It’s 1993 out. My wife, Valerie, suggests that we go see Phantom of the Opera at the Chicago Auditorium Theatre.

“It will be great,” she insists, “the tickets will cost about a million dollars, we’ll get nosebleed seats in the balcony, the actors will be two inches tall, there will be torrential rains that evening, traffic will be unbearable and you’ll get into a huge fight with the parking lot attendant.”

How do you turn that down? We go. The tickets cost 1.5 million dollars, we have ridiculous seats in the 3^rd balcony, the singers are the size of dominoes, traffic-crushing rains make the trip downtown spectacular, and our sociopathic parking lot attendant waves you in, forgets that he waved you in and then screams at you for entering the garage. We are there.

The Chicago Auditorium, designed by Louis Sullivan, is an absolute gem. It is elegant, ornate, and the acoustics are beyond great. But of course it is older. Older as in Teddy Roosevelt gave a speech there once. Apparently people were smaller then, a lot smaller actually, and you sit right on top of the row in front of you. Smack dab in my line of sight is a way-too-old to be doing this couple who start to make out full time when the lights dim for the show.  Not just a “isn’t this great” lingering kiss, but actual making out for entire musical numbers at a time. They seem to be sitting with their elderly parents.

If that is not entertaining and/or creepy enough, I am on the aisle, seated in the one row that Louis Sullivan screwed up as it boasts some stair irregularity. (Stair depth, riser height, something.) Not once, not twice, but at regular intervals during the performance some poor bastard or bastard-ette going down the stairs to seek out lower altitudes with a richer oxygen content stumbles on my stair and begins to launch themselves into dark oblivion.

Gasps, moans, and different varieties of panicked yelps are dampened only by the mute of public embarrassment.  Seat backs and shoulders are clawed at as people struggle with balance and gravity, basically a tussle with physics. A body in motion remains in motion and all that.  This begins to be my personal main attraction. There is a lot to watch.

So I sit there. Phantom is okay, I guess. I have friends who raved about it, making a point to see it in different cities. Whatever. But I can’t think about that. By now I am sitting sideways in my seat, staring at the aisle, waiting. If I see an elderly person I might make a cautionary little gesture. If I see a younger person, someone who I knew could annoy me if I gave them half a chance, I’d sit back and see how they handle the gravity two-step. High heels were a killer, I can tell you that. No one actually plummets but it does make it hard to turn my attention back to the stage, falling chandelier or not.

I also realize I’m being distracted by my own history. In this very auditorium I had seen some of the greatest bands in my lifetime: Jimi Hendrix on his first and second tours in 1968, both with Soft Machine. The Who, right after Live at Leeds and Tommy in 1970 with a peaking Keith Moon and white jump-suited Pete Townsend, the original Allman Brothers, all alive and kicking.  Crosby, Stills and Nash, right after Kent State and extremely pissed off, ready to burn. Even Emerson, Lake and Palmer, early enough to still be listenable, as they ushered in the tail-end of non-pretentious rock.

Back then, we stupidly felt that our music would just get better and better, the Beatles were a great beginning but only the beginning. Hey, they probably thought that about Beethoven. But in that short time, for those few years — in a beautiful, sonically majestic auditorium in downtown Chicago, Illinois — those bands, now iconic, inspired by the theatre, were very glad to be there and it was fabulous.

As I was sitting there, those memories, outflanked, began to surrender one by one to nostalgia. But they were still vivid and loud enough to drown out Andrew Lloyd Weber. Which leads us to the rub.

Back then, for better or for worse, those concerts were not just entertainment. It was not show business. Music was the basis, the construct of “difference.” For a very, very brief frame it allowed true believers to dance on the perforated line separating Old World and New World. And from 1968 to 1970 that gap made quite the dance floor.

Despite Iraq, despite melting ice caps, the gap today is different. It’s defined by red states, blue states, haves and have-nots, maybe even bright and not so bright. But it really isn’t age as difference, age as Politic. It isn’t style as meaning, and it sure isn’t music as meaning. When a car company has better musical anthems than the anti-war movement something has fallen away. Somebody has given up.

But enough.  I think about these great musicians that I got to experience sitting right here and then it dawns on me. Sure, I am not thrilled that so few are still alive, which is just freaking ridiculous. I am vexed by something far more pragmatic; as I sit looking at singing dominoes and middle-age necking, I calculate that the price of two tickets to Phantom of the Opera is greater than every single prior concert that I have ever seen in the Chicago Auditorium, some of the greatest bands of my lifetime, combined.

Take the chandelier, I want Jimi.

John Trimble / 2007