A few weeks back, my 8-year-old daughter Sloan finally got to experience one of the growing up “firsts” that I’ve been looking forward to for years:
I took her to her first rock concert.
I hadn’t planned to take Sloan to a concert, but scheduling conflicts with the couple my wife and I had planned to go on a double date with resulted in a spare ticket. You’d think that modern concert tickets costing more than a human kidney would’ve ensured more diligent schedule checking, but the result was getting to take my kid to her first concert, so I’m calling it a win.
The concert in question? Bruce Springsteen.
Now I’ve been to like 200 concerts in my life and have the hearing of a nineteenth century cannoneer to prove it. From my experience, Springsteen is the gold standard of live acts, and I was really happy I got to share such a cool show with her. My first concert was very special to me: Fiona Apple opening for the Counting Crows (forever giving me the right to scoff at kids who thought mall-punk was “Emo” ten years later). I wanted Sloan to have a really memorable first show, too.
So we got our tickets together, picked out our coolest concert clothes, got her a set of ear protectors meant for target shooting (because my wife Sara mandated it, just to establish that she is both a responsible parent and a total square), and we went to see The Boss.
The show was a blast. Bruce still has the energy of a singer half his age, the band brought a full horn line, which was fun and unusual, Sloan identified no less than 3 songs as the new Best Song Ever™, and her energy lasted almost to the end of the nearly 3-hour show. Pretty good for an 8-year-old. We even had the incredibly cool luck that a friend of mine was working as a stagehand for the venue, found one of the band’s discarded setlists, and gave it to Sloan as a memento from her first concert:
This is as hard as an excel spreadsheet can possibly rock.
So bearing all that awesomeness in mind, I still worry that making this her first concert might have been a mistake on my part.
I mentioned having a memorable first concert earlier. The Counting Crows are great to see live (or at least they were in 1996) and I still have fond memories of how fun and unique that show was, with most of the songs straying far from the album versions I was familiar with.
…But the fact that the first band I saw was any good live was entirely by chance. They were a band I liked, my dad bought us tickets, and everything else was pure dumb luck. I also liked the Gin Blossoms at the time (look, it was the mid 90’s; I’m not proud of these name drops), who I would eventually end up seeing at a festival years later. They were…less fun. The fact that I left my first show thinking “Concerts are amazing!” instead of “These songs are free on the radio, and the singer doesn’t sound drunk,” was entirely down to luck.
What I wonder about, though, is if I might’ve still had an amazing time no matter how bad the band was. Maybe more important than it being a good show was the fact that I was seeing a band that I liked, not just a band that my dad enjoyed. I loved those moaning, post-grunge, sad sacks and was ready to celebrate it.
So what’s the most important part about a kid’s first concert: seeing a good show or establishing themself as a person with their own unique tastes in music?
Sloan wasn’t much of a Springsteen fan before going to see the show. She knew a few of the more famous songs and is certainly a fan now, but that’s a result of going to see the concert and not how her tastes developed naturally. I’m the fan. As much as she wound up enjoying the show, if I’d asked her what she would’ve liked her first concert to be 2 months ago, Bruce would not have come up.
Maybe the ages we experienced our first concert at are enough to justify me taking the reins on this. She’s still shy of 9, whereas I was 14. A young teen wants to define themselves, but at her age, being into the same stuff as your dad is still cool.
…Cool to her, I mean. As a balding, pudgy 40-year-old, things that I like actively become less cool by association. At this point if I bought a Maserati people would be calling them “Dad wagons” within 3 months.
Cargo shorts, socks with sandals, 630 horses of raw Italian power…dads, amiright?
So all that to say, maybe I need to prioritize taking her to see a band that she likes. I’m not thrilled at the idea of sitting through 2 hours of the Imagine Dragons concert she would definitely ask to attend, but I have a sneaking suspicion that she’d look back on hearing that stupid robot voice going “thun-DDEERR?” with a lot of affection if it was something she picked.
I’m glad that we got to experience her first concert together, but I just want to make sure that I balance sharing the cool stuff that I enjoy with learning about the cool stuff that she enjoys.
…Also I need to stop letting Sloan come in and read over my shoulder while I’m writing, because she read the last couple paragraphs and immediately wanted to hear “Thunder.” Guess I better work on learning the lyrics to this song; If that’s our next concert, I might as well make it special.
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