"When the going gets weird the weird turn pro" - Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)

So there I was on a beautiful summer night under the stars clinging to a chain link fence like Spider Woman and yelling for a musician friend who was, hopefully, within hearing distance to come rescue me as the security guy advanced. I drove 350 miles to the concert and ended up with the wrong color backstage pass. I had orange. I needed green. The woman from the record company had several passes and handed me one, not even noticing they were different. She left to catch a plane. I stayed to catch a basketload of grief from someone who either was just not having a nice day or had decided he saw something in me that fit the profile of people he was paid to look out for. I had credentials. I had business cards from my radio station and a music publication. For once in my life I wasn't wearing a too-short skirt. When I was pulled through the gate right before the security guy pounced, the tour manager said, "He told me you were dangerous." Moi?? As I tried to reattach the heel to my shoe I thought, "Only to myself or any poor soul who comes to a concert with me."

For most people a concert is an enjoyable social event to be shared with friends or even, gasp, a date. Perhaps a nice dinner before the show, an enjoyable evening of music, then you go home. For me it is both work and escapism, often combined with hazardous travel and wardrobe blunders. In my current state of ADD enhanced self-absorption I have found that I do better on my own or with someone I want to accelerate a breakup with.

I broke up with someone while Miles Davis played the Jacksonville Jazz Festival. He said I was paying too much attention to the music and not enough to him. I told him he was right. Another breakup ensued when I took the alleged love of my life to see an artist I adored, and he spent the whole show talking on his cell phone and fiddling around with his PDA. I got on a new friend’s last nerve driving around in circles for over an hour trying to find a club where one of my favorite guitarists was playing. I almost lost my best friend and a client because of The Moat.

The Moat was a body of water surrounding the stage at an oceanside theatre in south Florida. The audience sat on bleachers by the water, and the stage was about 20 feet away at the end of a dock. Some adventurous souls jumped in the water. Some had even brought rafts and inner tubes. I was wearing a skirt I had designed and made to sell to someone else at a rather steep price. I took a cannonball leap into the murky, oil-coated water and started swimming toward the stage, leaving my friend dripping wet from the splash. The mud and water practically ruined the passenger seat of her new car during the drive home. Needless to say the client was not pleased with the stiff, dirty clump of lace that had been her future skirt.

Can attending concerts become a health risk? In my hands it has. At one outdoor concert I was so captivated by Dean Brown, an incredible guitarist who was in David Sanborn's band, that I tried to get a better view by perching on a ledge. By the time I noticed the stinging sensation my legs were covered with welts. I hadn't noticed that I was sitting on a fire ant bed. While I was being treated for a brown recluse spider bite, I simply couldn't miss Craig Chaquico and The Rippingtons with Paul Taylor, so my Dr. resignedly sent me on my way with antibiotics, painkillers and some type of ointment. Due to the placement of the golf ball-sized bite I had to watch the whole concert standing up, but being feverish and overly medicated did enhance the experience in an entirely legal way. While recovering from air-sickness and food poisoning, I went to see Jeff Kashiwa and Chuck Loeb at a festival on the site of writer Washington Irving’s historic home and lost my lunch in his historic garden. At last year's Peter White Christmas concert I tripped over my own foot, hit the edge of a chair with my thumb and enjoyed a lovely evening of music while trying to stop the bleeding with strips of paper torn from the concert program.

Last spring at a crowded and rowdy festival someone spilled a glass of Merlot all over the front of my favorite shirt. Okay, actually I was carrying a full glass of wine while trying to walk through a sea of packed bodies and I tripped over a picnic basket. Someone was kind enough to let me use the backstage dressing room for emergency repairs. As I stood there pouring club soda down the front of my shirt the guy who produced the concert walked in. He asked if I didn't think I was a bit too old for wet T-shirt contests and just kinda shook his head. He didn't throw me out though. I guess I didn't look dangerous that night. When he left I made a sandwich from the deli plate and ate it really fast so nobody would think I was crass enough to pig out uninvited. I was just testing the food to make sure nobody had poisoned it, and just to be really vigilant I made another sandwich to eat later to make sure it wasn't slow-acting poison. One has to protect the people who make the music you love.

So if you are at a concert and see some bewildered musician being cornered by an allegedly nondescript middle-aged broad in impractically high heels, covered with insect bites and precariously balancing a drink in one hand while digging through a seemingly bottomless tote bag trying to find the one thing she forgot to bring, usually a pen or the minidisc recorder, come over and say hello. After all, there are several excellent products on the market for removing wine and mud stains, and I only carry sharp objects when I am running, so what have you got to lose?

Shannon West