Joining the joyride



Photo by Marisa Steyn

 At risk of showing my age, I am going to start off this blog like this … Back in the day we used to buy music on cassettes. Er, we also had walkmans and tape decks. Cassettes used to get chewed in tape decks, quite regularly. I remember cursing whilst pulling out reams of tiny brown tape out of the car cassette player. It would inevitably snap and you would repair it with sellotape. This resulted in the tape jumping at a certain point every time you played it. You soon got to know when it was going to do this and would apologise to any fellow passengers beforehand. Oh, and you had to physically rewind the chewed tape using either your finger or a ballpoint pen! Ah the days … but I digress… on with the story at hand.

One of the very first cassettes I ever bought was Look Sharp by Roxette. I absolutely loved it. I danced to it, sang along with it and I probably even cried to it. Or course it eventually got chewed. So imagine my suprise when I got offered a ticket to go to their concert. What! Roxette playing a gig! Unbelievable. I simply had to go. So with ticket in hand and a few bucks for a drink or two, I was suddenly on my way to Grand West Casino to see a bunch of Swedes who had shaped much of my youth. With great excitement I might add… teenage excitement.

The ticket said 8pm so I got there fashionably late at 8.10pm. All was quiet in the arena so naturally I headed straight to the bar. There I chatted to other fans, remarkably all my age and some more overweight than me. Some even had Roxette shirts from the concerts “back then” and a few had even got dressed up in 80′s gear. You gotta love us older set, always game to go the extra mile. Even if it requires us to haul out our bad 80′s wardrobe that we keep “just in case it comes back into fashion”. Anyway, just as I had acquired my first drink, the doors were flung open and along with it a resounding roar from the crowd. Then I heard it … “Dressed for Success”… Thinking this was the support band playing a joke I casually put my change away and thought of going for a ciggie before the show. Then it dawned on me that this was no cover, it was the headline act. The ticket said 8pm folks and they wern’t kidding. Old rockstars don’t keep you waiting because they don’t need to. They won you over years ago, along with a whole lot of chewed up cassettes.

What a rocking evening indeed. I am not ashamed to say that I loved it all (this also comes with age – you don’t need to dislike a band because everyone thinks they are crap, or the band is not deemed cool, or heaven-forbid they are too commercial). They played all their classics, some of which I had even forgotten. I jumped up and down and sang along to Dressed For Success, Joyride, How Do You Do!, Dangerous and She’s Got The Look. All my teenage angsts and broken hearts came flooding back when they played It Must’ve Been Love and Listen To Your Heart.

Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle were sporting leathers and looked pretty good in them too considering they are older than me, gasp! Per still has that frog-leg thing going though. Some things from the 80′s need to stay there. Along with Roxette, probably. But good for them, they are still rocking it and judging by the crowd, have quite the fan base. Perhaps some of the youngsters there were dragged along by their parents, but none of them seemed to be complaining.

The Swedes did two encores and finally retired for the evening at about 10.30pm. Two hours of entertainment by an aging rock band is pretty good going! Ok, I will admit there were times when I did feel a little old, especially during some of the slow songs. The ones I didn’t know that is. I found myself thinking “Gosh, some popcorn would be nice now”. I also got highly peeved to find the bar had closed mid-concert. Who in their right mind closes a bar during a concert?? Talk about drunken crowd control. It was probably the most sober concert I have ever had. But it was also one of the most fun. Here’s to you Roxette … long live your joyride!

Oh, just to finish off, I just have to leave you with some pearls of songwriting wisdom from the Swedes:

• “I hit the road out of nowhere, I had to jump in my car. And be a rider in a love game, following the stars.” – Joyride
• “I’m gonna get dressed for success, shaping me up for the big time, baby.” – Dressed for Success
• “Make believing we’re together. That I’m sheltered by your heart. But in and outside I turn to water, like a teardrop in your palm.” – It Must’ve Been Love
• “You know she’s a little bit dangerous. She’s got what it takes to make ends meet.” – Dangerous
• “I ran a long long way from home to find a heart that’s made of stone.” – Fading Like a Flower
• “Well, here we are crackin’ jokes in the corner of our mouths and I feel like I’m laughing in a dream.” – How Do You Do!
• “Never was a quitter, tasty like a raindrop, she’s got the look.” – The Look

Go on … admit it. You are humming one of those tunes. Yes you are!!