Music Blogs

Matthew Sweet is GetBack's guest blogger all week. Here's an acoustic performance of "Byrdgyrl" from his new album, Sunshine Lies. Click here for another.

I can now see that the "rock concert" as a major social event was essentially still in its infancy during my preteen, dawning-of-awareness years. Still, concert LPs seemed to have infiltrated my ears long before I was able to go to a real one.

Wings Over America . . . Yessongs . . . Frampton Comes Alive . . . usually double-album affairs, useful to many for cleaning seeds (see Frisbee) in their glorious double-gatefold vinyl sleeves. These concerts on a disc helped provide a feeling of "being there" for, well, anyone who had been there, or, as in my case, had only dreamed of going!

Finally my chance came. Electric Light Orchestra was coming to town, and through some kind of genius my older (way cooler) brother and his girlfriend agreed to take me to see them live. At the time second only to Yes as my favorite current group, this was ELO circa the green vinyl "Telephone Line" 45. All week KFMQ blasted ELO hits. "Evil Woman," "Showdown," "Livin' Thing," and others primed listeners' heads for the big event.

The dependable cheer of the crowd on my concert albums was about the only thing that would match my actual first concert experience. The opener (the group "Screams?" - or was it Steve Hillage?) had barely taken the stage when the air became thick and rapidly thicker with a pungent smoke. It got smokier and smokier. I'm now going to estimate about 50 percent cigarette smoke and 50 percent another kind. Not having prepared myself for the sheer density of the smoke, I was soon breathing through my t-shirt (suggested by my brother), afraid I was about to faint. Somehow I stayed conscious until ELO arrived onstage.

The next different thing was that the sound was, big, yes, loud, yes, but bizarre and indistinct. It did not sound like a record. But it was awesome in its own way, and this is where the power of the green lasers came in. For anyone who's seen it, there is nothing like the sight of multiple green laser beams splitting off mirrors through a dense exotic smoke in lock time with big loud familiar rock music! Like a close encounter with an alien craft, it foreshadowed the use of the more literal giant spaceship stage by ELO a few years later. Head in the cloud, I thought about the Who record my brother had. "We're all wasted!" Daltrey screamed.

My gently opening mind turned back to the concert, and the lasers were helping it all come together for me now. Suddenly I remembered that Wings album where a character sang, "In my green metal suit I'm preparing to shoot up the city . . ."

I got myself an electric bass soon after, and went in search of rock.

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