ancient band reunions/returning to the dating world...surprisingly similar

I've always been more than a little music obsessed, either as a player myself or as a devotee of bands that were not exactly run of the mainstream and just as often as not, held in high disdain by a more discerning segment of my peers.

Which is not to say that my musical icons uniformly represented what would later be seen as evidence of a cutting edge sense of the soon to be credible.  Nope, I was just as likely to love stuff that didn't even need the passing of time to know that it was, well....crap.

Consider this.

I was an early adopter of both the New York and London sounds that would before too long be known as punk rock.  And prime among the bands I fell so hard for was the Sex Pistols.

But I also owned a lot of Kiss albums (and by a lot, I mean all of them).

Likewise, I may have been the only kid in early to mid 70's Mississauga who owned both New York Dolls albums.

But I also had more than a few Grand Funk LP's.

Now, what does any of this have to do with the resurrection of my single status after a 23 year absence?

Well, it has me thinking that this could go several ways, much like my musical taste.

And perhaps, the reunions of two of my favourite bands back in 1996 after long absences from the concert stage are the best example of how I mean that.

On the one hand there was the re-forming of the original lineup of Kiss.   The smoke and mirrors would have us believe that Peter, Paul, Ace and Gene had come together to give the fans what they wanted and to show all other pretenders to the throne how the "big boys do it" as lead huckster Gene put it.

So I bought a ticket and went solo, unable to convince any of my chums that this was going to be great....that somehow our 36 year old selves would be transported to a magic moment from our teen years when Kiss ruled the world, when they were the hottest band in the land and we were still full of the piss and vinegar of youth.

I was surrounded by other men of a certain age that evening in the SkyDome and we were indeed giddy with anticipation.  As the lights dimmed, we could see the shaded figures of our heroes take the stage behind the semi-translucent curtain and then we fairly burst with nostalgia infused adrenalin as the curtain gave way, the pyro was unleashed and the roar of Kiss past belched forth.

And it sucked.

The sound and playing were flabby, as were our objects of adoration.  They stood revealed as four fat, hairy old men milking it for all it was worth for every possible dollar going in front of some 45,000 devotees equally as out of sorts with their younger selves as the facsimiles on stage.

What had I been thinking? 

Which had me quite depressed as a Sex Pistols reunion date at the Molson Ampitheatre loomed.  Would it be as lame as the Kiss show had been?  The odds were not great as the Pistols were beyond upfront about their motivation behind the tour (dubbed Filthy Lucre).  It was about money plain and simple.  They had never really cashed in on their place in rock history and the time was right to correct that.

And perhaps more stark was the reality that the Pistols had never played that often live, partly a function of being largely banned for the most part from doing so in Britain during their heyday as well as the brevity of the band  as a going concern.  And the various bits and pieces of surviving live concert clips suffered from a lack of sound quality that did little to mask what was at best a thin version of the visceral power of their LP "Never Mind the Bollocks".

Expectations set low I set off for the concert feeling that anything beyond OK would be a win compared with the disappointment of the Kiss show.

This time though?  The show was magnificent.  The Pistols sounded amazing, their playing chops honed in the subsequent years to the point that they were more than up to the task of living up to the very high bar they had set with their landmark (and only) studio album.  There was a ferocity to their performance, even in Rotten's cry/boast that they were "fat, forty and back".

And we the audience celebrated this along with them.  The years fell away, our energy matching theirs for some 70 minutes or so before collectively spent, we all meandered home, feeling triumphant and well...justified in our love.

Which is where the "dating again" analogy comes into play.

What version of me is going to take the dating stage? 

The older, world weary pretender to a throne long lost and perhaps never really held.

Or the older, wiser version of my long, lost dating self reinvigorated by a kick at the can he never anticipated happening again.

A question that until further evidence unfolds I can only posit by quoting one of my other great musical loves,  the Who.

"Long live rock..be it dead or alive".