Thanks to my friend, the late great Pat, who owned the Video Connection on N. Park Avenue in Rockville Centre, I managed to purchase a pair of tickets to the star studded celebration of the music of Bob Dylan held at Madison Square Garden on Friday, October 16, 1992. Pat was what you would call a “character”; a heavy set bundle of energy Irishman with a husky voice and a hearty laugh who played softball and claimed to have gone to every recent Super Bowl at the time. For those old enough to remember, the Video Connection rented VHS tapes and had a Ticketmaster machine. Before the internet, if you wanted to obtain a ticket to a just about any show, one would have to wait on line at a Ticketmaster location early enough so to hopefully not get shut out of the hot concert tours completely; it seemed that popular shows would sometimes sell out in a half hour or less and good seats were pretty much impossible to get your hands on unless you went to sn old school scalper. This was also before tier pricing was invented, so tickets for the front row to the last row nosebleeds were the same price. Thanks to my buddy Pat, my wife and I were able to attend Bobfest and we sat up high to the right of the stage in the green seats. This was not only a top 5 or 10 all time concert for me, but one of the most celebrated concert events of all time well documented by audio recording and film; it was an amazing evening with too many highlights to mention. Fast forward to my European road trip a couple of years ago after I retired where I caught Neil Young and Bob Dylan together in Ireland snd Hyde Park, London. I would think that Neil, Bob and I, possibly a handful of others in the crowd, can claim to have been at both the MSG celebration and the Kilkenny gig. Back then I was still I was chasing the live rock and roll experience, and now I am really glad that I did at the time as Covid has crushed the live music industry for a few years now and Neil Young says he will not perform live again until Covid is under control. None of us is getting any younger, and the artists of the golden age of rock and roll are busy selling off their catalogs for a nest egg. Thankfully, I just saw Bob Dylan perform again at the Beacon Theatre just before this past Christmas and it was outstanding. I am holding some tickets for the summer concert scene, of course heavy on the Chicago shows; a gtoup that seemingly never stops touring snd still my wife’s favorite band, but where the rest of this is all going is anyone’s guess.
Forever Young (check out the Bob Seger version)
Seven Days
Rock on!
GQ