Flashback Friday

On my way home from work today, I was listening to a Heart CD, and when "Love Alive" came on, my mind drifted back to the summer of 1978 when I saw Heart in concert for the first time at the infamous California Jam 2 concert in California.  We were in California on a month long vacation visiting our relatives, and my cousin and his wife took me to the concert.  It was a life changing experience.  Sure, I saw Ted Nugent come on stage wearing a loin cloth and swinging on a vine like Tarzan, and I saw Aerosmith and other bands, but I also saw Heart for the first time.  As I said, it was a life changing experience. For the first time in my life, there was a woman on stage and she was belting out the rock and roll songs.  And then there was another woman on stage and she was playing the guitar. I don't mean to be sacriligious but to me it was a true life-changing moment.  It was a near-religious experience.  I knew then and there that was what I wanted to do.  The next day after the concert, while still visiting at my aunt and uncle's house, I grabbed Dad's guitar that he'd brought with him on the vacation, and found a music book he had stuck in the guitar case and I started to teach myself how to play the guitar.  The song, you ask?  "Stand By Your Man" by The First Lady of Country Music, Miss Tammy Wynette.  And as soon as we got home from vacation that summer, I signed up for guitar lessons at a local music store so they could teach me how to play "Crazy On You."  The rest, they say, is history.

As I think back that moment in California when I was watching Ann and Nancy Wilson perform on stage for the very first time, I wonder how many thousands, if not millions, of women they have inspired. Rock on Ann and Nancy.