My baby is a friend of LIVE

I always assert that my first concert as a baby was John Denver in downtown Pittsburgh in mid-1975. Of course, my parents argue that I was home with the baby sitter the entire time. I remember it being dark, with a large yellowed spotlight shooting from the rear of the auditorium on Denver who sat on a stool in a yellow bell-bottomed suit with an acoustic guitar propped up on his leg behind a microphone. I can almost remember the swaying of the people around me, and my mother singing Annie’s Song and Sunshine on My Shoulder. But they say I wasn’t there.

This will never happen with my daughter. Today we took her to professional baseball game because with the price of a ticket you were able to stay afterward to see LIVE in concert. My best friend and I have been seeing LIVE almost every time we could since college and practically since Public Affection was still headlining shows in small towns in Pennsylvania. The baby, mommy, some friends, D, and I were there today and shouted along with a few other thousand people when Ed Kowalczyk took the stage. His dark blue designer jeans were held up with a light brown belt below a thin, bald frame. His tell tale brooding eyebrows were covered with dark black sunglasses before, and he broke into “Selling the Drama” before going into “All Over You” and belting out old and new tunes for 90 minutes.

The baby watched part of the show then cat nap on mom’s lap before waking later to watch Daddy and the concert. I took her and she danced on my lap for the last third of the show, while Mommy and A took photos.

I would have liked to hear TBD and some song from “From the Distance to Here” about shaking your hips. After the show, we hit Red Lobster to celebrate our first concert and baseball game, and now I sit here reminding me and everyone of her favorite show, so we cannot argue about it in 30 years.