A career could choose you and it all turns out ok
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- June 14, 2025
- 578
I’ve never tried to list all the concerts I’ve seen in my life, but I figure it’s never too late … in no particular order, let’s try it:
Jackson Browne (four times), Rod Stewart and the Faces, the Babys, Joni Mitchell, America, the J. Geils Band (twice), Alice Cooper, Van Morrison, Chicago, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Arlo Guthrie, and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.
Neil Young (five times), Paul Simon, Jethro Tull, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Rolling Stones, Yes, the Goo-Goo Dolls, Suzi Quatro, Peter Frampton, the Beach Boys, Leon Russell, the Carpenters, Skid Row, and Herman’s Hermits.
Bruce Springsteen (three times), the Kinks, Elvis Costello, “Jesus Christ, Superstar,” David Crosby and Graham Nash, the Jefferson Airplane/Starship, David Bowie, Bob Dylan (twice), Joe Walsh (twice), Guns ‘N’ Roses, and the Allman Brothers Band.
Patti Smith (twice), Lou Reed, the Grateful Dead (twice), the Black Crowes (twice), Glen Campbell, Crystal Gayle, Santana, Sha-Na-Na, the Tower of Power, Glass Harp, Randy Travis, REM, the Searchers, “Tommy” and the Alarm.
Elton John (twice), John Cougar Mellencamp, the Doobie Brothers, Sparks, the Pretenders, Tanya Tucker, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Keith Richards and the X-Pensive Winos, the Hooters, John Denver, Albert King, John Sebastian, the Replacements, and Little Feat.
I know I’ve omitted a few from this list, but hey, I’m 70 years old.
I’m lucky if I can remember where I left the car keys last night.
Always wanted to see a Beatle in person, but the closest I got was owning a ticket for George Harrison only to have the concert canceled because of a Notre Dame hockey game, which sucked.
These days I don’t think much about going to concerts anymore. For one thing, the ticket prices are ridiculously high, with even the worst seats selling for $100. And you can forget about buying from a secondary source — internet shorthand for the black market, also known as a scalper — because counterfeit is still in vogue, despite all the supposed safeguards meant to protect the public.
It’s a nasty world out there, reminiscent of Casablanca in the 1940s.
“Vultures,” warns a character in my favorite film ever made. “Vultures everywhere.” He, of course, is a skilled pickpocket.
They don’t make movies like that anymore. It’s all spinoffs and sequels, carbon-copy Marvel/Star Wars/Superhero fluff, nothing to challenge the mind or touch the soul, just cookie-cutter facsimiles aimed at the lowest common denominator, relying on indifference.
And TV’s largely a wasteland too, reality trash and brainless drivel, nothing with any heart or intelligence, just lots of junk.
Occasionally, something substantive and challenging, like “Succession,” pushes forth and makes its way through the sidewalk cracks, like that rose in Spanish Harlem, but it's very uncommon.
I’m reminded of Peter Finch’s brilliant portrayal of Howard Beale in the 1976 film “Network” and its savage critique of mass media:
“We know things are bad — worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘At least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my TV and my toaster and my steel-belted radials, and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not going to leave you alone! I want you to get mad!”
America’s bicentennial summer seems so quaint these days. After Vietnam ended and Nixon quit in disgrace, there was something new in the air, a buoyancy, a hopeful optimism, but that all died too, giving way to a sense of inevitable dread, of a zero-sum game in which winners and losers were determined by the bottom line.
My roll-of-the-dice career in journalism carried with it no illusions of making much money, but that was fine with me. I loved the atmosphere of working for small-town newspapers, the way the newsroom hummed with excitement, keyboards clacking away, deadlines looming like guillotines, the Goss printing press growling in the bowels of the building, waiting for the moment when that red button was pushed and the world began to vibrate, all our work heading into hands we’d never get a chance to shake.
I spent the better part of three decades feeding the insatiable maw of that hungry machine, writing hundreds, thousands of words at a time, knowing that somewhere, somebody might enjoy them. From sports to entertainment and then into news, I matured, if only a bit.
My writing toolbox was always on the skimpy side, mostly nouns and verbs, with a splash of adjectives, adverbs and ellipses substituting for proper punctuation, syntax a hoped-for result.
I always enjoyed designing the front page, something I got to do every night at the paper in North Carolina for almost eight years.
The first time I saw my work displayed for all to see, I was stunned. There it was, my vision, my imagination, my ideas showing proudly in public in a vending box, part of the real world. I could’ve cried.
Was it like being a rock star? Hardly. But I never wanted that, only to put something of value out there, to create something good so that when I went onstage again, that night, I might do even better.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to join him on his Facebook page, where many of his columns are available to you.