Most people don’t expect to be confronted with many versions of their prospective self on an unspecial Tuesday via old guys in band t-shirts. Most people don’t expect to be leaving Newtown on a Wednesday morning with a temporary ink sleeve of genuine Rockstar signatures either.
It’s over a week later and the last barely visible stroke of k-Figg’s signature is clinging onto my forearm with a vengeance. I had to say a solemn goodbye to Nuno Bettencourt’s first, a victim fallen to washing my hands about three days ago. Gary Cherone’s and Pat Badger’s followed close behind.
Attending an Extreme concert- who are, of course, a band who peaked in the 80s and 90s but are still very charting after their this-year hard rock release SIX- means old people. (And, this is a very broad classification I use that encompasses those 25 and above.) When a couple friends pass me standing in the general admission queue at 3pm, I scramble to explain that I’m lined-up for a show with four hours to doors, chatting with the middle-aged, because I have “nothing better to do”. This is a lie because, though I find a healthy long wait good for the soul and experience, I’m entirely obsessed with meeting up with Rock Fans.
As a nineteen-year-old Rock Fan myself, thoughts on the longevity of this lifestyle are often uncomfortably evaded. It’s only when I take the time to talk to the others; thirty-year-old Rock Fan, forty-year-old Rock Fan, fifty-year-old Rock Fan and, later, the sixty-year-old Rockstar; my protective Peter Pan syndrome wanes. My future, which I have feebly justified with creed “why not just have fun until I die?”, gets explicated on Enmore Road. Maybe excitement, fervour and, even, passion are not youth exclusive, and I can’t think to why I haven’t realised this before.
After an hour of circling local Enmore shops and scoring a free Eagles’ Desperado CD at Papa Disquo because I will dance in record stores if warranted, I finally got approached by forty-year-old Rock Fan and son. The motley pair hailed from Campbelltown and regaled me with stories from as long ago as 1988 (Guns N’ Roses at the Entertainment Centre) and as late as this May (my infamously unattended Skid Row Manning Bar show).
These Rock Fans were kind beyond measure as I tagged along like a lost dog for the next seven hours. While I got a pina colada from Fortunate Son across the road, they ran into Corey Glover walking the streets, showing me (and everyone around) the selfie to much “ooh”ing. Forty-year-old rock fan was smart, adroit, loving and thrilled to see Living Colour perform again.
When slipping into the bar stool by myself, fifty-year-old Rock Fan bribed me into conversation with said pina colada and a packet of potato chips. We chatted across a corner about the Enmore concert we were both attending and how I came to be a fan of Extreme. In very Guitar Magazine fashion, I eulogised the neoclassical fretwork of Nuno Bettencourt and readily admitted that prolific funk-metal solos alternate-pick my heart strings.
Thirty-year-old Rock Fan gave me her VIP pass. She had a smile that took up half her face, last tour’s band tee and was waiting on a friend who would never make it in time. She grinned down at me as we watched Extreme take requests for soundcheck. Gary refused to play “Li’l Jack Horny” until he caved and we felt the full thrust of real rock guitar tone and funk bass for the first time that night.
Living Colour deserved more pre-show attention from me. Despite being unfamiliar with almost their whole discography, they delivered a show that had me screaming as much as forty-year-old Rock Fan. Corey Glover has a voice as daring and elegant as a practiced acrobat. Watching him wail so was like waiting for him to miss a rung after every bold leap. Yet, not a single moment of face-planting- from any of the members, actually, who held down true grooves with ease. Their tracklist even contained a tribute to the hip-hop legacy of Sugarhill Records, of which bassist Doug Wimbish was a noteworthy rhythmic figure.
By the end of the set, I was convinced that I needed to properly check out Living Colour at home. Others were less chipper, as a tiny spitting/face-slapping fight broke out next to me- rock aesthetics were well alive.
Talking of aesthetics: the Enmore theatre was a religious congregation, the band clergy, and us Fans fervent believers in rock n roll that Tuesday. Maybe this was best typified by the acoustic intimacy and sanctus crowd response to the band’s mega-hit “More Than Words”, where even Nuno, seated and finger-picking, recognised it was “like a church in here”. Or, maybe, when Gary hopped atop amp towers in sneakers half-obscured by low-waist bootcut denim and belted “Play With Me” with the vigour of charismatics.
It’s no rock show without scriptural references from the sacred texts and, naturally, Extreme were well-read. They jammed between songs with sections of James Brown’s “Sex Machine” and Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” in true celebration of the saints that once built this hallowed funk-rock institution.
The whole production was a great declaration of love to Rock and Rock Fans, right from the moment a single circle of light illuminated Nuno, catching feedback and lunging in front of a wall of Marshalls, to the intense viscera of instruments played on the go, and finishing with a proper rock n roll send-off as our stars balanced on the barricade to shake the hands of the front row. Gary addressed the crowd personally, at one point smiling at me long enough that I could throw a grateful kiss back his way.
My undeniable night highlights were the sure burial of a Pat Badger bassline by the best Extreme solo ever in “Get The Funk Out”, the tender deliverance of new ballad “Small Town Beautiful”, and a fierce all SIX encore, including the internet-arresting guitar of “Rise”. And they did it all with costume changes, lights and the best mixing I’ve ever heard at the Enmore. Remember when “Rockstar” was a profession?
So, maybe, I have priorities that favour bagging all four Extreme signatures out in the frigidity of Enmore instead of revering strict curfews. And, maybe, the Rock Critics find it hard to respect someone who will so easily listen to silly words with Mozart solos as soon as uber-pretentious art rock. But what I’ve lost in them, I’ve gained infinitely more in the instantaneous relationship materialised with the person I lock eyes with wearing a Mötley Crüe t-shirt.
Rock Fans are always there, and I’m willing to wager they’ll still be there, buzzing with that barely contained enthusiasm, when I breach my dreaded thirties. Makes me wonder, what’s all my “ageing” fuss about then?