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Saw the R.E.M. last night at Red Rocks. Great show. As always.

People may not be buying R.E.M. records like they did in the 80s, but these geezers still know how to entertain a crowd for a couple of hours.

• The opening band was The Nation. I liked them better when they called themselves The Church. Seriously, I thought I was back in 1988. Nothing new here. Move on.
• The second band was Modest Mouse. I don’t get those guys, either. What’s worse is that the band is wasting a perfectly good Johnny Marr.
• If you’re a guy and you order a margarita or a glass of wine at a rock and roll show, you should kick your own ass.
• Is the white-haired hippie guy with the long beard at every concert everywhere? I think he is.
• If you buy a reserved seat at Red Rocks you should go sit in your seat and not take up limited seating in the GA section. I know you want to be closer. Tough shit. Shoulda thought about that when you paid more than I did.
• Michael Stipe really is at the top of his game now that he’s not so self-serious all the time.
• There’s no legitimate reason to check your e-mail on your Blackberry at a noisy rock and roll show. Ever.
• Parking at Red Rocks is a goat fuck. But it’s free and people, for the most part, are gracious and considerate when it’s time to leave.
• The relevance of 50 Cent’s G Unit clothing line is officially over. I saw Fiddy’s clothes on two 40-something soccer moms.
• It’s super-adorable when my wife plays air guitar. She doesn’t think I notice.

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The Young Ones + Motörhead = (Awesome X 1000)

I really miss this show.

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Wil Wheaton dropped this nugget on his blog yesterday:

… Sure, it’s great to have the convenience of buying and instantly downloading records and stuff, but the damn kids today who will grow up without ever setting foot in a record store or talking to a hardcore music geek who works there just don’t know what they’re missing.

And they’re missing a lot.

It really doesn’t get any simpler — or truer — than that. Believe me, I love the things the Internet affords us all. And you know what I mean: instant this, access to that, location independent blah blah blah.

But there’s something wonderful about spending time in the record store, mixing with the music and the people there in a tactile way that browsing the super-shitty iTunes just can’t reproduce.

As cool as Apple wants to make you feel about owning one of its pretty pretty products, the record store thing ain’t gonna happen while you’re sitting on your ass listening to 30 second snippets through shitty speakers.

No chance of strolling the aisles and flipping through the stacks and talking to the scruffy kid, who’s filing new arrivals, about what he likes better, THIS YEAR’S MODEL or LONDON CALLING. Or finding that you both dig bagpipes, klezmer, or John Denver… as much as you dig Johnny Rotten.

Maybe it’s just stupid romance for me, but the record store is where I learned to love Sonny Criss and Josh Bell and R.L. Burnside.

It’s also the place where I met each of the four men who stood up for me at my wedding… and the place where I met the woman I married that day.

(If you haven’t guessed already, I worked in a rec-a-sto once upon a time. For the better part of the 90s, I schlepped my ass to a stand alone shop for miserable pay and tons of promo CDs and comp tickets to just about every rock and roll show that blew through town.)

Unlike Wheaton, I’m not sure I miss my record store geek days… at least not from a consumer’s point of view. There’s so much out there and I don’t have the dough to discover one percent of what I used to know, and I’m not convinced — even if money wasn’t an object — that half of that stuff is worth discovering anyway.

What I share with Wheaton, in addition to lamenting the demise of the record shop and what that means, is the connection of music to significant parts of the past. It’s more visceral for me than movies are. More than books, too.

Maybe I don’t always remember the exact event connected to a song or record. Sometimes, yes. But I do remember the time and what it represented for me while I was in it.

Is it the same for you? What are some of the things you’ve really connected with like that? Drop a comment… let’s discuss.

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Just a few minutes from now I hope to be the owner of tickets to see The Police and Elvis Costello at Red Rocks.

Denied.

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