Getting Old
I’m not one of those late thirty-somethings who’s going to rant about the ravages of old age. For someone who goes to bed after three ayem five times a week, I do alright. I got invited to see Vampire Weekend at The Wiltern by my friends Megan and David. Ten years ago, there weren’t many bands who played a place that size who I hadn’t heard of, but now, not so much. Luckily, I have some young friends. I mentioned this band to Kimi, who practically burst with excitement and shouted, “Oh, I’m going, too!” To give you an idea of the difference in my age and Kimi’s, she asked me if I’d ever seen Escape From New York with Kurt Russell. I happened to have seen it in the theater, which was a year before she was born.
Turns out Kimi saw Vampire Weekend the night before we did. She mentioned that they started pretty late, some time around ten-thirty. At dinner at Woo Lae Oak, the three of us spent most of the meal wondering why a band would go on that late. I figured they had an algebra test they had to study for. When we got to the show, the crowd didn’t look too young, we just happened to be in the top percentile for age. I believe I saw a forty year old but he appeared to be chaperoning his kids. The Wiltern is divided into upstairs and downstairs, both general admission, but the upstairs has seats. We were standing in the middle of the lobby when four youths approached us, and when I say “youths,” I’m guessing high school age. One of them asked, “We were wondering if you guys had downstairs tickets you’d want to trade for upstairs.” I happened to be super high and had trouble comprehending the offer, until he said, “I mean you guys don’t want to stand up the whole time, do you?” Megan turned to David, who has a stiff neck, and asked, “Are they saying we’re old?” David turned his entire upper body, robot like, to face her, “I don’t know.” Yes, they were barking up the correct tree. And, although, Vampire Weekend has only one album, which means their set can’t be more than forty-five minutes, including a dozen covers, I would have loved a seat for the entire show. Turns out we had upstairs seats and did not make the trade.
We went in and got our seats, a few rows from the top. When the concert eventually started around ten thirty, cell phones lit up the crowd. Now I’ve heard over the last couple of years that cell phones are the new lighters at concerts. Somehow I don’t feel that screaming, “Free Bird!” at the top of your lungs holding up a Blackberry Pearl has the same impact. But when they started playing the screens of a shit load of phones lit up the crowd. It took me a minute to realize that they were video recording the concert. I don’t know what kind of phones these crazy kids have, but I take a picture of my friend from eighteen inches away while using the flash and they look like a Shmoo. What shocked me even more was that there were people a few rows in front of us practicing phone-cinematography. Maybe the IPhone has some sort of zoom lens I’m unaware of.
Lucky for me, the one-album band played for less than an hour, which got us out at eleven thirty or so. When they first came on, I thought they were far too small for the venue, but their sound got bigger and they grew on me. The last band I saw at the Wiltern was Queens of the Stone Age, whose sound was so big one of my testicles blew off. Don’t worry I reattached it with stapler. (I sure hope Obama wins so I can get that health insurance, I’ve read about.) One thing about Vampire Weekend is that it was probably the first concert I’d been to where the lead singer said, “If you’re not sitting in a seat, you should try and dance.” It’s not the same as Funkadelic singing, “Shit! God Damn! Get off your ass and jam!” I guess I’m just getting old.
