Does that image just not fill you with LOVE?! I’m seeing Billy Joel and Elton John in concert tonight.  I paid $100 a ticket to undoubtedly be in the nosebleed section of Conseco Fieldhouse.  The sound will probably be bad. The beer? Expensive.  I thought about this when I signed on to ticketmaster that Saturday morning, 10 am sharp.  Sensing my hesitation, I asked myself, “Which will you regret more? Spending the $100? Or NOT BEING THERE.”  That’s what it’s about, isn’t it? Just being there? Because I’m not going to see, up close, Elton John’s bedazzled blazer or the details of Billy Joel’s scruffy grey stubble. Because I’m not going to appreciate the sublime acoustics from the upper balcony, am I?

No. But sometimes? I just want to sing, with thousands of strangers,  songs I know and love, with artists that have contributed to The Soundtrack of my short twenty-five years.

Billy Joel’s “The Stranger” was the first cassette tape I stole from my parents. I remember popping it into my boom box and doodling on the notebook paper bound in my Trapper Keeper.  Later on in life, I choreographed a dance routine to “Uptown Girl” in the foyer of my house.  It was a pas de deux of sorts, me and Zack Morris.  Zack never showed up for rehearsal.  Lucky for him, I had enough imagination to dance away an entire afternoon.  In my twenties, my love for Billy Joel was something I hid, until I read this great, great article Chuck Klosterman wrote in 2002 for the New York Times [that you should all read].  In it, Billy Joel is so vulnerable and so sad, and you remember, oh yeah, of course, you wrote songs like this.

Meanwhile, I didn’t really get into Elton John until college. Before then, he was all Lion King and Crocodile Rock to me — which is to say that I liked him, but I had heard the hits so many times I was burned out. One listen to Madman Across the Water and the whole thing busted open for me. Jesus. Great, great songs. Decades later, and they still sound modern, fresh.

I checked out the setlist from this tour, and I think we’re in for a real treat. Yes, I always cheat by looking at the setlist beforehand, if I can. People seem so disappointed by this, but I have to do this to curb my expectations.

For example, a few years back I saw Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.  While they played a plethora of AWESOME songs, they did not play Suite Judy Blue Eyes. Every time a song would end, my ears would perk up, waiting for the opening riff of that song. It never came. I wasn’t sad about it until later, of course, because I was stoned (SECOND HAND POT SMOKE, MOM.  …*cough*…), but still. My point is: Managing my unreachable expectations is harder to deal with than spoiling the show’s setlist. I like to go into it knowing, hey, there’s no hope for that random obscure B-side that you love.

I decided to write this before heading out for the night, because it’s NaBloPoMo and I worried that I’d get home too late to post. (DED-i-CA-tion, *clap, clap, clap-clap-clap*) Also because I have a hard time writing about concert experiences after the fact without sounding like a complete sentimental goon.  Live shows are my favorite things in the world (IN THE WORLD!), and so my response to them is always visceral and corny, like, how do I describe why I cried when Bob Dylan came on stage?

It’s one of those things where I can’t really find the words, and you, well, you just had to be there.