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In an effort to eliminate “dropout” from my CV I returned to high school in the late ’80’s, restarting grade ten shortly before my nineteenth birthday. As a matter of fact I spent most of my tenure at Moncton High School simultaneously working at the Junction Club – a busy dance bar that used to be in the Champlain Mall – meanwhile my peers were still trying to sneak into the liquor store, but I digress.
I remember the first day of school (I started a month into the year, in mid-October), trying to squeeze my big, adult body into the tiny school desk while a room full of fourteen and fifteen year-olds looked at me with distant curiosity. Sitting at the desk in front of me was a tiny elfin dude named Carlton. He turned and said “hi”, I said “hello” back and just like that we were friends.
I soon came to find out that Carlton was a superb blues-based guitar player* and a heck of a harmonica player too. Plus he was just one of those guys who everyone wants to be around. Carlton possessed a truly attractive personality and I was pretty happy to call him a friend.
One day Carlton called me and asked if I wanted to go to Montreal with him to see Bob Dylan. His uncle had secured tickets and we could stay at the uncle’s house just outside of the city for a few days. I was not at all a fan of Bob Dylan and outside of analyzing his amazing Subterranean Homesick Blues in English class I don’t think I had ever knowingly heard the man’s music.
But I did know of the man’s legend, and figuring this might be my last opportunity to see Dylan before he died (ironic considering I’ve seen him more than a dozen times since and as I type this I await his upcoming concert with fifth row tickets in hand) I jumped at the chance to make my first serious concert road trip.
What transpired was the stuff of legends.
Three of us left Moncton in my 1983 four-door Buick Skylark. As soon as we hit the Quebec border we stopped at a roadside dépanneur for a dozen Coors and a big bag of Ring-o-los (a pairing that Carlton likened to a magic elixir) and I turned over the driving to Scott Andrew, a high school associate of ours that I can vaguely picture in my mind and whose name would completely evade me all these years later if not for the notation in my ticket album.
We arrived in Mont Saint-Hilaire too late (and two-thirds too drunk) to be knocking on any doors. I recall waking up in Carlton’s uncle’s suburban backyard, my eyes cloudy, my head sore, and my face and arms indented with little squares from the cushion-less deckchair that had served as my bed.
I met the family, we were well fed and cared for, and Carlton’s uncle even sprang for an outing to the Olympic Stadium. We went up the funicular to the top of the roof-thingy and everything. It was July 8th, 1988 and it was show day.
Carlton’s cousin joined us for the concert, and I remember him being a bit of a knob. He was pulling parking tickets off of cars and throwing them in the garbage, claiming he was helping the drivers have a good day or something like that.
At the concert we found ourselves sitting in the bowl directly facing the stage. I can visualize the opening band onstage but I can’t hear them in my mind. It was a band called The Alarm, one I’ve long confused with The Firm, a one-hit ’80’s band that featured Jimmy Page on guitar. To be clear (to myself as much as others), Jimmy Page did not open up this Dylan show and whoever did was given hardly a glance from we three (four I suppose, but I never picture Carlton’s cousin as actually being there) as we busied ourselves with beer lines and increasingly animated conversation in anticipation of the headline act.
By the time Dylan came on we were pretty well into the beers and screaming for every mumbled number like we were at an AC/DC concert. Someone behind us asked us to keep it down, I yelled back “We’re at a concert, not a movie theatre,” and held my ground. Miraculously, the crowd around us started coming over to our side. People were even buying us beers. Like, more than once.
To interject a bit of a concert review, this was easily the worst Dylan show I have ever seen, and perhaps the only ‘bad’ Bob Dylan concert I’ve attended. Ironic that it was my first, and lucky for me I eventually came back for more. Aside from the incomprehensible lyrics or melody lines and the very muddy sound the band unfortunately featured G. E. Smith on guitar. You may remember G as the Saturday Night Live musical director who, despite being an undeniably great player, I and many others found absolutely unwatchable. I don’t know if it’s his attitude or a perceived arrogance on his part or what, but I could only ever enjoy G. E. Smith’s playing if I had my eyes closed.
So yeah, not a great show, but I bet if I had been a bigger fan and had been paying more attention I would have liked it a lot more.
Fortunately none of this had any bearing whatsoever on how great of a time we had. As we were getting ready to leave the Forum Carlton pulled out his harmonica and he effectively turned into the Pied Piper, drawing a posse of about twenty people from our section to follow us in the ten-million-word epic adventure that was the rest of our evening.
I remember Carlton splitting heads with a live parrot, I remember literally laying prone on a bar somewhere having shooters mixed straight into my mouth, I remember a sidewalk dance party that just grew and grew until it became a certified mob, people kept paying for things and kept handing us drinks both inside bars and out on the street…oh what I wouldn’t pay to see footage of the stuff I don’t remember from that night!
Come to think of it, that night was probably the most fun I had ever had up to then. No wonder I keep getting in my car and driving to concerts.
*Carlton played left handed and unlike the rumours that still swirl about Jimi Hendrix, Carlton actually did keep the instrument strung for a righty, so his strings were upside down. I had just started playing guitar and was playing with my strings upside down too. It was at Carlton’s insistence that I started to learn how to play the thing strung properly. To this day I can still play tons of chords and even a few songs with the strings upside down.
Todd Man Out 