Its November 22, which means that 17 years ago at this very hour I was sitting in a TGI Fridays somewhere in Cleveland Ohio, having met up with a bunch of other Duranies (who ignored me & my concert companion 99.5% of the time because we arrived late and had to sit at an adjacent table) for a pre-concert meal before Duran Duran played the Lakewood Civic Auditorium which we discovered upon arrival turned out to be the auditorium of Lakewood high school. If that in itself werent the low point of a career for a band which at that point had sold over 80 million albums, it also happened to be the day that Michael Hutchence died -- Michael who was best friends with Simon LeBon, who had written a hopeful, playful song about Michael on the album Duran was touring in support of. The concert was ended after about eight songs, when the band just could not continue, and we all trudged out into the dark miserable Ohio wintry night, sad and confused and most of the meet-up girls went to find a bar to get drunk. Concert adrenaline prematurely crashed, I attempted to drive back home but ran out of steam about 20 miles from the OH/PA border and we were forced to check into a roadside motel of no corporate affiliation, the sort of place where one is hesitant to remove ones shoes. We slept in our clothes, awoke at dawn, used the bathroom without our glasses on so we wouldnt be able to see anything we didnt want to, and made it the rest of the way home in silence rather than the normal day after concert chatter. It was, and I do not exaggerate, the worst night of my life that did not involve a medical crisis or death. And I was doing really well at forgetting, and then I scrolled down through Facebook and saw the Michael Hutchence remembrance posts and it all came flooding back. I still cant watch INXS videos. I still miss him. I still mourn that weird night. I still hate Ohio. (Sorry Ohio friends.) And theres only one song that fits the mood, so here we go. Im not going to watch, just listen. youtu.be/zqGWrLGaTZc
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 22:33:49 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015