I was born, brought up and still live in Kenya. Kenya, if you don’t know, is a country just below the Horn of East Africa, as opposed to a small town in Idaho or a liberal arts college in Ohio. No, I’m not trying to insult your intelligence. A girl in the SFS once said to me, “Oh my Gawd, I’ve never heard anyone from Alabama talk with an accent like yours.”
Anyway, going through high school in Kenya I remember my friends being fascinated by the America that, from thousands of miles away, brought us such wonders as CNN, Snoop Doggy Dogg, NWA, Nike and the NBA. (Somehow the career of Kevin Costner didn’t quite stir the imagination.)
Of course my friends and I had our own experiences as well, and most of us had even been to the States on vacation so it was a hardly a case of us going through neurotic identity crises followed by powerful urges to worship George Bush the elder. It was just a sense that there was a part in each of us that wanted to truly experience a little something of America that we had randomly obsessed about in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. My friend Rodney, for instance, believed that he would make it as a top-notch director and consistently swore allegiance to the films of Michael Bay throughout our junior year. Jamie, who was always the sporty type back in 12th grade, was quite convinced he was good enough to play soccer for AC Milan. But what he really wanted to do was represent D.C. United just so that he could, “Become a star and put the United States on the soccer map of the world.” If you’ve seen Jamie play or know the reputation of the MLS in international circles then you’d realize quite quickly that this was bordering on the ridiculous. Personally, I wasn’t obsessed with Michael Bay and, frankly, I don’t really mind the MLS. All I ever wanted to do was go to a concert.
It was 1999 and I was in my first year of college. Unfortunately, and rather like my early sexual encounters of the same year, the concert was quite brief, rather sobering and a little embarrassing as well. I had just bought a scalped ticket from outside the 9:30 Club and after getting a really sketchy looking $2 bill as change for my twenty I received the prized ticket that would entitle me to two hours in the company of Guster. But things didn’t go as planned. The drinking age in this country was something I had absolutely no concept of at the time. So when a bouncer who looked like he could really kick some ass grabbed my beer, pulled me by the ear and then dragged me out of the emergency exit, I was rather shocked. All I could do was scream in confused pain and say something vaguely coherent that sounded like, “But I have a Kenyan passport mother bitch! Give me back my beer!”A few seconds later I felt the distinct sensation of flying through the air followed by a short but pretty damn sharp pain as my rear end made contact with wet D.C. concrete. The next few seconds were blurry. I vaguely recall making sounds akin to that of a dying wildebeest and mumbling to anyone that would listen about the gross injustices of America’s alcohol and drug policies.
I sat on the curb and smoked the last squashed Parliament in the pack trying to figure out what time it was. Trying to figure out how long it would be until the last encore ended and the glowing faces emerged from the darkened exit. Trying to figure out just how many voices would be saying, “I can’t believe they played that song! Oh my God they were fucking awesome.” I did manage a slight smile though. A girl I was sitting next to, who couldn’t have been more than 14 years old, and had also suffered the same wrath of the “18 to enter, 21 to drink” logic as I had that night, looked at me with heavily glazed eyes, a sniffling nose and ripped jeans. “Relax dude. You mean you’ve never been kicked out before … this has happened to me like 27 times. Just get higher next time?quality shit?do you want to buy some by the way?”
Thankfully, there was a next time. I did see Guster again in the spring, and exactly a year later my experiences reached new heights when I watched Paul Simon’s benefit concert down on the Mall on a crisp November morning of sophomore year. Ever since I stole my best friend’s Simon and Garfunkel CD at the age of 11 it was always my dream to see him live in concert. Watching him up close and personal I heard the response to the crowds’ wild chants of “We love you Paul, we love you!” Taking off his hat and sunglasses he could only reply with the suavest, “Thank you, thank you very much, I should show you the 50 ways.”In my eyes it elevated him to nothing short of God-like status.
The demons of that first night without Guster were finally exorcised this past summer. Ten of us piled into a jeep Cherokee and journeyed into the deep woods and NASCAR territory of Virginia’s Nissan Pavilion to watch Aerosmith. Rich got yelled at for wearing really ugly shorts. Ted made friends with some Appalachian State University frat brothers. Matt urinated on the freeway and left his cell phone in the same place after jumping out of a moving vehicle into open traffic. Most of that is another story, but I concluded that I loved the American concert experience that I had craved for so long. I went to bed happily that night and truly understanding why Steven Tyler is crazy enough to accidentally snort up a line of ants.
