August 2003

Ten Years Ago Next Friday
1993 Remembered

My First Steely Dan Concert
Sunday, August 22, 1993

The release of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) summer concert schedule was a huge event every year where I come from. Whatever you had planned could be changed immediately depending on which artist was appearing on what day. For us in Schenectady, with Saratoga only thirty minutes away at the most, SPAC was our best opportunity to see a concert. When I got the schedule in, I think, May of 1993, one specific date jumped off the page and slapped me on the face: Steely Dan, August 22.

At that time, Steely Dan was the only band with which I had a type of obsession. Over the past year, I had accumulated all seven Dan albums, on record and tape. And, with the concert being just two days before I left home for college, it looked like I could go out with a bang.

Because no one I knew at school had even the slightest interest in seeing Steely Dan, I purchased only one ticket for the show - first row balcony! I put the ticket in a very safe place, and let time pass me by.

On the day of the concert, my older brother and I, along with two dozen of his friends, planned to meet in the State Park adjacent to SPAC for a day of grilled meat and beer. We had one hell of a time that afternoon. The skies were blue, and, it being upstate New York, it was not hot and humid. We eat food, blasted tunes, and drank the day away.

All the people spending the day with me had bought lawn seats. At SPAC, you could sit in the amphitheater or on the huge lawn spreading out to all over the place. Earlier that summer, I had been to Saratoga to see Jazz Fest with 80,000 other people. SPAC could pack 'em in! If I wanted to enjoy the concert, I had to sit in my balcony seat, but if I wanted to keep having fun with the group I'd been with, I would have to abandon the reserved seat and party on the lawn. Not being one to make decisions, I chose both. But more on that later.

As the sun set, and the beer supply dwindled, we packed up and began our walk over to the concert. Almost everyone grabbed one of the remaining beers for the walk over. While I looked underage, the police were there more to keep people from fighting, smoking weed, and jumping the fence into SPAC. There was little chance that young me would be caught with a brew.

Unfortunately for me, I had grabbed a stout. While pleasing to drink out of a glass, is the devil when chugged out of a bottle, and I needed to chug the beer before I tried to enter the facility. In haste, I drank it down, the heavy carbonation and all. My young stomach began to expand with embarrassingly strong force. I stood there, trying to be super cool in a crowd of cool people, half wanting to barf, half wanting to burp for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. The devil has a name, and that name is CHUGGED STOUT. I curse that bottle to this day.

Enough about the stout, I didn't die, barf or irrevocably harm myself. I got into the concert, drunk, a bit flummoxed, but happy. This was going to be cool.

I cannot recall if a band opened for the Dan. I just don't remember. I hung out on the lawn with my conpadres until a few minutes before the concert started. At that time, I left to find my seat on the balcony. I found my company in the balcony far older than my burgers and beer gang, a middle aged menagerie sitting calmly waiting for the show to start. In all honesty, I did not know how old those people were, but they looked way older than me. I felt like I was in the teachers lounge, not detention.

After a couple songs, I left the lounge for detention.

The night progresses as I would have imagined: great music under a clear, star-speckled sky. My beer-buzz was wearing off, and I felt the need to go up the balcony for another visit to the Land of the Undead. With the lights down, their wrinkles were less defined, and their existence no longer challenged mine. I sat down and returned to my enjoyment of the music.

As if it were a gift from God, the couple sitting at my left busted out a large joint. Heavens! It looked like my evening was going to get a little better, even if I got nothing more than a contact high. Alas, they had a J, but no lighter! The gentlemen to my left turned to me, with that huge, sweet doob in his hand and said, "Do you have a light?" Hell yes I did!

If I had learned anything in High School, it was that carrying a lighter, even if you did not smoke, made sense. This was not the first night in which carrying a perfectly functional lighter came in handy. I offered my fire in exchange for some smoke, and he obliged. I had a couple of good tokes. Mmmmmm. Now, outfit with a new, smoother buzz, I left the balcony to enjoy the rest of the concert, and night sky.

As you can imagine, the night sky, in combination of my overall good day, and new buzz, looked crisp and clear. The fact that I was about to leave my old life behind completely was the farthest thought from my mind. I lay in happy-land. Mmmmmm.

On our way to the truck after the show, I bought a bootleg tee-shirt from some guy for ten bucks. Two seconds after I got that shirt, three police officers arrested him. I hope they kicked him in the balls. On the front, there is a list of Steely Dan's albums, including "Countdown to Ecstasy." But, instead of the word 'Ecstasy', it reads 'Ecastasy.' Damn bootleggers.

Instead of that being the best ten dollars I ever spent in a parking lot, it's the funniest.

Two days later, I packed my life in a trunk and went off to college.