Monday, August 29, 2011

Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Irene


This is a crappy photo but you can feel Pat's rockin'ness if you look close enough.

My weekend was supposed to be wine and friend-filled in Boston. It was to be glorious.

Instead I was stuck in Cincinnati thanks to that bitch-troll Irene.

But when life gives you hurricanes, you just add rum, right? Or in this case, Pat Benatar!

I remembered at exactly 7:49 p.m. that one of my '80s idols was hitting the Taste of Blue Ash stage at 9 p.m., and I quickly texted everyone I know, "OMG Pat Benatar at Taste of Blue Ash, We Belong!"

I stared at my phone anticipating the vibrating explosion of excited texts from everyone canceling plans to roll with me and see this amazing female rocker.

Instead, crickets.

My friends are losers. (You all know who you are.)

So I went to see Pat, alone... because that's what Her Bad-Assery would have wanted.

I raced to Blue Ash praying, "Look, Jesus... please let Hurricane Irene skip the coasts, cause no deaths, inflict minimal property damage, and ummm, oh, by the way, for the love of God, don't let me miss a minute of Ms. Benatar!"

Ask and you shall receive, people.

All Fired Up was playing when I rolled in. Though not a mega-hit like her others, it's one of my personal favorites and if you don't have it on your iTunes then I feel sorry for you because it is a hard-rocking stadium smoker sang by one of rock's most iconic singers and it totally will rock your Arcade-Fire-listening ass off. (So here it is; right click and you too shall receive.)

I squeezed past the throngs of people who had been staking their claim for hours swilling Miller Lites, saw a narrow little opening atop a retaining wall and slid in with the help of some dude who helped pull me up the step.

And Pat. Well, damn. She lit-it-up.

Her voice, still fierce. Moves, she's got 'em. Her hits, she sang them all.

She was way bigger a force than Irene.

We will be invincible!

3 comments:

Kelly said...

I was hanging at the Cactus Pear. We were like 100 feet from each other. But that of course means there were like 1,000 people between us. Star-crossed!

Jen Lewis said...

I am with you - All Fired Up is one of my faves, too. We saw Survivor at ToBA about five years ago. I imagine Pat Benetar was way cooler (though hearing Survivor play Eye of the Tiger not once but twice was pretty awesome, I must say).

Shane Long73 said...

Do you remember that Erin calls her "Pat Nebatar"??? Always makes me giggle. Anywho - I am soooooooooooo incredibly jealous that you saw her. She is one of my very all-time faves!! All Fired Up rules!