Last Thursday night, right about a week ago this very
minute, Rhea mentioned it in passing: “You know, all of my Aero-friends are
going to see Buckcherry someplace out on Long Island tomorrow night.”
“We can go if you want.”
I like Rhea’s Aero-friends. By this point, they are in fact my
Aero-friends too, but referring to them as hers in that last sentence flowed a
bit better. Writing-geek semantics
aside, I mostly offered this to be nice; while I certainly didn’t mind the
thought of going, I was fairly certain that she’d decide she’d rather not
schlep all the way out to the Island on a Friday night, and that was okay, too.
“I’ll tell you how I’m feeling tomorrow.” I told her that would be fine, and wrote the
whole thing off in my head. In fact, I
didn’t remotely give it another thought until the next afternoon when, while at
work, my Blackberry chirped its little new-text sound: “we are SO going to
Buckcherry tonight if you’re up for it.”
Well, I’ll be damned: surprising for sure, but the kind of surprise that
makes you smile…and makes you glad you wore that D Generation t-shirt under
your work clothes, just in case you need to make like an aging-rocker
Incredible Hulk on the way home from your day job.
Several hours and several traffic jams later, Rhea and I
found ourselves parked around the corner from the Paramount in Huntington, New
York. It’s a weirdly-located venue – a
mid-sized rock hall seemingly plopped randomly in the middle of a town that’s
far more Scarsdale than Bowery – but one that I quickly became a fan of. It’s well-designed, sounds great, and boasts
the least dickish security I’ve encountered in many a moon. Rhea works her magic in no time, scoring us
two tickets for $20 total. We meet up
with our friends and head inside while the first opening band is on. They’re a bit too Nickelback for my tastes,
but they’re at least competent; the kind of decent local act that towns are
always better off for having.
About twenty minutes or so after they finished, I found
myself face to face with the one and only James Durbin. You can ask “who?”, it’s alright: he was the “rock
guy” runner-runner-up from last year’s American
Idol. His opening slot was a bizarre
spectacle: first off, there was his band.
Each musician was a perfect stereotype: mohawked drummer, long-hair
bassist, and so on. It was like a
Playmobil Rock Band set come to life, and it was as mesmerizing as it was
stupefying. As for Durbin himself, he
was exactly as he was on American Idol:
likable, sincere, reasonably charismatic and, unfortunately, not even slightly
talented as a singer. I begrudge a kid
who gets to live – and clearly enjoy –
his dream absolutely nothing, but Durbin simply couldn’t stay on key if his
life depended on it. His entire set can
be perfectly summarized by his performance of Ronnie James Dio’s classic “Rainbow
in the Dark”: Durbin’s spoken intro to the song about Dio and his influence on
him was clearly heartfelt, and the song itself is inarguable, a true metal classic. I wanted to like it, but the second Durbin
let out the first of his astoundingly pitch-deaf screams, I found myself
pushing my earplugs in as far as they would go.
Still, the kids – and I do mean kids; the entire area in front of the stage
was packed with under-eighteens for Durbin’s set – clearly heard something I
didn’t in his performance, and good for both him and them. There is nothing wrong with young people
wanting someone closer to their own age to identify with, rather than listening
to an old fart like me moan about how an even older fart like Dio did this sort
of thing a million times better. You
know what the best thing about being as young as Durbin and his fans is? You’ve got a lot of time in front of you to
learn, grow, and improve. I wish all of
them the best of luck with that in all sincerity, even if I must admit I hope I
don’t have to hear Durbin sing again anytime soon.
Once Durbin was done, the kids receded to the back and the
aforementioned old farts congregated near the barrier. I’m on the positive end of the neither-here-nor-there spectrum with
Buckcherry, actually: I enjoyed their first two albums, but haven’t been quite as taken with the slicker, more formulaic material they’ve recorded since
reforming around the middle of the ‘00s.
Within about five minutes of their taking the stage, all such critical
thought was thrown aside: having fun in the moment with my beloved Rhea and our
friends that we don’t get to see nearly often enough was far more important
than what Will the Critic had to say.
The band was entertaining, their performance both professional and enthusiastic, and so what? The friends were absolutely first rate, and
if the loud music made us all feel a bit more like those teenage James Durbin
fans than we do in our day-to-day thirty-something lives, then what more does
it need to be? Sometimes, just being a soundtrack
to a great evening is more than enough. There is absolutely nothing wrong with seeing a very good party band on a fun night out, and that's exactly what Buckcherry are and what they needn't apologize for being. For those about to rock, Buckcherry salute you, and vice-versa.
Folks, sometimes you’ve gotta go where the day takes
you. If the day takes you to some
nowhere town on Long Island to see a hard rock revival band and a
third-place American Idol, don’t just assume that there’s going to be nothing
there for you and make excuses to stay home. Times well worth having
sometimes happen in the unlikeliest places – like a rainbow in the dark, as it
were.
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