By Friday afternoon, we were in through the front gates. It was around 1 p.m., and we showed our 3-day tickets to the man, and received our armbands. Plastic straps, designed to have impervious clasping buttons. The strip can be cut, but the latch and the plastic would hold on showers, sleeping, fistfights, and even full on grip.
Probably, anyway. We didn’t want to test our theory too much, since this was the only way to get back in for the rest of the weekend. A near foolproof idea for attendance: only the right people, who had paid full price like normal, would be wanted here. We ran into someone later trying to beat the system, but we’ll get to him later.
I had driven Bishara and I the day before, eventually taking somewhere upwards of 11 hours from departure, to get to his Uncle’s house with time to spare for the concert the next day. We had taken our time, leaving a day early, so as to leave nothing to chance on our attendance once everything started. On our way through Wisconsin we’d bought a carton of cigarettes and a pair of tar filters. The cigarettes in Wisconsin because they were cheaper, a carton because we didn’t want to run out (since we’d planned on sharing, if nothing else than just as ice-breakers for conversation), and the filters for our health. Also, because we’d be fooling ourselves if we didn’t already feel (or is that wish?) we were stuck in our own version of “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas”. We bought the tar-filters to complete the Hunter S. Thompson package. For myself, particularly. Arrogant assumptions, it would seem, except for the fact that I was white, my 310-pound Arab friend could easily pass for Samoan, and I was a writer. Avoiding the obvious was not what we were on this trip to do.
So we bought the tar-filters, and I write this story to you making no apologies as per my flagrant following in Thompson’s footsteps. Every writer in America since the 30’s has been ripping off Fitzgerald and “The Great Gatsby”, including Hunter S. Thompson himself, so I don’t feel much guilt wishing I could be half the creative force as The Greatest Writing Machine In History, who I also happen to have been reading like a man possessed for the past 3 months. I wanted the story done, and I couldn’t very well hold off because of some guilty feeling I might get from trying to dance like an idiot in my mind while writing anything that sounded marginally exciting. “The story bores me to tears,” I’d say, “But at least I didn’t rip anyone off.” They’re great writers. They’re supposed to sink into your brain, skin, fingers, and voice.
So we carry on, with clenched teeth and clean conscience. I owe $6000 to a credit card, $375 of which are these tickets. We spent more on gas, we’ll blow more on music, and I have no one paying the bill for it all. I want to know if the art of the rock concert is dead. Will there be anymore historic moments, or is our country done with them? We may have everything figured out so well, that I stay up at night in terror, thinking it might not get any better than this.
A culture lives and dies by its music. Perhaps not directly, but you can definitely tell where the wave is going by your ears. What does it mean to people? How far are they willing to go for it? How closely do they live by it?
What would I find on this trip? Would anyone know what I’m talking about, or am I a faded kid born 30 years too late? 10 years? 10 years early? How close am I? Am I at the end or the beginning? To be the middle children of history, as Tyler Durden called us in Fight Club, we seem to be milling in groups, waiting for the hero of the microphone to lead us on an artillery of power chords, primal drums, and a mania on the verge of loss of control to make themselves feel known, and by extension, make our presence known.
I went to Chicago to see if they were there, and to see if we were ready for them.
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