Memory Lane

I was going through some old papers of mine that I dug out of my storage unit and buried deep down, way in the bottom of a box, I found a ticket stub for a Loverboy concert that was held at the Asheville Civic Center on September 11, 1983. That was my Senior year in high school.

It was a big deal back then because no big bands came anywhere close to my hometown. Loverboy was just getting their start and I believe this was a tour that supported their second or third album. Yes, there were albums back then. A group named Zebra opened up for them. I think just about everybody that was anybody from my high school went to that concert. I was a nobody and I even went. Try to picture Revenge of the Nerds Goes to a Rock Concert.

The concert was on a Sunday night and my friend Jeff came and picked me up at my house in his old Subaru. We went and grabbed something to eat, probably McDonald's, and headed towards Asheville which was about 25 miles from my house.

The Asheville Civic Center was only about ten years old, it was a dump even then, and 31 years later it is still being used and still a dump. We had the standard "stadium seating" meaning that we stood on the floor for about three or four hours listening to the bands play. I remember very little about Zebra and they only had one album out and had gotten very little air play. Loverboy was beyond loud but the acoustics in the Civic Center were not that good. I couldn't hear a thing for about three days after the concert. I did learn what "contact buzz" meant that night as the guy standing beside us must have smoked a bale of marijuana during the concert.

The concert was great, it kicked off our Senior Year with a little bit of style and everyone showed up at school the next day wearing a Loverboy t-shirt. I made the mistake of buying a muscle shirt (how many muscles can a teenager that is 5'8" and 125 pounds actually have?) and I caught hell for it. It was also overcast and chilly that next day after the concert and I damn near froze to death but I refused to wear a jacket because I wanted to show all of my classmates that I was at that concert. Nerds can rock on, too.