Nearly 250,000 people attended the 1994 Woodstock concert. Celebrate Virginia's own summer concert series will draw a somewhat smaller, but no less enthusiastic, crowd. AMY SANCETTA /ASSOCIATED PRESS Visit the Photo Place

View the Spotsylvania County community page

It's only rock 'n' roll, but I like it

Summer outdoor concerts: It's only rock 'n' roll, but I like it

Date published: 6/7/2009

A FEW FRIDAYS ago, my wife and I checked out the Gin Blossoms and Tonic, two bands that achieved some measure of fame in the 1990s, and who were performing as part of the Celebrate Virginia concert series.

To be honest, neither was an absolute favorite of mine--like most self-designated hipsters, my tastes ran (and continue to run) to more outre and fringe acts--but a few of their songs--the Blossoms' "Hey Jealousy" and Tonic's "If You Could Only See"--continue to enjoy healthy rotation in the cranial jukebox of anyone who lived through that fin de millennium decade.

These Celebrate Virginia concerts are held in a field near the Expo Center and the soon-to-open Wegmans. It's not Max Yasgur's farm, but rather an unremarkable patch of green near all those various big-box temples of consumerism in Central Park. But, no matter. We'll leave the half-baked Marxism for another soapbox on another day. Back to the show.

Tonic and the Blossoms RAWWWKED, dude. The so-called Gin and Tonic tour was utterly inebriating and best enjoyed in immoderation. (Too bad there isn't an oldies outfit called the Lemon Wedges currently touring just so they could have been on the bill and made the aural libation perfect.) It's a good thing the music was intoxicating, too, since at $5 a beer--more on this deeply distressing fact later--you'd have to be a Rockefeller to get a buzz on.

For one who has entered those great middle years of life, attending concerts featuring bands of one's lost youth is perplexing. The best strategy is to engage in a rather willful suspension of all disbelief: Check it out, man, it's 1995 again, and I am a young fellow, carefree and callow, heading out to catch some tunes and hang with my bros. (My apologies to any young people reading this. Sadly, we did talk this way in the old days.)

Follow us on

Date published: 6/7/2009