Nurse the Hate: Rolling Stones Cleveland 2024

 

The Rolling Stones are in town tonight and it's amazing that I am not attending the show.  I have tried to make it a point to get ripped off by Mick and Keith once a decade, but I pulled the plug on that in the 2010s when they were still a youthful band.  I remember buying tickets to the 1989 Steels Wheels tour.  I worked in radio and normally I could get comp tickets to shows, but there was NO CHANCE to get freebies on that.  The Rolling Stones were coming to town and we were all going to receive an abject lesson on how almost three decades of rock n roll had insured that this corporation was going to scoop every last dollar into their machine before they left town. 

On that show I had figured it would probably be the last time I would get a chance to see them.  In 1989 it seemed impossible that the band had much gas left in the tank, you know, like The Who.  I ponied up for a new level of ticket, "the Gold Circle" ticket, which had an admittedly murky definition but as it was Gold, it had to be good!  After paying what was a then absurd ticket price of about $75, I felt confident that my seats would at least be really close to the action.  When I showed up at the old Browns Stadium I discovered that The Gold Circle appeared to encircle almost every seat in the stadium and we all were looking around saying to each other "what the fuck?".  

I went to the Voodoo Lounge tour in 1994 as well, my thinking again being "well, THIS has to be the last time".  Again, this was an entirely reasonable assumption 30 years ago as it was common wisdom that they were "too old" and there was something undignified about an old man like Jagger wagging his ass around in bike shorts.  While that is probably a defensible point about the bike shorts, it does blow me away that in 1994 Mick was 51 years old, and I'm older than he is now doing equally reprehensible things on stage (albeit not in bike shorts).  Again, I arrived to my seats to discover that they would have been OK at a Browns playoff game but maybe not so good to see five creaky guys knock out "Harlem Shuffle" and other hits of the day.

People do seem to be very excited about seeing the Stones, and this HAS TO BE the last time, right?  Those guys are 80 now, though Willie Nelson is about to play Blossom and he's 113 years old, so who knows.  In 1994 there was a debate about the quality of the performance, and you went in with the idea of "OK, it's not Get Your Ya Yas out 1969 tour, but they're still pretty fucking good".  Now it's sort of like seeing The Turtles at one of those Moondog Oldies shows.  You really have to squint to pretend that little 80 year old man is going to have sex with your girlfriend tonight because he's in league with the Devil.  People go to say they saw 'em and yell out all the choruses of the songs they have listened to on Classic Rock Radio since they were in high school.  Keith has that constant laugh thing happening like he can't believe what's going on despite this being exactly how he's made an estimated $242 million a year for the last four decades.  My favorite part of the show is where he goes "Argh arr enoff zoot ROCK AND ROLL heh heh heh heh" before growing through either "Happy" or "Before They Make Me Run" exactly as he has done since 1978.   

I do like that they have a new record and play cuts off of that.  It's got to be a drag to play the same 15-20 songs over and over, but if people are paying $200-$300 bucks a head, they are going to want to hear "Start Me Up".  Now I don't think I'd play $300 to see the Stones on my own patio, but people love a good communal event and the Rolling Stones are here to take their money.  Why they still need to Hoover up all this money when they are 80 years old and worth a billion dollars each I'm not sure.  Because it's there maybe?  They seem incapable of resisting any revenue stream.  They aren't getting me again though.

Oh, by the way, when that new LP of theirs came out last year I bought a more expensive version with a live EP included.  Fuckers.  They got me again.