Live Concert Series, Pt. 10

Burning, Burning

Well, it is Midnight Oil

This could have happened only thirty years ago, when we were younger; when driving almost three hours after a show didn’t tax our aching minds and bodies.

We had been living in Greenville for only a year, my wife and I. My teaching job at Presbyterian College still had many bugs in it, like the charge that I was undermining the freshman English program. That charge came basically because I didn’t penalize students early and often enough when they made comma splice errors or refused to allow their subjects and verbs to agree. I knew these were important grammatical issues, but I thought -3 points per every error didn’t exactly send the message that writing essays about literature could be invigorating and deeply useful.

I made it through my trial period, and found ways to subtract necessary points while encouraging my students that learning how to use a comma properly didn’t have to be as difficult as they thought — certainly no more difficult than learning how to interpret passages from the “Old Testament,” King James version, which they had to do in their religion classes.

To stay even saner, my wife and I took day trips, and sometimes after-classes-finished night trips.

One of these happened when we discovered that the Australian band Midnight Oil set a concert date in Atlanta. The good news: we got tickets easily. The bad news: we couldn’t leave until 5, and the show started at 9. The good news: we made it in plenty of time. The bad news? I’ll wait a bit for that.

Since we had toured Atlanta many times, we knew what to do efficiently so as to maximize our experience. A Tuesday night, things weren’t as hot in the city as a weekend night, but you know how snaky the traffic is in that town, especially along the I-85/20 corridor. Since then, I have discovered better routes to midtown, but back then, we’d take the interstate all the way to Georgia Tech, and then find the main-est of arteries to whatever our destination was.

Given our shrinking time window, we took a chance on Ponce de Leon drive, because we wanted to eat first in Virginia Highlands at our favorite Ethiopian restaurant — the long-since-gone Blue Nile. Our hypnotizingly gorgeous hostess knew us almost by sight, and led us to the back sitting room, where we cushioned ourselves and fed each other bites of the spongy bread, spread with lentils and forms of African-based stew. In Ethiopian custom, you’re supposed to feed each other, if you are lovers. And of course, we were.

We were also two twenty-somethings (actually, I had passed into 30-something) who preferred getting high before our live shows. This took a bit of doing, given that I didn’t want to drive anywhere in Atlanta high. But since it was Atlanta, when we got to the concert venue — I’m remembering the Atlanta Playhouse — we stood back in the parking lot and toked on up.

The hall held maybe 2000 people, just enough to feel intimate and big-time at once. If there was an opening act, I don’t remember it, or that could have been the pot kicking in.

I remember when the band’s hit album, Diesel and Dust, came out in 1987. I bought it almost immediately, and kept it on the turntable until my wife came home from work that evening. She had a co-worker with her, and I had gone to the store to scrape up our supper. So I left a note at the stereo:

“Turn on, play loud. Dance.”

“What a great way to come home,” she told me later.

Of course, it was the MTV smash, “Beds Are Burning” that she, and later, we, danced to. But the rest of the record holds up well, though not always danceably.

So there we were in our concert seats, high and waiting. We didn’t have to fidget long before bald-headed Peter Garrett led his mates to the stage. I stress his bald head, because those in the front row got to rub it periodically during the show. He’s a strange-looking dude anyway, and forgive me, Peter, for saying that you wouldn’t be out of place were you to show up in that old Wes Craven film, The Hills Have Eyes. Look it up.

Have two hours ever passed more quickly? It might have helped if I hadn’t been craving more Ethiopian food, more pot, and a good place to dance. And, I have to confess, I spent most of the show salivating for “Beds Are Burning,” which finally came during the first encore. I hate to be one of those fans who desires the biggest hit and almost dismisses the rest of the band’s set, but truthfully, that was me on this night.

And, they truly didn’t disappoint. the crowd grew frenzied, too, as if we had all kind of forgotten what the song is about, the human rights issues that Garrett championed here and on Artists United Against Apartheid’s Sun City.

Walking out of the show, we felt tired and happy, and here came that bad news:

The almost three-hour drive back home, which in and of itself wasn’t so bad, because when you’re driving with the person you love after seeing a show you longed to see, time is almost irrelevant.

What wasn’t irrelevant was teaching the next morning at 8:00 AM, because as a new faculty member, I didn’t get much choice in my time slots. I also had a 45-minute drive to campus, which meant I had to awaken around 6.

We pulled into home that night around 3.

But I think I was the hero of one of my hip students who knew bands and who couldn’t believe we had seen Midnight Oil without him. Sorry Jeff.

Nope, couldn’t do that today. Thankfully, though, I could do it back then.

Thanks for the challenge, Noah Levy. The time has come, indeed. And what about the rest of you: Kathy Gerstorff, Vince Coliam, Matt Dwyer, Jessica Lee McMillan, Kathryn Dillon, Steven Hale, Jeff Goodwin, Rob Janicke, Kevin Alexander, Sarah Paris, S.W. Lauden, and whoever else wants to play!

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