Rock and Roll will never die. I saw evidence yesterday. I was able to score some cheap tickets to an outdoor concert on Groupon. (I love Groupon!) When I saw the name Pat Benetar, I didn’t bother to even look at the date! All I cared about was whether it was on a Sunday or not.

I don’t do stuff like that on Sundays. As soon as I saw Saturday, I bought two tickets. I have been so darn excited for weeks waiting!

A little history behind my love affair with Pat. When I was a kid, I was a dork. I think we covered this earlier. I moved around quite a bit, doing time in some of the dumpiest little towns in Arizona. I never fit in and wasn’t overly happy with myself for a long time. Thank goodness I had a good family or I could have ended up very different. When I was 13, I moved away from the last “ick” town and on to the big time in Mesa. Mesa was the place to be. It was the “big city” we had gone to for years to get the stuff our little towns didn’t offer. I was excited to finally be living somewhere cool. The problem was, I still wasn’t cool.

I was blessed to find a friend at church that went out of her way to be nice to me. She was a goof, but a really good kid. I was glad to have a friend. I made other friends in Junior high and we all moved up to High school without too much difficulty. Once I was in high school I branched out and made even more friends. At one point, I remember it very clearly, I decided I was ready to move on from that first friend and join the ranks of a couple girls I thought were just cool. They were just quirky. They were a mix of Molly Ringwald and Madonna. When my first friend said something negative about them one day, I turned on my heels and left her side. I was suddenly a part of the three amigos, Madonna, Molly and….Pat Benetar. Okay, so not really, but I had a slight resemblance to her in the face area. (cheeks)

I didn’t really know Pat at that time….it was back in 1984 or so, and Pat was just getting out there too. “Molly” introduced me to her music and it was love at first hear. We would walk down the street and sing her songs all afternoon. I would sing soft and shyly in the background,”Madonna” would sing the melody and “Molly” would come up with amazing harmonies. (she could harmonize anything….) I was in awe.  I had found my little nitch in the big bad world of high school and Pat was part of our group.

“Molly” and I loved Pat so much we even went to one of those Star Trak recording studios and sang her songs on a tape and even made a video! It was so cool (and lame)! What ever happened to those recording studios? I could have lived in there!! I think karaoke stole their thunder. Karaoke is usually free and you actually have a live audience. It just isn’t the same for me. Something about being in the booth with that big foam microphone and huge earphones….I was a rock star. Plain and simple.

My life moved on, as did “Molly” and “Madonnas” and we went our separate ways. I still look back on times with them as highlights in my drab teen years.

Sitting at the Pat Benetar concert yesterday in the Arizona sun and 77 degree weather, I couldn’t help but think back to my high school days. I wonder how cool I would look to my high school self now. Sitting in a lawn chair with hundreds of other people ranging from 10 to 85 or so….calming watching the queen of rock on stage. I never got to see her in concert back in the day, but I bet the concerts were a bit different. I bet there were lots more people crowding the stage and screaming. I bet there weren’t a bunch of old geezers wearing wine bottles around their necks (for the wine tasting event…too funny) and definitely not a vendor fair in back of the audience. I kind of wondered how Pat felt about being in an obviously more ‘mature’ rock concert. Can we call it a rock concert? I think so. No matter the setting or the audience….Pat is a rock star in my book and many other people’s books as well. At once point in the show, she said that since she was “Old now” (59) she would sing the song we wanted to hear but we had to sing the part she didn’t like. No surprise it was “before I put another notch in my lipstick case”…..never understood where that came from either.

I think that there is not an age limit on rocking. Look at the Stones and Tom Petty. Those guys are getting up there in age. They have plenty of money, so they could stop any time they wanted to. I think the true rock stars are the ones that don’t do it for the money or the fame. They are the ones that rock cuz they love it. Pat still jammed out on her air guitar and danced around the stage. She and Spider could stop, but I think they love it. They love hearing people sing along with their songs and clap and cheer. They can feel the love their fans have for them and that is why they do it. I could be wrong, but since Pat Benetar is very unlikely to read my blog, I’m gonna just go with it. Cause I said so.