Sharing 5 Seconds with The Princess

The Queen Mother did many, many wonderful things for me, but she never took me to a rock concert.

Plays, musicals, speech contests... heck, we even saw dancer Bobby Burgess (of Lawrence Welk fame) at the Muscatine County Fair... but never a rock concert.

In her defense, she did buy me tickets to see Richard Marx at the fair, and she didn't quibble when I wanted to see Billy Idol in concert (I may have led her to believe he was a modern-day Pat Boone).

I thought of all this while I was sitting next to The Princess at the 5 Seconds of Summer concert last weekend in Tinley Park, Illinois.

This was our Second-Annual Boy Band Concert Excursion, having successfully navigated St. Louis to see One Direction last summer. Throw in rapper Huey Mack (an introduction to the Iowa City bar-band scene) and I'd say we've hit the trifecta or scored a hat trick or, well… let's just say she's widened my range of musical influences.

Some people who are not as hip as me (and obviously I'm pretty damn hip), have asked me what the difference is between One Direction and 5SOS (pronounced “five-sauce” by the cool kids). Originally I thought the only difference was that 5SOS had four members, while 1D had five. But now that Zayn has left 1D (drama!), you can't judge a band by the numbers.

At the concert I decided the real difference is in how those band members fit the time-honored, boy band line-up stereotypes. From the Beatles and the Monkees to NSYNC and Backstreet Boys, they've all had one “bad boy,” one “smart boy,” one “cute boy,” one “fun boy,” and one “sensitive boy” (as needed).

1D have (or had) one of each.

5SOS has 2.5 bad boys.

Of course The Princess' favorite 5SOS member is the lead singer – the .5 bad boy. At the concert he was wearing a grey t-shirt (not “bad boy”) in contrast to his pierced lip (“bad boy”). The other “bad boys” are the drummer (he's the drummer, so, duh, and he was wearing his hair in a “mun” or man-bun), and the guitarist (eyebrow piercing and Harley Davidson t-shirt). The bass guitarist, he of the baby face and prep-logo t-shirt, I figure is about as clean cut as possible these days.

When I ran my bad boy ratio theory by The Princess she looked at me like I was totally not cool, and explained that 5SOS plays punk/pop, while 1D plays pop/pop. That may be why I like 5SOS both more than and at the same time less than 1D. I like the edgy sound to the 5SOS songs (although they all sounded like one long teen-age girl's scream until their cover of Green Day's “American Idiot”). But the mom in me likes 1D's lyrics (“You don't know you're beautiful/That's what makes you beautiful), better than 5SOS's (“You look so perfect standing there/In my American Apparel underwear”).

When it comes right down to it, it's not about parents enjoying their children's music (although I like it all well enough). It's about parents enjoying their children's happiness. I'm certainly not a perfect mom – when I offered to spend an equivalent seven-hours travel-time in the car with The Prince he looked horrified – but I'm trying. And of course I'm not alone.

The mom next to me at the concert said Led Zeplin was more to her liking, but she was at 5SOS to make her 14-year-old daughter happy. They had gone to 1D last summer, too. As the speakers blared Europe's “The Final Countdown” in preparation for 5SOS's big opening all four of us sang along.

“This is what we went to back in the day,” laughed the almost-as-cool-as-me mom.

Despite the age differences and the relative hip/unhipness of parents, most of us stood and kind of swayed along to all the songs – except for the parents who had their camera phones trained on the stage (presumably at their kids' request). And when 5SOS played their latest song, "She's Kinda Hot"  – which they had just “dropped” (see? I even picked up the cool lingo) a couple weeks earlier – we all knew the words and sang along.

Just like everyone sang along when 5SOS covered The Ramone's “What I Like About You” to end the show. Green Day and The Ramones? Those bad boys are growing on me.

The Princess and I had such a good time enjoying the mix of old and new music that I offered to take her with me to see Billy Joel at Wrigley Field. It was kind of hard to read her expression, what with all the lasers and strobe lights, but I'm pretty sure she looked excited.

Especially when I said we could spend the day shopping along Chicago's Magnificent Mile instead of going to the Art Institute.

It's all about compromise and sharing what you love.

With the ones you love.

We Danced All Night to the Best Blog Ever

“You two are having too much fun!”

That's what the Dad sitting behind the Princess and me at the One Direction concert in St. Louis last week said to us.

And you know what?

He was right.

I should point out that when he said this we were chair dancing enthusiastically during the hour long – that's right hour long – break between the five-song opening act and the main attraction. And did I mention the opening act started late, too? And that we waited in a glacially-slow moving t-shirt line before the opening act?

In other words, approximately two hours into our 1D concert experience we had not yet seen a glimpse of the lads, and we were still having fun. Or already having fun, however you want to figure that.

So, how was the concert? Well, One Direction is no Billy Joel. But then again, I doubt the real 1D fans (tweens, teens and post-teens) know who Billy Joel is.

And you know what?

That's OK.

It's probably a sign that all we have to look forward to during our handbasket ride to heck (or during music time at the nursing home) is non-stop Muzak versions of bubblegum pop. But that's OK.

And I'll tell you why.

But first, I'll admit I was somewhat less than excited about going to this concert. My reasoning:

     A. I had just seen Billy Joel live and in concert. Really? What could possibly compare to that, besides another Billy Joel concert? Nothing. But....

    

    B. Screaming tweens, teens and post-teens. This was even worse than I had imagined. They screamed whenever a new video started (during the 2-hour wait). They screamed whenever the safety announcements were made (in English accent). They screamed whenever the cotton-candy vendor walked by. (OK, I made that one up, but I did scream when the beer vendor walked by.) But....

     And 3. According to the Ticketmaster map, our seats were somewhere above the nose-bleed section in an area of the Edward Jones Dome accessible only by trained Sherpas carrying oxygen. But....

But....

You know what?

     3. Our seats weren't that bad. Sure we were in the third tier, but we were only three rows up from the edge of the balcony. Granted, that was straight up. And I do mean Straight. Up. But the Princess and I had trained earlier in the day by riding the ferris wheel on the roof of the St. Louis City Museum (my hands never unclenched from the safety bar). And by sitting in the school bus that hangs over the edge of the roof – 20 stories up. And by going down the 10-story slide. Best. Museum. Ever.

     And... the 1D stage cat-walk extended out to at least the 50-yard line. Combined with the obligatory Jumbo-Tron Screens this made our seats... not bad.

     B. After while I became immune to the screaming. In fact, I started to rely on it. All those 1D songs sound alike to me, so the only way I could tell they had cued up a new one was when the girls started screaming.

     True Confession: I did scream. Once. Harry (or one of the lads, they all look alike to me, too) asked if anyone in the audience was having a birthday. The Princess and I looked at each other, shot our hands in the air and started screaming like... well, like teens at a 1D concert.

     And finally, A. It wasn't a Billy Joel concert. It was a One Direction concert for One Direction fans. I wasn't the target audience. The pre-teen-posts were. And they loved it.

They danced, they sang, they screamed, they cried, they laughed, they smiled. They beamed. They radiated happiness.

They had the time of their lives.

I finally recognized one song near the end of the concert (after only 90-minutes, as opposed to 65-year-old Billy Joel's 2-hours... just sayin'). And as I sat there watching the Princess singing and swaying, I thought about how the lyrics to that bubble-gum, boy-band song summed up how I felt:

“Baby you light up my world like nobody else...”

I looked at the Dad behind us and I could tell from the smile on his face as he watched his girls that he felt the same way.

Oh yeah. We had fun.

“You don't know you're beautiful. That's what makes you beautiful.”