Life is a mystery - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

When Guns N’ Roses reformed (sans Slash), Jess and I went to see them in Toronto. They went on hours later than they were supposed to. In fact, a friend was working security and when we ran into him an hour or so after the band was supposed to start playing, he said he’d heard lead singer Axl Rose wasn’t even in the building, but in one of Toronto’s premier gentlemen’s clubs.
I didn’t get back home until the sun had come up. Clearly those were my younger days. 

 

I once saw Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and the encore was cut short when David Crosby, seemingly rocking out a bit too hard, fell and injured his hand. (As a Young fan through and through, I can’t feel too bad about Crosby taking a fall. Young may have been the bigger man and let it go, but I’m not.)

 

Earlier this year, at a show in Florida, Bob Dylan was hit in the face with a request to “play something we know” from the crowd. Admittedly, when I saw Dylan many years ago I didn’t know many of the tunes I was hearing. Furthermore, it must have been a weird stage of his career because he almost exclusively played the keyboard, not the guitar.

 

I once went and saw The Pixies and we left early because we thought the show was bad. We were in relatively close proximity to one of Toronto’s premier gentlemen’s clubs (not the same one Axl allegedly patronized) and, as men of a certain age and maturity, we jumped ship for what we saw as greener pastures.

 

I’ve had feet, behinds and everything in between bop me in the head during concerts that are conducive to crowd-surfing. And, because we’re in Canada, you know, I’ve had to endure all kinds of temperature swings, the most popular being the heavy winter coat in a sweltering rock club. If you have to walk from your car, you’ll need to stay warm, but, upon arrival, a lot of these places don’t have a coat check, so you’re either wearing or holding it.

 

I’ve been to baseball games that have run absurdly long. Jess and I saw the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Texas Rangers in 18 innings back in 2013. Pro: We got to do the seventh and 17th inning stretches. Con: They stopped serving beer and food in the middle of the eighth inning as per usual and never did get it going again, so those left in the stands were hungry.

 

My sister and I saw the New York Yankees play the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. The game was scoreless until the 15th inning when Alex Rodriguez hit a two-run home run to win it for the home team. That happened just as we walked in my cousin Mike’s door. He was watching the game. He gave us all kinds of guff about it, but we didn’t want to miss the last train out of The Bronx back to New Jersey. That could have been a really long night.

 

The next day after all of these and more (even the one when I was still driving home as it became the next day), I have never, to this day, consulted legal counsel. I never thought to take to the courts to punish those responsible.

 

So, I had to roll my eyes a bit after reading a story about some concertgoers suing Madonna after a Washington, D.C. show they attended didn’t quite go the way they had hoped. Madge was due to go on at 8:30 p.m. but didn’t grace the stage until a full two hours later. The class-action lawsuit also makes mention of the hot temperature in the venue and alleges Madonna lip-synched much of her performance.

 

I have kids now and they have a bedtime and frankly I have a bedtime too and it’s before 10:30 p.m., so I get it, but, court? Come on.

 

I wonder if the statute of limitations has passed on suing Guns N’ Roses, because not only did it take all night, but it wasn’t good.