My first concert

RIDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER 2007

My taste in music is something of an embarrassment to my younger sisters, and in time I will probably be banned by my children from ever mentioning my love of the Depeche Mode, UB40, Billy Idol, Madness, Soft Cell, and of course John Lennon.

The music of the seventies was not my thing, I never “got” Abba, or disco.
But for one night I was willing to pretend otherwise, although I am not absolutely sure, I think this event took place in 1979.

A teenager in the late seventies I was into what teenage girls were into at the time, music, boys, and magazines on both topics.

The music was pop, in charts as played by the BBC world service, or selected records on Radio Kuwait, the boys were on the front covers of my magazines, or better still the centre fold posters.

The magazines were called Pink and Jackie, colourful, glossy, arriving without the attached free gifts of plastic trinkets, or lipsticks (where did they go?), they showed us little snippets of a different lifestyle, fashions (thigh high wool socks, white with thick blue or red stripes worn over skin tight jeans!), and each issue would have a couple of posters to adorn the bedroom wall, the only ones I seem to remember are a group of rather ugly balding chaps called MUD whose songs I had never heard! And someone with long blond hair whose name sounded like a loofah.

The news spread like wildfire at school, there was going to be a concert, a band coming to perform in a theatre in Baghdad.

Who was it going to be?
Who cared?
We had never been to a concert before; we all agreed we must go.

Myself Aseel and Mina were dropped of at the entrance and left to our own devices for however many hours the music blared out.

It started out really reserved, the front seats were taken up by older rather timid types, our seats, reserved in the stalls by parents wishing to keep us safely away from the crowds were abandoned within moments of the first notes, as we descended down to try and join the few youngsters dancing.

The boys drifting down to join us, giggled uncontrollably at their intentionally hysterical dance moves, and at the staff dragging everyone away from the stage.

We returned to our seats during the interval, sneaking up the steps, we saw members of the band having a drink, sweating in the stifling heat, they seemed extraordinarily tall, and had their hair in dreadlocks.

As my friends egged me on I approached, trying to appear suave and sophisticated, and asked for an autograph, then realised the only paper I had on me was the crumpled wrapper of a chocolate bar!

They must have been amused, because they obliged, I treasured my crumpled piece of wrapper with its scrawled signatures for some time hoping one day it would be worth something.

The music was deafening, the lights mesmerising, the band sprawled across the stage, and the applause went on and on.

As the concert came to an end, the band was thanked; a promise was made that within a few months Gloria Gaynor would be singing, “I will survive” from that same stage.

She never came.

We never got to go to another concert.

Who was the band that played in Baghdad in 1979 you may be wondering

They were called Earth Wind and Fire.
POSTED BY 3EERAQIMEDIC AT 19:39 4 COMMENTS
Yasmin (Blanche) said...
dear 3eeraqi Medic,
I remeber vaguely the concert that took place in Baghadad, m not quite sure it was 1979 but it might fit into my memories.. and as u said , i dont think tehre was any other band visiting afterwards.. so i suppose that was it..
u took back in time.. to teenage years..my old schol..
Very nice post..
30 September 2007 07:52
3eeraqimedic said...
Yasmin
long time no see hope all is well
I am also not sure it was 1979, possibly before but unlikely to have been after, did you go? or just hear about it?
30 September 2007 13:41
Yasmin (Blanche) said...
3eeraqi Medic,
No, i think it was 1979, or 1978, i did not go myself, but my closest freinds did go..all i remember is the fuss and excitement that filled their talk for a long time before and after going..
im not so sure either about the name of the band, does Magna Carta ring a bell? or is it only my imagination??
in any case it seemed you and i moved in very much the same circles..
very nice post once more..
01 October 2007 07:03
3eeraqimedic said...
Oh Yasmin
Honestly I sometimes think I imagined it all, or it was all a dream, maybe it was maybe it was never meant to be a different world, a different time, but you were there too so it must have been real, not just my imagination.
The same circles, the same time, that is why we understand each other, and why I said a while ago the people we miss are no longer there they are dispersed everywhere little specks of what was once our home.
01 October 2007 19:00