BEST CONCERT: A BOOMERPDX REVIEW

Reviewing for best concert happened the usual way: I opened a box of pictures and found Prince.

I saw this show in 1985 for $17.50 with my then-girlfriend, driving up to Tacoma and back from Portland.

We got married a year later.

Prince The Closer?

I was a thirty year old Prince fan in 1985 and felt a little funny about it.

No, I didn’t want to be Prince, but after watching Purple Rain I believed I had a best concert Get-Out-Of-Jail card. I needed it for my concert remorse.

I can’t be the only one around with concert remorse, can I?

My remorse comes from living a few blocks away from Mac Court on the University of Oregon in Eugene when Elvis rolled into town three months before he died.

I didn’t go because I didn’t want Real Elvis to ruin ‘My Elvis’. I was weak and selfish and should have found a way to see one of the guiding lights of young boomers.

My Elvis was Movie Elvis, a man who showed that if we pull a guitar out on a deserted beach a swarm of bikini girls would show up.

I grew up on Oregon’s cold water beaches that needed a warm thought.

Yes, I missed Elvis while I was a student at Oregon. Not much of an excuse, but it gets worse.

I Missed Bruce Just Before The Time And Newsweek Covers

I lived in Philadelphia by coincidence.

It’s where the Army sent me to work in a civil service clinic that needed a medic for pre-physical work-ups and driving the ambulance.

They decided I was just who they needed, or it was the only open slot available after I missed my original assignment to Germany.

Either way, it was a long established clinic with long-term nurses and doctors and young civil service staffers. It was set up with two military doctors rotating in based on their ‘Army service for medical school tuition’ contract.

And two medics.

The doctors weren’t always a happy lot after leaving their civilian practice and uprooting their families to serve their time in some back-water facility in seedy South Philly.

The two young ladies working the reception desk and records were another story. They were local girls with loads of friends to do things with.

One weekend they invited me to go with a group over to New Jersey and see their favorite band, Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band, playing in some bar.

But I was new to the area, the region, and didn’t know about the growing legend of BRUUUUUUCE.

Besides, I didn’t need to see another flash-in-the-pan Dylan impersonator with his cover band. Or say the wrong thing in some Jersey dive and end up in a swamp.

If I had gone, it would have made my Best Concert list.

The worst part was seeing him decades later touring behind The Rising. Portland was the second stop after his Las Vegas opener didn’t sell out. He complained about his first marriage to an Oregon woman with, “What was I thinking?”

That one is not on the list.

Prince Saves The Day With Best Concert

I didn’t buy the Prince tickets. I knew a guy who had them.

He said he’d give them to me if I helped him lay sod in his yard.

Have you ever laid sod? For Prince tickets? I doubt that anyone has

So I’m on a mission, but not one I shared with my date/wife-to-be, which turned out to be in the Married Man Manual. No one needs to hear about every little thing.

So she’s excited to be with someone who ‘Does Things,’ like drive the hell up to Tacoma because Prince doesn’t do Portland.

We found our seat on the far end of the oval and saw the band way out there about a half inch tall.

During the song Purple Rain, Prince hopped into a bathtub with a shower pipe over his head spraying purple neon down. That was cool.

Then the bathtub started rising. It’s the only time I’ve seen a bathtub prop in a rock show, and this one flies? Different.

Then Prince started shedding his clothes. Prince The Stripper. He was wearing either a diaper or a Sumo wrestler’s mawashi.

This was before the big screens, like the one with Bruce at the Moda that highlighted a big gnarly tooth.

Was Prince the Best Concert Ever? No, but he’s been the most interesting rock star and even in death his legend grows.

Thank you, Prince.

And for this.

And this.