Tag Archives: Bo Diddley

Bo Diddley

Standard

I won the tickets from the local radio station.

Bo Diddley’s playing at the House of Blues, the DJ said. Be the 10th caller and win two tickets.

I was at work. It was a slow evening, and there were no customers in the store. I picked up the phone, dialed the radio station’s number. Busy signal. I hit redial Busy signal. I hit redial.

You’re the tenth caller, the smooth DJ voice said.

I was going to see Bo Diddley!

Later than night I called my housemate who also happened to be the man on whom I had a huge crush. I didn’t have the courage to ask him to go to the show with me. Instead, I told him I’d won two tickets and asked him if he knew anybody who might want to go to the show with me.

Do I know anybody who’d want to go to the show with you? he asked incredulously. I want to go to the show with you!

To this day, I’m not sure if he wanted to go to show with me or if he just wanted to go to the show.

I didn’t know much about Bo Diddley. I’d heard that “Who Do You Love?” song and that’s about it. Free tickets were awesome, and now I had a date, so I didn’t much care what the music was like.

I can’t remember if we walked together from home on the night of the show or if we met at the House of Blues. I just remember being there and my crush saying he’d buy the drinks since I’d provided the tickets. I told him that plan sounded fair to me.

We started drinking right away.

Bo Diddley took the stage, and he ROCKED THE HOUSE! He was skinny, and he was old (66 at the time), but there was nothing feeble about the way he played and sang. My crush and I weren’t the only members of the audience on our feet. Lots of us were dancing our asses off.

At intermission, we struck up a conversation with some earnest young Canadian men on vacation. One of them asked what kind of work we did. My crush told them I was a stripper, and to my complete amazement, the Canadian men believed him! Maybe Canadians have a different standard of beauty than Americans because eve then, in my early 20s, I was not stripper material.

The second half of the show was as good—no, better—than the first. Old Bo still had plenty to give his fans.

Can you see ok? my crush asked me.  Let me put you on my shoulders so you can see, he offered.

We were on the balcony, so I could look down and see the stage pretty well. However, I was not going to turn down physical contact with this man I liked so very much. He leaned down, and I climbed up, throwing a leg around either side of his head. Woowie! Yes! This was fun!

It wasn’t long before a security guy come up to us and told my crush to put me down. That good time was over, but Bo Diddley played on.

As all good things do, the concert came to an end. The crowd roared, but the show was over.

I was feeling good, a little drunk, a little loose, happy. I’d just had a lot of fun at that show.

My crush and I walked home to the large house we shared. We were laughing and talking, and I was hoping to get laid. The other times we’d had sex, we’d usually been out together drinking, then came home and prolonged the night by falling into bed together. While—sure—it was about the sex for me, it wasn’t only about the sex. I really liked the guy and hoped one of these times we fell in bed together, he’d fall in love with me. Maybe tonight would be that night.

My hopes were dashed as we approached the house, and I saw the car parked in front.

Oh! Gretchen’s here! my crush said with more excitement than he’d expressed all night.

Gretchen was the women with whom he was in love. It was apparently going to be love triangle night in our house.

Gretchen had dozed off in the front seat of her car while waiting for us. My crush was all smiles as he tapped on the window to wake her. He led her inside the house and to his bedroom, as I went to my room to spend another night alone and unloved.

Concerts I’ve Attended (Nine Truths and a Lie)

Standard

Recently on Facebook, folks I know were playing a game in which they listed ten concerts they’d been to. The trick was, one item on each list was a lie, a concert that person had not actually attended. Friends got to guess which concert was a lie. It was a fun game, but too time-consuming for me to write it all out on my phone. So here today I’m sharing the concerts I’ve attended in my life–nine truths and a lie style.

Can you guess wich concert I did not attend? Leave your guesses in the comments section below.

#1 Information Society at Disney World during Grad Nite. Samantha Fox and New Kids on the Block played at that Grad Night too, but I couldn’t get anywhere near the stages. I saw them from a distance, and they looked like ants.

#2 Tribe 8 (Bay Area queer punk rock) at Zeitgeist Theater in New Orleans.

#3 Crash Worship on two occasions. I don’t remember the venues. Once I was really high on really nice drugs. Once I was totally sober. Both shows were great!

#4 Toshi Reagon at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. I believe in kindness too.

#5 Billy Idol in some big arena. I told my parents I was spending the night at a friend’s house. I used my babysitting money to pay for my ticket.

#6 Barenaked Ladies at the House of Blues. My roommate bought me the ticket as an early birthday present.

#7 Blues Traveler. Blues Traveler. Blues Traveler. Once at Jazz Fest. Once at Tipitina’s. Once some place I don’t remember.

#8 Blue Scholars in NYC. Hip Hop fantastic!

#9 Bo Diddley at House of Blues. I won tickets from a local radio station and got a man I had a crush on to go with me. Bo Diddley rocked the House!

#10 Ani DiFrance on two occasions. Once at House of Blues where I met up with the woman I had a crush on who told me she’d had sex with the man I had a crush on. (It was a very Ani DiFranco moment.) Once at Jazz Fest where C.J. Chenier (who played before her) must have thought he had a huge new lesbian following.

 

 

 

Before You Accuse Me

Standard

Before you accuse me,

take a look at yourself

  — Bo Diddley

 

IMG_5654

The rural campground where I stayed.

I’d been staying almost a week on my friend’s prepaid spot in a rural  campground. It was a peaceful place with huge sites, nothing like the RV parking lots I’ve seen across the U.S. No one parked near me until the seventh night, when I returned to my van home after a cook-out to find a Class C on my cut-across route to the bath house. No big deal. I altered my path and didn’t think much about it.

It was a warm night, and before crawling into bed, I set up my small, battery operated fan in the back window. I drifted to sleep with a cool breeze blowing on my face.

I woke a little before 4am, needing to pee. The entire groggy time I dealt with that situation, I could hear a mechanical sound, a sort of distant humming.

What is that noise? I asked myself. It must be those new people! It must be their generator! Those idiots are running their generator in the middle of the night. They can’t do that! Don’t they know they can’t do that? Don’t they know this is quiet time? They can’t run a generator during quiet hours. Who thinks it’s ok to run a generator in the middle of the night?

As I woke up more fully, I wondered if I were really hearing a generator. What else might the noise be?

I got back in bed and put my ear close to the window, trying to better hear the noise so I could discern what was making it. When I put my ear next to the window, I found my ear next to the fan I had forgotten about and the whir of its motor. Oh. I hadn’t been hearing a loud generator in the distance. I’d been hearing the soft hum of my own fan up close.

I went back to sleep, feeling like an idiot.

The view from my campsite.

The view from my campsite.

I took the photos in this post.