Y Loves The ’80’s! My First Concert

It's a Great Big Y Loves The '80's Party Weekend Giveaway! In the early '80's I was in high school and I remember my First Concert.

It was Styx. At the Auditorium Theater. Chicago. Their somewhat pretentious concept album, Kilroy Was Here. It was their Caught in the Act Tour.

In 1985, the future Second Lady of the United States, Tipper Gore founded the Parents Music Resource Center. What had been building for some time was a whole Explicit Content movement. Gore was moved to action by hearing her daughter listening to Prince's Darling Nikki. At the same time there were issues of "back masking", which is where a message is recorded backwards under a song on a vinyl album. According to legend there is back masking on some Beatles songs and on Zepplin's Stairway to Heaven.There's supposed to be back masking on Pink Floyd, ELO and Queen albums, too.

The issue was censorship. That was the concept of Kilroy Was Here.

Lead singer Dennis DeYoung created the Rock Opera featuring the character Robert Orin Charles Kilroy (ROCK), a musician sentenced to life imprisonment by the Majority for Musical Morality.

The band launched the tour at a bunch of smaller places before playing the bigger arenas. The concert was kicked off with a ten-minute mini-movie that set-up the concert. The night that me and my buddies went to the show, the projector broke. That was a Monday night. The concert was re-scheduled for a couple nights later, Wednesday night. Styx was playing the whole week at the Auditorium Theater.

After the concert, Tommy Shaw was out back of the theater, signing autographs. It wasn't long before there was a huge crowd around him.There was no way I could stand in a crowd around him and push my way through to get his autograph. I handed my ticket to one of my buddies and he got it signed for me.

Irony's a funny thing. Not less than a few short years later,  Maybe less than ten years, I was married and starting a career in broadcasting and escorting people that listened to me on the radio to artist meet-and-greets. I was too shy and nervous to get an autograph from on of my heroes. But I've gotten to meet Shania Twain and Garth Brooks. That's kinda cool.

What was your first concert? Ever have a "brush with greatness", a run-in with a celebrity?