My friend once scored with a 38 year-old MILF. Right after this happened we all started calling her by the nickname 38 Special and started listening to the band for smart-ass ironic reasons. But for some reason the southern rock tunes just stayed with us through the years. This leaves at the point I'm at now, writing a concert review for a band I thought I would never ever see, but for the ironic and nostalgic purposes had to attend. As soon as I first heard the radio announcements for this concert I knew it would be amazing if not retarded. The local scene for washed-up geezer bands is red hot right now - we've got our fingers crossed that Fire Fall will be back. It doesn't hurt to hope.

Of the 8000ish seats in the arena only about half were full. I remember hearing stories of highly crazed 38 Special junkies foaming at the mouth over how they were going to be the first to get their ticket…like it was going to sell out or something. There was a very large section in the back of the floor area were you could hang out and dance like the other weirdos. The dancing I witnessed was fucking amazing, and by amazing I don't mean good, I mean creepy. It made me feel squeamish - I can't understand how you could do that kind of shit in front of 4000 people? I really felt embarrassed for most of them. I saw a chick rocking heavy air guitar solos for two minutes solid. Only it looked like a bass guitar, the kind of hunched over goofball bass playing style that the guy from Korn has. By the looks of things those moves haven't been pulled out of the closet since John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band were on the charts. But you know what? Forty-somethings sure love to rock ass and have a good time. They don't give a fuck. It's 38 Special bitches.

One thing that I didn't like about the show was the song "Second Chance." Holy shit even my dad thought it was some sort of disgusting cover song. But after asking around it was conformed that it was in fact a 38 Special song. Amazing, even the late 80's adult contemporary fans were rocking into the night. At the end of the show my dad and I both looked at each other like we'd just been ripped off. "What song didn't they play?" he said. "Hold on Loosely man!" I screamed with tears of shock running down my face. As we turned back to the stage the band reappeared, this time with more artificial fog than ever before. It was like an Adam Mast horror movie and something big was about to go down. With a roar of the crowd and a squeal of guitar "Hold On Loosely" was finally played and people went fucking berserk. This turned into an encore medley jam consisting of CCR songs and raw jamming. All this while Donnie Van Zant swung the guitar stand around like a garden rake. Believe it or not 38 Special is celebrating their 30th anniversary, and the solos and harmonies never sounded so tight. Don Barnes was on point, bassist Larry Junstrom looked like he could bust out some cattle calls at any time, newcomer drummer Gary Moffat did extended drum freak-outs, and keyboardist Bobby Capps looked like Billy Squire. All in all I thought it was a fun show. They played all the hits and even some newer stuff that only people on the 38 Special mailing list would know about. Yep, that show fucking rocked actually, and I just got wind of Kenny Loggins coming to Mesquite. Stay tuned for more.