The last night of the last summer on earth

Saturday, Veronica and I attended the “last summer on earth” concert that was headline by the Barenaked Ladies. The show also featured fast fallen Sugar Ray, so it was very much a 90s nostalgia tour.

I had a lot of mixed feelings about the show. I was impressed by fastball. I remember them from a couple of radio hits they had back in the day.

Sugar Ray impressed me. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that they stole the show, because Bare Naked Ladies put on an amazing set themselves. but I think I was impressed by the showmanship in Crowder interaction of Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath. He always was probably the most famous member of the band. I remember he was a cohost on one of those entertainment news shows after the band fell off the map.

I never owned any of their albums, but they had about half a dozen big radio hits, all of which they played in tonight set. There was one song “answer the phone“ from there 2001 self titled album that really caught my attention. I probably haven’t heard the song in over 20 years. But the moment it did, I experienced the total recall. That was kind of an unexperienced for me, considering how much of the 80s and 90s and nostalgia buff I am. But I was surprised to even realize I had completely forgotten about this song. I think there was one point came out in 2000 and one of the wireless phone companies was actually using this as one of their callback or ring back tones. Remember those?

Something about that moment of recognizing “answer the phone” put me in a really reflective mood for the rest of the show. By this point, I was already doing a little bit of people watching. It was interesting to note that while I probably was not the oldest person at the show, I was definitely on the upper end of the crowd, age wise. Furthermore, I’m sure there’s some people there who Probably looked older than me, and I assumed we’re older than me, but may have been younger than me.

Maybe this is what most of the legacy act concerts are like, but seeing Barenaked ladies tonight, I was getting the impression that they did not want to leave the stage. It was almost as if they did not want the concert to end. Veronica informed me that tonight show was actually the final show of this year’s tour; hence the title of this very blog entry.

Getting old and dying have been on my mind a lot lately. I’m sure that the death of Ozzy Osbourne, and even to a lesser extent, Hulk Hogan, had me thinking about mortality. The very premise of this particular tour was all about nostalgia. I couldn’t help them be reflective.

The tour lineup – these three particular bands – had me thinking about my age as well as how much time has gone by. As I was watching the bands on stage, particularly when all three bands came out to perform Brian Adams “summer of 69“ as their encore. I couldn’t help, but wonder if this might be the last time one of these bands performs. An evening that was soaked in nostalgia also had me thinking heavily about mortality in the passage of time as well.

Not that I wish an early demise on any of them. But the truth is you just never know. It’s been over 30 years since Barenaked Ladies first performed live. The band had explained to the audience tonight that this was the 24th time they had been playing at Pine Knob. It seems like it wasn’t that long ago when they only had to seem to perform for over 30 years were Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones. Hell, I’m still at that age bracket who thinks that the year is being only 20 years ago. Time truly has marched on.

Of course, the evening was only made better by being there with Veronica. It’s been occurring to me lately that although I think she got into Thai situation with even more casual intentions that I had, I can tell that she’s falling for me. More and more every time we see each other, I see the way that she looks at me. The time we spend together is becoming more important and saying goodbye at the end of the night.

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The last night of the last summer on earth ￼

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