With only one night in London, we had to make the most of it.

Shooting straight to the top of the pops, blasting past all of the Mammas & Mias and Les’es & Mis’es, ditching the Wicked Witches and Masked Phantoms and Lion Kings, we grabbed the last two standing-room-only tickets for the Saturday showing of Queen:  We Will Rock You.

We had no idea what it was all about.  We were just there for the tunes.

Turns out the show was The Eschaton of Mercury and May:  A nightmare future where a Killer Queen has assimilated the Ga-Ga youth and Talibanned all musical instruments.  This Killer Queen controls the brainwashed with a platter of pre-approved tween cheese.  (Akin to the love child of Zappa’s Joe’s Garage and the Disney Channel.)

Alas, there is one wrinkle in her plan of complete pop-cultural control.  She didn’t count on the rise of The Bohemians, shepherds of the sacred texts prophesying the coming of Galileo and Scaramouche, and the irrepressible life-affirming urge to Rock.

And so it was that one young man from a poor family had the power to release the sacred guitar (Excalibur-style) from the ruins of Wembley Stadium.  Messianic salvation by six-string.   Thus were The Bohemians the champions, my friends.

Silly show.  Great music.  I expected a band, but I didn’t see one.  Still, the speakers were filled with a spot-on re-creation of Brian May’s one-of-kind grind looping around adaptations of Queen’s already stage-ready theatrical hits.  Surprise!  During the third act they dropped the side curtains to reveal the most professional tribute band in London armed with Brian May guitars and we-nailed-it-again grins.

Fun crowd.  Not a bunch of trampling tourists and arrogant Americans, but lit-up locals making an extra-pint night of it.  Life-long fans looking for a lager-triggered flashback.

I thought I knew the records well, but a few of the songs were a mystery.  At first I assumed that they were digging deep into the catalog for lost nuggets, but the natives seemed to know them word-for-word.  Things must have charted a little differently in the mother country.

But as the curtains closed, there was one omission that broke my heart.  Despite many, many opportunities, the stars didn’t sing our song.  I couldn’t believe it.  After two hours of classic Queen, where was My Best Friend?

Then I looked over.  She was right beside me.

Caught the Cracker Acoustic World Tour the other day.

Still feeling new in town, curiosity got the best of me to go out and see what the Gen X’rs are up to on a Tuesday in the Great White North.  Turns out my kin are still alive and kicking.  It was standing room only in the little bar on the edge of our cozy downtown on a subzero evening.

Just like I find at most of these shows, there’s never a short supply of single guys like me, slow-sipping a beer in the corner, thinking other thoughts of pop-culture geekistry.  We don’t go to these show alone.  We go to be alone together.  We line up, each head tilted just enough to see the stage over the shoulder of the next guy.  (Though this feat has proven more challenging as they grow ‘em a little taller up here.)

All were accounted for:  The reads-too-many-comics guy, the poor fella broken by his attempts to achieve respectability, the dad drafted by responsibility, the trio of guys who sure-as-hell once rocked and whom I would have known had I served my local-bozo* tour-of-duty in 90′s South Dakota instead of 00′s Ohia.

Good to see them all in one room again.

So how was the show?  Solid.  Like hickory.  Solid in the way that says, “We’ve been doing this awhile.”  There’s really no substitute for experience.  Forget about youthful enthusiasm, energy, vim, vigor, vitality.  All so much peacock-plumed tumescence.  Bound to pop and fade fast.  It’s the Lifetime Achievement Award that my heroes are working for.

Can’t say I was a BIG Cracker fan, but I’ve burned through my share of Camper Van Beethoven cassettes.  The skinny goofballs have grown up to resemble the stout men of noble stature that grow like corn on the cob out here on the prairie.  Furry and formidable is the new David Lowery.  An ever more serious strummer of the six string.

It was good to share the air with him, although I’da paid double to hear “Take The Skinheads Bowling.”

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*The actual self-deprecating term of endearment that we used for our fellow musicians was “local ass-clown,” but that seemed a touch offensive.  So, instead of writing “local ass-clown” I changed it to “local-bozo” which carries the same meaning, yet without the possibility of distracting my readers with a potentially offensive phrase like “local ass-clown.”  You can thank me for my sensitivity anytime.

You ask me how I can like this band of phonies.  And I ask you:  How can I not?

I grew up on Graceland.  I was a boy in a bubble and that bubble was mercifully, occasionally, popped by missives shot off from the head-tops of East Coast sons of privilege and promise.  From Salinger to the Beats to Woody to Wolfe to Wharton to the VU to Tim Gunn.  Sure, I’m painting with a broad brush here, but from a Pittsburgh-birthed point of view, everyone from the Upper East Side to the Village had it better than me.  Not having much else in common with Warhol except for the whole hometown thing, I had to sit back and watch.  Just a doe-eyed extra in a Whit Stillman film, hoping to someday make it past a velvet rope.

And anyway, the Strokes made the critical cut, right?

As for the music, I like Contra just fine.  The rock-band to what-have-you ratio seems askew, but sophomore efforts often come off a little over-produced.  I’m not sure it’ll plant a seed in the sandy soils of my heart like their first disc did, but that’s more about time/place than anything else.

That first Vampire Weekend landed a little ray of light on my life during some dim days.  I’m not in that same head-space at the moment, but it’s good to know that they’re picking up where Buffett left off, keeping the ice in the blender for a better-read bunch of preppy parrotheads.