2007-02-05 - 7:56 p.m.
Last week our friend Melinda flew here from Dallas to see a rock show by Kasim Sultan. Actually two rock shows � the first here in Chicago Saturday night and then the next night in nearby Valparaiso, IN. This was the woman I sold my extra tickets to the Blondie/New Cars show back in the spring. Kasim Sultan is a member of the New Cars and part of the reason she came up for that show (in addition to being a big Todd Rundgren fan). She says she wonders if she�s crazy for traveling so far to see shows. But I say her dedication to rock�n�roll is unquestionably awesome and something we should all aspire to.
This is someone who�s dedicated a great deal of energy to seeing a rock star who I, in all my obscure-music-nerdiness, had barely heard of. When I took a closer listen, it turned out he was quite good. I think he�s certainly the best part of the New Cars. And he�s been playing for over 30 years, mostly as a sideman. Now that�s dedication. He was a member of Todd Rundgren�s band Utopia. He was later a Blackheart with Joan Jett (!). He was also (unfortunately, I think) bassist on Meat Loaf�s album Bat Out of Hell and is now his music director for tours. He�s also toured with Cheap Trick, Blue Oyster Cult, Richie Sambora, Patti Smith, and on and on.
The title of �Hardest Working Man in Show Business� was already claimed by James Brown. But Kasim Sultan has got to be up there. I�m impressed you can be a peripatetic and in-demand backing musician for so long. I�m even more impressed that you can garner such rabid fans from out of the limelight. And I�m yet more impressed that Melinda found such an obscure, but great, musician to become a fan of. I think it�s awesome that she came from Dallas to Chicago to see him play. Repeatedly traveling such great distances for a show is not �crazy�. It�s inspiring dedication to rock�n�roll.
We met Melinda for lunch at a Thai place near us. Then Nya realized that she couldn�t go to the show that night, so I decided I�d go alone and meet Melinda at the club. Nya was excited that I�d be going out to have fun on my own and ordered me to come back drunk and amorous. Since I was going by myself, pushing myself to the corner, flagging a regular taxi, transferring to the back seat, and explaining to the driver how to fold up my wheelchair and fit it in the trunk would have just been too difficult. So I called well in advance for a wheelchair-accessible minivan cab to come pick me up.
I went down to my lobby quite early and waited until twenty minutes after the cab was supposed to arrive, then called the cab company to see what was up. They said they were still working on it. It would be another half hour, probably. Oof. I told them to never mind, then. Discouraged, I threw in the towel and went back up to my apartment. Man. I was all dressed up with no place to go. What a bummer. No rock�n�roll for me tonight. And I was failing in my assigned task to get drunk and amorous. So as not to make it a complete loss, I thought of a few lessons to take away from this experience.
My first mistake was buying tickets to the show online a week before. My instinct these days is to always be overprepared. I call ahead, I make plans in advance, I double-check addresses and phone numbers. I was certainly never this way before, but I found early on that spontaneity is one of the first casualties of disability. However, there is such a thing as planning too hard. Sometimes waiting until the last minute brings great results and sometimes plans made ahead can�t be followed through on. Secondly, while my preferred cab company usually comes through, it was foolish to call only one taxi service on a Saturday night. Hedge your bets, call several, see who shows up first, then call the rest off.
I hope Melinda had a good time at the show (and the next night in Valparaiso). I�m sorry I didn�t make it. But take a lesson from her dedication � it�s all for the love of rock�n�roll.
� 2007 Geoff Gladstone
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