Owen's Flamin' Groovies Adventure Continues
Ok, I must state that when we scheduled the trip to DC for Owen and Ernie to see the Groovies, they hadn't announced the midwest leg of the tour. We are not totally insane. Hopefully. Welllll...whatever. Once they announced the shows in Chicago and St. Louis though, Owen got MOST excited. We can't make the St. Louis show because it's the night before the Peter Case show and I can't take off more work, but Ernie and I agreed to the show at Space, which fortunately is not 21+.
I told Owen we could pull him out of school a bit early, that I had to work in the morning but we could leave early afternoon. Ernie reported that Owen asked to picked up a bit early so he could take a shower. I rolled my eyes as hard as I could. He took his shower and started begging to leave. I told him I was working (I work at home on Thursday mornings) and he sighed and said he could have stayed at school longer if he'd known. I looked at him in amazement and resisted hitting him, or me, or both of us, over the head. Eventually we took off; the day was beautiful and Owen was radiating excitement as he drove. It turns out the reason he wanted to leave a bit early was so we could stop at the Chicago Music Exchange so he could play a 12 string Rickenbacker. They have comfortable chairs so I read a novel on my phone and pretty much felt that all was right with the world.
We drove up to Evanston on Ashland to Clark to Chicago. It felt so familiar but Owen started making fun of me for saying, "Oh, that's new...oh, that's a new building." As Ernie pointed out we haven't lived there for, gulp, 23 years, so yeah, there's bound to be a few new buildings. We stopped at cute little restaurant and had ok food but service so bad we actually complained, something we rarely do. We were too happy to care all that much though. Owen insisted we get to Space EARLY. Then when we got there he was worried about the crowd. I tried pointing out that it was only 20 some minutes after the doors opened to no avail. He felt much better as the place filled up.
We had reserved seats at a table and it was RIGHT next to the right side of the stage. After the opening band (the Mixture, whom we liked quite a bit) Owen and Ernie headed over to the merch table. I looked back at one point and thought, "What the fuck" because they were talking to Cyril and I was sitting there guarding our drinks. Heh. They came back and Owen was vibratingly happy. They'd run into Barry, whom he'd met in DC, and talked. When Owen decided to purchase the miniature of Cyril's signature Dan Armstrong, Barry ran to get Cyril. It was the first one they'd sold and Barry took pictures. He told Owen he was famous among the band, that he was their superfan. Such kind men.
Thanks so much to Barry Simmons for taking these pictures and sending them along to Owen.
The show was great. It made us extraordinarily happy. I love this video someone took. If you go to about the 1:40 mark, after Chris sings Owen bent his head to me and whispered, "He just sang the harmonica part." I nodded and laughed and you can see that Chris saw Owen and started laughing and pointed to him. ❤️
When they came off stage right next to us Chris smiled and Cyril gave Owen a thumbs up. We hung out for a bit. Barry was charming and thanked me for bringing Owen to them. Chris was voluble and kind and funny. Tony was lovely...loved him. Chris Von S was kind and talked about finding his old Groovies tape from when he was about Owen's age. Cyril was delightful and chatted away to Owen about tunings, VW's and the like. I acted like a mother and thanked them all for being so kind to my boy. Owen had specifically requested that I not call him my baby, but I may have slipped once or twice.
As I said to Tony as we were chatting, we take Owen to see the Groovies, we take our other son to see steam engines, because you have to respect their passions when they're deep and true, and they truly are.
Heartfelt thanks to all the guys for inspiring Owen and showing him such kindness. We send our love.