110684 Frank Zappa, Halifax, NS

I did not attend this concert.  I never saw Frank Zappa live.

This is one of the very, very few ticket stubs included in this tome that are from concerts I did not actually go to.  I actually found this spent ticket stub from November 6th, 1984 on the sidewalk near my house in Moncton one day, and being such an eager collector of ticket stubs at the time I simply couldn’t resist taking it home and sticking it in my still-very-empty ticket album.

The reason I’m including this ticket here is because it represents one of the reasons I go to so many concerts in the first place.  

When I found this ticket stub I was aware of Frank Zappa (1940-1993) by name and reputation but I was still several years from becoming the massive fan of his music that I eventually became.  Unfortunately soon after I started to really appreciate the man’s brilliance he was gone, dead of cancer at the tragically young age of fifty-two.

Oh, to have a time machine so that I could go back to 1984 and see this Frank Zappa concert!  Or any Frank Zappa concert for that matter.  And how about Miles Davis (1926-1991)?  Or Freddie Mercury (1946-1991)?  Danny Gatton (1945-1994), Lenny Breau (1941-1984), Kurt Cobain (1967-1994)?  All artists that were still alive and touring during my concert-going lifetime that I missed for one reason or another, and all artists that I would give my hind teeth to have seen play live.

And now they are all artists that I will never see, each another legend added to that long list of impossibles, a list that includes names like Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970), Jim Morrison (1943-1971), Buddy Holly (1936-1959), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and so many more that my temporal existence took off the map before I even got started.  

Every one of these names is another reason why I do everything I can to go out and see every artist and band I might even think of being interested in, every chance I get.  You just never know when it’s going to be someone’s last time around.  Yours even.

Thank ye lords that I caught David Bowie (1947-2016), Stevie Ray Vaughan (1954-1990), James Brown (1933-2006), Prince (1958-2016), Chuck Berry (1926-2017), Jerry Garcia (1942-1995) and so many more before they left this realm.  

Each name on that list is a lesson as well: Do It Now, While There’s Still Time.

I guess that philosophy sort of spilled over into the rest of my life too.  And just like with the concert world all the biggest regrets are for tickets not punched.