Loving Wife was casually browsing the internet last week when she noticed it. Her ensuing statement was innocent enough, but I bristled at the words immediately.
“Hey,” she said, “did you realize Marianas Trench is headlining in Kamloops this weekend?”
For those of you out of touch with the teen music scene, Marianas Trench is a Canadian band whose musical style is what I’d describe as skinny-jeans-pop-punk-meets-squished-alley-cat. Definitely not my cup of vinegar, but as musicians they are four of Eldest Daughter’s all-time favorite people on the planet.
On one hand, I knew that my kid would donate any one of her vital organs to score tickets. On the other hand, it’s November, and going to the concert would mean a two-and-a-half hour drive over an unpredictable snow-tires-and-chains-are-mandatory road that I’m not yet willing to let my seventeen-year-old baby girl tackle on her own, which meant that I’d have to take her.
I winced. “Does she know?”
“I don’t think so,” my wife replied. “Should we tell her?”
No choice really. We had to. As any person who owns one will attest, teenage girls are inherently difficult and frightening creatures to live with, and if you have the chance to keep them happy by providing materialistic things like chocolate, high-speed internet access, and surprise concert tickets to see their favorite bands, you damn well take it. So we shelled out for seats for the show, and Eldest Daughter has been emptying clean dishes from the dishwasher without needing to be reminded since last Tuesday.
Due to the short notice though, none of her best friends could join her, so yours truly got promoted from passive chauffeur to ambivalent attendee. She and I haven’t had a daddy-daughter date for some time. In the days leading up to the concert, we had many sarcastic exchanges about it:
Eldest Daughter: This is great. You’ll actually get to hear some good music for a change.
Me: What do you mean? Is Aerosmith the opening act?
Eldest Daughter: We’ll have to see. Maybe we’ll be able to tell by whether or not their tour bus is parked in the old-geezer handicap spot in front of the arena.
Me: Shut up.
Or…
Eldest Daughter (holding my iPod): Want me to put all of Marianas Trench’s songs on your iPod so you can get to know them for the concert? I could clear off some of your old guy music to make room if you like.
Me: Step away from the iPod, and nobody has to get hurt.
Eldest Daughter (scrolling through my music): There should be law against this playlist. Who exactly is Bob Seger anyway? Wasn’t he the guy from that stupid Full House TV show with the Olsen twins?
Me: You’re hilarious. Listen, you don’t want to go toe-to-toe with me on substance in music, baby girl. My generation has Billy Joel, you have Justin Bieber. Mine has Pink Floyd, you have Britney Spears. Mine has Jackson Browne, you have the Black Eyed Peas. And don’t even get me started on Miley Cyrus. Bottom line…I win.
Eldest Daughter: What about Rick Astley? Isn’t he one of yours too?
Me: Shut up.
Filed under “Things I will never understand…”
So Saturday night was the concert. The two opening bands were loud, offensive and nameless – think Beastie Boy wannabes followed by another rap group whose sound was akin to that of a chainsaw in a clothes dryer. It didn’t matter though, as we spent the first hour of the concert wedged into an atmosphere-crazed throng of teenage girls lined up to buy anything with the headliners’ pictures on it.
One t-shirt, one hoodie, one commemorative tour poster and one substantially lighter wallet later, we were at our seats. Eldest Daughter luckily caught an aisle. Me, I was stuck beside a young girl in a hand-painted Marianas Trench t-shirt who stabbed me incessantly with her exceptionally bony elbows and who was capable of producing an ear-piercing shriek at a decibel that, if put to industrial use, could curl paint off a wall.
“I’ll take one t-shirt and one hoodie.”
“Here you go. That’ll be your left kidney, please.”
The rest was pretty much a blur. I remember lots of screaming. I remember strobe lights and spot lights. I remember hearing an extremely bad rap version of Hall and Oates’ Rich Girl that made me die a little inside, and I remember the deafening volume. In Spinal Tap parlance, the amplifiers went to eleven.
Oh, and I remember one other important thing: my daughter smiled through every second of it.
In summary, I didn’t like the bands, I didn’t like crowd, and I’m pretty sure Ticketmaster is still raping my credit card with a couple more convenience charges they forgot to stick me with earlier. So would I ever have another daddy-daughter Saturday night concert date again in this lifetime?
You’re damn right I would. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
One of my best nights ever.
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