My night last night was powerful. I can’t do it justice, but I’ll try.
For a brief moment, I found myself in tears with one of my best friends as we had, yes, a profound moment over a McDonald’s cheeseburger in Robson Square.* The kind of tears I shed signal the end of something long and hard, a relief no one can understand unless they’ve been there.
My end? It was the first rock concert in about 15 years where I went came home pain-free. 15 years. I danced. On a chair, even. Bounced, jumped, everything I could. And I felt fucking fantastic later.
Fifteen years!
Oh, honey. Fifteen years.
On another level, it was kind of a strange night in that this little band I’ve always considered The Best-Kept Secret in Rock’n’Roll and who couldn’t even fucking sell out the Red Room or Dick’s, and I’ve seen them THREE times in the last five years in those venues, and now they finally played the biggest boy, The Commodore, and sold it the fuck out.
Where have YOU been, Vancouver? I know where I’ve been. THERE.
The crowd was ambivalent about the Kills at the beginning, you could tell a lot of folks weren’t sure what was coming. But they shut the fuck up by the time Kissy Kissy was fired up, about 4 or 5 tracks in, which has long been the BEST song I’ve ever seen live. I’ve seen hundreds of gigs, and I’m tellin’ ya. Best.
They do this guitar-sex thing onstage that’s just one of the hottest, most erotic performances I’ve ever seen. God. Going home alone after that song performed at its best? Oh, cruel. Fortunately, the last time at Dick’s was the hottest I’ve ever seen Kissy Kissy, and I didn’t come home all sexually frustrated at all last night. (But wouldn’t have regretted if I had.)

Music is strange. It was 5 years ago when I was starting to try and claw myself out from all the accidents I’d had, and finding “Fuck the People” by The Kills was sort of a validation of the cooler chick I was way back when. They were THAT kind of band, the kind that made me  feel better about myself just because I listened to them. It sounds stupid now. But they were my anchor to a part of myself, my cool self I’d sort of let slip to the wayside (and didn’t really excavate until this last year).
While I never got why they weren’t big, and I never wanted to lose my small-venue experience with their awesome selves, I always felt that if any band deserved to rock the Commodore and have a sell-out, it’s the Kills.
And if any rockin’ girl ever deserved to enjoy a concert pain-free? It’s me. I’m the original Saved-By-Rock’n’Roll poster-girl.
It felt like the end of a really long struggle had been met by both myself and one of my favourite bands, and we got there together.
But you don’t know, you can’t know, you can’t possibly understand how fucking freeing it is to be there, dancing, thinking the whole time “When I start to feel something, I gotta stop” and waiting, waiting, waiting, but going, going, going, and then realizing at the end of it all that I never reached to that point where I had to stop. You DON’T KNOW.
I danced.
I loved it.
I paid no price. At all.
After FIFTEEN YEARS.
Later, I laughed and I cried. I’ve been waiting for last night for a good many years. I always believed I’d get there, too, but then every concert would come and just yield a different variation on the same theme I’d suffered for ages.
And now I can dance. I can rock. I can even do the head-slamming moshing moves of old that five bouts of whiplash always made a painful thing for EVERY CONCERT I’ve ever been to since I was 19, and I’m fucking great. And my back? My back’s fucking GREAT! No, it’s GREAT.
Three weeks ago I remember getting stoked about something and bouncing several times in a row — and I had pain. Less than 30 seonds!
Last night? Two hours.
I’m really, really back.
Watch the fuck out. 🙂
*Because, really, 10 drinks is enough, and fuck, a burger in a square on a warm night after a gig? Yeah! Yeah. YEAH.