This is the first of a series of posts covering some of my favorite concerts over the years. I’m so lucky the Motörhead concert I attended was captured in the video below.
I was in high school during this concert and there were some very distinctive cliques to navigate there. I was unique (weren’t we all) in the fact that I connected well to most of these cliques. For instance, I played hockey, so I was in the jock clique. I had a preppy girlfriend at the time and read furiously, so I was in the preppy clique (not by choice). I love D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) gaming, so I was in the nerd clique. I liked smoking weed, and I smoked cigarettes, so I was in the stoner clique. Which brings me to the focus of this post, music. Taste in music created its own sub cliques. From what I remember there were three distinct cliques of music. These music cliques or genres were new wave, punk rock, and rock (metal). While I despised new wave, I loved metal and punk. Now here’s the rub. At least in my high school anyway, I was able to straddle all the major cliques without issue. However, music I could not. I had to choose one or face complete ostracization from the other. So, I choose rock (metal) as it was my favourite but in secret I listened to and loved punk and even rap. I mean, The Sex Pistols, and The Ramones where huge during these years. This brings me to Motörhead and the concert below. It was a concert that united two high school sub-genre cliques, punk and rock (metal).
When I arrived at this concert, the first thing I noticed was that there were punkers and rockers there in equal measure. Upon my return to school the following week, I noticed a unity between punkers and rockers. Motörhead did this and I was finally able to proudly wear my Never Mind the Bollocks t-shirt. Oddly, throughout my entire time in high school I wore union-jacked doc martin boots and no one made the connection that I was always a cross genre punker metal head.
Now for the concert below. I was positioned in the third-row floors. If you look close at the concert video, you may see a flash glimpse of a long-haired ginger me. Also, Lemmy almost spat on me during the second or third song while a girl with a green mohawk gnawed on the shoulder of my black leather jacket. I remember this as if it were yesterday. It was wonderful!
