I'm crazy about the song Moves Like Jagger. And I'll tell you what, I've seen Mick Jagger live and his moves mesmerize you.
So how'd I end up at the Rolling Stones Bridges of Babylon tour in Pontiac, MI in December 1997 four days before the LSAT exam? I needed a break from studying, that's how. I even cleared it with Dad. Meaning I told my dad my plan to go to the concert during Thanksgiving break, thinking he'd say don't go study instead, but he said "of course go see the Stones, who wouldn't?" So I went.
My senior year college roommate and I were in an honor fraternity, yes an honor fraternity (sneer now) that needed volunteers to take tickets at the concert. So we drove from Ann Arbor to the Pontiac Silverdome a/k/a Detroit.
Have you endured a Michigan winter? Better yet have you stood outside in the 30 degree weather with a wind chill on top of that tearing concert tickets? I have and I wasn't good at it. For starters my gloves were too big, which made me slow. Mick and Keith fans didn't like that. And these were real tickets with perforations so you got to take home the larger part of the ticket stub, not this Ticketmaster print-your-tickets-at-home bullshit we do now. These were the real deal--the concert goer was left with a stub for their bulletin board, scrap book and bragging rights later that night at some Detroit dive bar. But only if I did my job right.
Unfortunately for some Stones' fans I did not. The frigid cold, my too big gloves, and the pressure to be fast had me discombobulated and while I could tear tickets, I gave the wrong end of the ticket to some fans and deposited the big part of the ticket stub--the part with the name of the show, the date, the location and the seat number--into the slot of my locked, ticket holding canister. Bad move(s). I was booed and hissed at...literally. People were so pissed at me for depriving them on their cherished memento.
I must thank the freezing cold weather. For surely, if it'd been warmer, those concert goers would have stayed outside and torn me apart, fought me, kicked me, something not nice and most likely violent. Or they would have rioted and demanded the guy with the key to my ticket-taking receptacle appear at once. The cold, however, prevented them from coming after me or from complaining more than they did.
I survived the ticket taking line and pissing off a couple of people. Finally no more ticket holders formed a line and a stadium employee allowed me into the warmth, only so I could complete round two of this once glorious, now hideous volunteer job. This would be a good time to mention the sole reason for agreeing to do this volunteer job for my honor fraternity was because after you took tickets you got to see the Rolling Stones FOR FREE.
But first I had to count my ticket stubs. I actually counted the first couple stacks of twenty five tickets and then I started making little piles that were as high as the first properly counted stacks of twenty five stubs. I called over my supervisor, gave him my made up number of tickets taken and was given the green light. I raced out of that room leaving the genuine, honest, ticket counters in my dust to grab a seat and see Mick, my oh-so-sexy-yes-I know-he must- have-sexually-transmitted-diseases and a raging-drug-problem-Mick Jagger.
His hips, those gangly arms. I'm telling you those moves are smooth. Mick can work it. He had on two tight t-shirts one red and one purple. When he shed the red one, I almost fainted. It was beyond sexy. And then he kept dancing around the stage and back and forth on the make shift "Bridge of Babylon" that was part of the set for the tour. It was utterly amazing. I was star struck, I was jealous of his dance moves struck, I had it bad.
That Mick though, he's an equal opportunist with those trance-effect dance moves. Even men were gawking and wishing they could move like that. I mean why else would this guy at the concert say what he said to me? Mick must have put him in a hypnotic state, anything looked good. This guy walked up the steps of the stadium and stopped right in front of me and said "you're striking." Not you're pretty, but you're striking. It's the best compliment I've ever received. Ever.
Wait, come to think of it, I hope it was a compliment. I think it was. The way his face looked when he said it made it seem like genuine flattery and not an insult or something not nice.
How much better could that night get? The hottest dancer of all time was dancing in front of me and a random, guy out of no where noticed me and said something nice to me. It felt so good.
So what tops that? How about Row Z, Seat 11 at the Michigan theater in Ann Arbor. That was the seat either my college boyfriend or me sat in when we were at a Bob Dylan concert one summer and he told me he loved me for the first time. And then a year or two later (he'd since graduated and moved) he told me to go to the theater find Row Z, Seat 11 because he'd left something there for me. I trekked thorough the Michigan weather again, this was in December, asked permission to go into the theater without buying a ticket, searched the seat, the row, everywhere. Exited the theater, annoyed at being so cold and not finding a present or something, and who was there waiting for me, surprising me by being back to town without telling me, outside of the theater? You guessed it. Mr. Row Z, Seat 11.
Told you I liked concerts. Amazing things can happen at them.
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