the Check Your Head album. I realize this is like preaching to the choir, especially when the choir preaches back, but it was an amazing realization that I was stifling an expereince myself; that experience being the one of being humbled before a man or woman channelling a great wave of creative energy through his or her being...