Me and Pablo Go See Guns N' Roses

Obligatory concert selfie.

The miracle had occurred. The original members of Guns N' Roses were getting back together. Most of the members, that is. Mainly AXL, Duff and Slash. Steven Adler was still MIA (though—spoiler alert—would appear for a few shows). And so wasn't the notoriously reclusive Izzy Stradlin. Izzay was MIA in the U - S - of - A.

 

I was as excited as any GNR fan to hear the news when it broke. In fact, I was so excited that I felt inspired to write an entire (short) memoir about my love of Guns N' Roses that evolved and took on many forms over about a 30-year period. I won't repeat what I said in that memoir, but, if you like, you can read the (short) memoir in full (see previous blog).

 

Anyway, it wasn't long after the band reunited that they announced they would play a couple shows together, one in Hollywood at their old Sunset Strip haunt The Troubadour and then another one at the Coachella music festival. A couple shows turned into a Las Vegas concert and then a tour was born, the "Not in this Lifetime" tour to be exact.

 

Not long after the announcement of the tour, a couple Boston dates were announced. Well, not Boston but Foxborough, Massachusetts if we're going to be specific and I'm going to be specific. GNR would be playing at the gargantuan "Gillette Stadium"—where the New England Patriots play—on July 19th AND the 20th. Gillette Stadium was literally ten minutes away from me. That's right: Guns N' Roses were going to be ten minutes away from me. Holy shit!

 

Now, it may surprise you that I didn't get tickets right away. This was partly because they were a little bit out of my budget range and also because none of my friends really liked GNR all that much so there was nobody to go with. But then I saw on Facebook that everyone was talking about the concert and buying tickets and I was, like, "There's no way I'm missing this fucking thing!" 

 

I decided to just say fuck it and buy a ticket before they sold out completely. Would I end up going alone? Well, I would worry about that later. I could potentially find somebody to go with down the line. Or maybe I'd just get wasted beforehand and go in and not give a damn that I was alone. I could always say my friends were sitting in "a different section" and nobody would probably ever call me out on such a lie. Not that I've thought all these scenarios through or anything and I do have friends by the way, I swear. Also, being friendless isn't a huge deal, anyway, because sometimes alone time can give you some of the best times of your life. But, I mean, ahem...none of that stuff is relevant. The main goal here was to NOT miss GNR. That's all I'm trying to say.

 

So I went to the Ticketmaster website and—right off the bat—it was almost as though the universe was trying to stop me from what I was doing. I used two different computers and both were freezing up and getting all slow on me. The server for Ticketmaster didn't seem to work properly either. 

 

When I finally DID put a ticket in my "cart", I was brutally reminded how Ticketmaster likes to rape you in every which way that it can. There was a $20 service fee added onto the ticket price and some other $10 fee. Maybe there was tax, too, but all I know is that a cheap nose-bleed ticket was about a hundred bucks at the end of it all.

 

I still wanted that ticket, though, so I proceeded to Ticketmaster's checkout and that was when I realized I couldn't use PayPal at the checkout. Shit! I didn't have...um...what the financial types would call a "valid credit card" at the time (I hereby plead the starving artist excuse) so I needed to use PayPal. But it was credit cards only. No PayPal! Shet!

 

And this was when I saw the writing on the wall. I'm no rocket astrologist or anything, but I know how to read the signs of the universe, and it seemed like the universe just didn't want me to buy a ticket. At least not now. Maybe I would buy one later. But not yet. Not yet. 

 

Little did I know that the universe had something else up its sleeve.

 

It was the Fourth of July and I received a message on Facebook from a former Spanish exchange student my family hosted back in the late 80s. Her name was and still is Virginia and she's all grown up now with four children of her own. Her eldest teenage son Pablo was coming to America for a month and would be staying with a host family a couple towns away from me. Virginia was wondering if I was going to the Guns N' Roses concert and, if so, could I possibly take him along?

 

See, I should explain that Virginia was very aware that I was a big Guns N' Roses fan. She knew this partly because she had read my (aforementioned) blog, but there's actually much more to it than that...

 

When Virginia came to live with my family in the late-80s, Guns N' Roses were just starting to blow up. She saw a poster on the wall of the bedroom that my brother and I shared at the time. That poster was a Guns N' Roses poster. She was in awe of how AXL and Slash looked and she asked us who this Guns and Roses was? We were, like, what, you're asking us who Guns and Roses are? Are you from some foreign land or something?! Oh, wait, sorry. You ARE...

 

Apparently GNR was not very big in Spain yet (though later on they would be). She had no idea who they were, but there must have been something about the GNR poster on our wall that was calling Virginia's name. The more time she spent in America, the more she was exposed to GNR what with "Sweet Child O' Mine" constantly being played on the radio and the "Welcome to the Jungle" video being played over and over on the MTV. When she left America, she took the music of GNR with her and she spread the good news of GNR to all her friends and family who would listen. Over time, she became more and more of a GNR fan, to the point where it's safe to say that she was a HUGE fan. And I don't say that lightly. I mean, she actually had the song "November Rain" as her wedding song. That's dedication, man!

 

Now, it was only about three years ago that I found Virginia on Facebook. My family hadn't been in contact with her in years and—for me—it was almost like getting in touch with a long-lost sister. I was only seven-years-old at the time Virginia stayed with us in the 80s, but she left quite an impression on me. She was really cool and funny with a very down-to-earth sense of humor. There were also a lot of good memories made, one of the most memorable being one night when we watched Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS with her. It was the first time any of us had ever seen that movie and we were all completely freaked out afterwards. 

 

Not to go off on a tangent or anything, but what made our viewing of THE BIRDS even more memorable was that, the day after watching the movie, I actually had an incident with...well, a bird! I was playing on the steps outside our house and a bird started attacking me. I ran inside and the bird tried to follow me in. I quickly shut our screen door and the bird hung on the screen with its claws and it kept squawking at me, pissed as anything. Everybody came to see what all the commotion was about. The bird kept squawking and we had no idea what its problem was; it's not like I was messing with it at all. All we could think about was the movie we had just seen! REAL life was mimicking REEL life! It was just so weird, but it became something we all joked about for the rest of the time Virginia stayed with us.

 

So, yes, good times were had with Virginia and it was great reconnecting with her on Facebook. Over the past few years, Virginia and I have corresponded on Facebook quite a bit and it was during this correspondence that I found out how big of a GNR fan she had become. She also refreshed my memory that it was here in America, in the household of Burns, where she first learned who GNR even was. I was kind of proud of that.

 

Anyway, when she asked about the GNR concert, I told Virginia that "as loco as it sounds" I did not currently have tickets. It was possible that I was going to get some at the last minute, but I had no idea. Well, Virginia quickly responded and said not to worry. She would buy two tickets, one for me and one for her son Pablo. That way, I could bring Pablo to the concert and she would know that her son would be safe. I quickly responded that, hell yes, that all sounded awesome to me if it was OK with her!

 

Within only about an hour or so I had two Guns N' Roses tickets in my email inbox, one for me and one for Pablo. Wow, this was actually happening! I was officially going to the Guns N' Roses "Not in this Lifetime" concert. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. Okay, I didn't have to do that.

 

The timing couldn't have worked out better. Pablo was already going to be in Massachusetts. He was a big GNR fan. He wanted to go. I wanted to go. I needed a ticket. He needed somebody to take him there. I was able to take him there. It was a win-win for us both. No wonder why the universe had gotten in the way of me buying a ticket previously. Again, I'm no rocket astrologist or anything, but there was apparently a greater plan in the works the whole time.

 

A week or two went by and I started Facebook messaging with my new amigo Pablo. We came up with a plan where I'd pick him up at his host family's house in Natick, then drive to Walpole to meet my family and then head over to the concert from there.

 

So the day of the concert arrived and—from the get-go—the plan went seamlessly. When I picked up Pablo, I expected his English to be minimal and I'd have to resort to a combination of Spanglish and charade-like body gestures to communicate. But his English was great. It didn't take long for me to realize I could basically say anything to him and he understood what I was talking about. I was even kind of disappointed that I wouldn't need to use any of the scant amount of Spanish I still remembered from my high school days. I thought it would be an interesting challenge and a stimulating brain exercise. Oh well.

 

Not only was Pablo's English great but so wasn't his personality and sense of humor. I instantly felt comfortable and relaxed talking to him like he was a long-lost buddy. I could crack jokes and he could crack jokes and it was interesting to see how we were both on the same wave-length despite the fact that we were from two different cultures. 

 

It was also interesting hearing what Pablo found fascinating about America. Riding around with him, it was like having a new set of eyes. He liked the trees we had and the forests. He was impressed that the houses were made of wood (not stucco)! And we had mailboxes and ice cream trucks similar to what he'd seen in the movies. Everything I had learned to take for granted or just not care about he found amazing.

 

When I brought him back to Walpole, my family was eager to meet him and they were instantly impressed by the young, fifteen-year-old lad. They were able to talk with Pablo for a good hour or so while—giddy as a schoolgirl—I went to pick the perfect outfit for the concert. My family loved Pablo. Everything about him reminded them of Virginia and it was kind of like a surreal trip down memory lane.

Pablo with my family (photo by me)

Me with my family, all ready for the concert (photo by Pablo)

Okay, I'll get to the concert. Sorry for all the foreplay.

 

Despite the fact that my house is only about ten minutes from the Gillette Stadium, it probably took us about a half hour for us to drive to the spot where we were going to park because traffic and police roadblocks, detours and such. Now, as far as parking goes, that actually leads me to the next serendipitous event here...

 

Shortly after Virginia bought the GNR tickets, I started thinking about where the best place to park would be. Parking at the stadium costs $40! So I didn't know whether it was worth doing that or maybe just getting a ride close-by and walking.

 

Well, as serendipity would have it, a dog-sitting gig came my way only a couple days after Virginia gifted me with a GNR ticket and the owners of said dogs happened to live right by Gillette Stadium. I went to meet with these people and the subject of the concert came up. They insisted that I park at their place and it was only about a fifteen minute walk to the stadium from there. I could save money and a lot of hassle! Once again, I'm not a rocket astrologist, but clearly the universe wanted me to go see Guns N' Roses. The stars were really aligning for this one.

So I took them up on their offer. I parked at their house with Pablo and it worked out great. It was a nice night so we had a pleasant walk down the road, cut through a dirt path with a frog pond, walked over some train tracks, saw an empty Dunkin' Donuts box, took a right and then a left, fiddled with our ear once and scratched our noses twice, and then...

 

Whoa.

 

There was the buzzing sound of people and then an energy that rushed up on me. It was an exciting energy, but to be honest, it kind of felt like a menacing energy as well. I felt kind of intimidated, almost in danger.

 

The energy came from all the people who were boozing and barbecuing in the gigantic parking lot of the stadium. Pablo and I had no choice but to cut through this crowd and we were both glad we did because it was a really surreal experience. There were people from all walks of life, many of which looked as though they had been hibernating somewhere since Guns N' Roses broke apart more than 20 years ago. A lot of them had skin that looked burnt-out, somewhat sooty and baked-potato-like. These people kind of reminded me of the guys who worked at the carnival that used to come to my town every April. Specifically, I was reminded of the gentleman who operated that ride "The Zipper". Or maybe it was the man who worked the "Gravitron"? Yes, it was maybe that one.

 

Of course, there were a lot more normal-looking people there as well. But the overall energy, like I said, was a mix of excitement and danger. And I realized this made sense because, shit, everybody was there to see the 'dangerous' band that was Guns N' Roses. Well, they at least used to be 'dangerous'. That's how they were marketed when they first rose to fame back in the late 80s and, heck, by all accounts, they WERE rather dangerous. I mean, people often rioted and some people even died at one of their concerts. But the band has, of course, mellowed out now that they're older.

 

So Pablo and I wove our way further through the crowd and, as we did, the energy only got more intense. People were drinking and they were drinking A LOT. I kind of wanted to pound a few Natty Ices myself, mainly because the energy of the crowd was overstimulating my senses and I needed something to numb them. But I needed to keep myself together and be a responsible adult. Pablo was counting on me.

 

We pretty much went right into the stadium as soon as we arrived. Security was tight and we had to go through a metal detector before we entered. They didn't pat us down or anything, though, so I wished I had snuck in some granola bars with me or some other light snack. 

Feeling thirsty, I bought a four-dollar Aquafina water bottle from a lady at a small concession stand. I saw the lady take the cap off the bottle and then I went to reach for it, but then she said, "No, I keep that." I'm not sure why she needed to keep the cap, but I asked her no further questions.

 

Lenny Kravitz was opening for Guns N' Roses and his band started playing right around seven o'clock. I must say I was more or less indifferent about seeing Lenny when I heard he was going to be opening. In fact, it wouldn't have mattered to me at all if I missed him altogether. And it wasn't that I didn't like his music; again, I was just indifferent.

 

Well, let me tell you something: I'm glad I got into the stadium on time to see Lenny. He opened with a song called "Bring it on" and his voice sounded incredible. The word that immediately came to mind to describe his voice was "golden". Both Pablo and I were immediately wowed. It sounded so friggin' golden.

Lenny onstage as the sun went down.

Lenny played most of his popular songs like "American Woman", "Fly Away" and of course "Are You Gonna Go My Way", which he closed with. His band consisted of a trumpet player and a saxophone player, back-up singers...the works. It was really a sight to see and I feel like only seeing Kravitz live really does his voice justice.

 

Honestly, I kind of felt bad for Lenny, though, because the stadium was nearly empty for most of his set. The people were still outside in the parking lot boozing up a storm. Most everybody was clearly only there to see GNR. Hell, I was only there to see GNR, but I just happened to arrive on time and go into the stadium on time and I was glad I did.

It was a beautiful night for a concert.

Lenny's set was over by about eight o'clock and then the roadies started getting the stage ready for Guns N' Roses. At this point, the stadium was getting more and more crowded. Everybody was starting to spill in from the parking lot and there was definitely an exciting buzzing and murmuring in the air. That menacing energy I felt outside in the parking lot was now oozing its way into the stadium. I was excited, but there was also that touch of fear making you a little uneasy.

 

Then, a Guns N' Roses logo appeared on one of the giant Jumbotron screens to the sides of the stage. One of the guns in the logo went off and made this awesome subwoofery sound that literally gave me chills. It kept doing this maybe every 30 seconds or so. It was kind of like a countdown and build-up to GNR coming onto the stage. It was also probably a Siren-like call to all the people still boozing in the parking lot, that they should hurry and get their asses into the stadium. 

 

I don't know what it was about the sound of those gunshots, but they sounded so awesome. They were so bigger than life. God-like. Just so awesome. Did I mention they sounded awesome?

I should probably also mention that—by this time in the night—I was sipping my one and only beer of the evening. I had gotten it after a quick bathroom break I took during Lenny's "Fly Away". It was a watery Bud Light and it cost me $13.

 

So, with the faintest of buzzes now tingling my bloodstream, I sat in my seat listening to those ominous gunshots and it felt like I was being transported back to the late 80s or early 90s. I know this sounds weird to say, but I could feel exactly how it felt when GNR played stadiums during their heyday. I'm not sure why I say this, but I kind of just felt exactly how it felt like back then. Do I sound nuts? I think I probably do. Or maybe it was just the thirteen-dollar Bud Light messing with my mind. Maybe a thirteen-dollar Bud Light has some sort of magic drug in it that takes you for a little trip. For thirteen friggin' dollars, I would hope it would have some sort of drug like that, for cry eye! I don't want to believe it's only shameless capitalism that explains the thirteen-dollar price-tag.

 

Anyway, as more time went by, the subwoofery gunshot sounds became more frequent and then there were even assault rifle sounds. Pretty soon, all the seats in the stadium more or less filled up and then some guys nonchalantly walked onstage with no announcement whatsoever. It was AXL, Slash, Duff and the rest! There was no big fanfare. No big, "Ladies and gentlemen—from Hollywood—Guns and fucking Roses!" Nope, there was nothing like that. Just a humble walk out onto the stage and then the crowd suddenly realized what was going on and started screaming in a delayed reaction. The scream started out low, but then it started to grow and grow and grow...

 

I turned to Pablo and asked him what he thought they were going to open with. He said he wasn't sure, but—whatever it was—he said it was going to be some loud and strong guitar with very high energy. I agreed with him about the strong guitar, but I specified that it wouldn't be normal guitar; it would be bass guitar. Oh yes. I'm sure fans of GNR know exactly what I'm getting at here...

 

I told Pablo my bet was on them opening with "It's So Easy".

 

Sure enough, Duff's familiar opening bass riffs kicked into high gear and GNR broke into "It's So Easy":

 

"...I see your sister in her Sunday dress

She's out to please

She pouts her best..."

 

I must say that—no matter how much live footage I've seen of GNR on YouTube and such—it was surreal seeing the band onstage and I mean seeing them in the real world with my own eyes and listening to their music live in its purest form (not on a pre-recorded video). There was a moment where I felt very present and in-the-moment. "This is happening," I whispered to myself. "It really is. Also...you rock, Matt. You smell nice, too."

 

After "It's So Easy", the drummer pretty much went right into the beginning drums for "Mr. Brownstone" and this was when the reality of what was happening sunk in even further. I was seeing GNR live! And they were playing all my favorite songs. "This is so fucking awesome!"

As AXL sang about the malicious Mr. Brownstone, my nostrils suddenly felt tickled by a skunky odor wafting its way up from the stands below. First, it started out faint and then a little stronger and then...it was wicked potent. Pablo turned to me at a certain point, gave me a look and wrinkled his nose. 

 

"Marijuana," Pablo said.

 

"Yes, Pablo. Marijuana."

 

And we left it that. For a moment, I thought that—being the responsible adult—I should quickly remind him to just say no to drugs. But then I got distracted. Because Slash was suddenly playing some familiar-sounding guitar riffs...

 

The riffs were the opening to "Welcome to the Jungle", which is perhaps my favorite GNR song and probably the only GNR song I know every single lyric to. I can tell you all about how I used to sing "Welcome to the Jungle" at least once or twice a week at various karaoke bars, but I already go over all that in my (aforementioned) GNR memoir. 

 

After "Welcome to the Jungle" came some "Use Your Illusion" tunes and even some songs from "Chinese Democracy" that I never really heard before, though they actually sounded really good.

 

Overall, I was surprised to see how pleasant AXL was, especially seeing that he has such a near-mythological reputation of being a difficult person. It seemed like he got to a point, like maybe five or six songs into the set, where he realized he was "feeling it"—the performance, that is. It was like he had fully warmed up and he got into a zone. And after that point you could just tell he was having a great time. 

 

The songs that stick out the most throughout the set (for me, anyway) were "My Michelle", "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and later "Nightrain". AXL's voice sounded incredible in all of these songs. What's always amazed me about AXL (and I'm sure I'm not alone) is his split-personality-like vocal range. When he's low he's really low and when you hear him sing like this you would never imagine him being able to get as high as he can. It's like Jekyll and Hyde or something. The low voice is some sort of Hyde-like demon inside of him and the high voice is Jekyll almost being held prisoner by Hyde. Yes, that IS the best way to describe it. Please don't raise your eyebrows at me.

 

As far as "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" goes, I've never really been that huge a fan of that song. I don't know if this is because it's a cover or what, but I've just never been a huge fan. However, hearing it performed live was a whole different story. AXL did a whole call and response deal where he would belt out "Knock knock knockin' on heaven's door" and then the crowd would shout it back to him. He did this about three or four times during the course of the song and he held absolutely nothing back. What amazed me is knowing that AXL knew he had a second show to do the following night. But this didn't seem to deter him from giving the performance his all, not one single bit. If he blew out his voice? Oh well. He didn't seem to give a shit.

 

In fact, AXL's voice was what probably impressed me the most about the whole show. I mean, I was prepared to cut him A WHOLE LOTTA slack if his voice just wasn't what it used to be. And even though it probably wasn't as good as it was when he was, like, 27-years-old, it was still really fucking good. I was pretty shocked, actually. You would have expected a voice like his that's taken so much abuse over the years—from his screams and howls and shrieks—to have been weathered. But for a 54-year-old dude who's been singing for years he sounded absolutely incredible. I don't know what he does, but he must take good care of that voice of his. He must drink a lot of tea with honey.

 

AXL and the rest of GUNS played for more than two hours...maybe even two and A HALF hours. It was a killer set with basically every song you would want to hear with very few exceptions. "Don't Cry" was noticeably missing from the set, but that's honestly the one main song I noticed wasn't performed. And I don't really care about "Don't Cry". I'm more of an "Appetite" fan above anything else and—now that I think of it—most of the songs from that album were played. "Welcome to the Jungle", "It's So Easy," "Nightrain", "Out Ta Get Me", "Mr. Brownstone", "Paradise City" (their closing song), "My Michelle", "Sweet Child O Mine", and "Rocket Queen". All present and accounted for.

 

Later into the set, a trapdoor opened in the very front of the stage and a piano rose from the pit below. Everybody hollered at the sight of the piano because they knew what song was coming up. Yep, you guessed it: "November Rain".

 

I actually kind of almost shed tears during "November Rain" but not because it's such a beautiful song, which it is. No, I was getting misty-eyed because it was during this song that I especially noticed how content and at-peace AXL appeared to be. You could clearly tell he was enjoying himself and he knew the show was going well. Between singing the lyrics in the song he would look down at his piano keys and he had this boyish grin on his face. It wasn't a menacing grin, nor was it smug. It was just peaceful. It seemed like he was in his happy-place, perhaps because most of the original band was once-again back together. And really, if you think about it, this was kind of a miracle. It was called the "Not in this Lifetime" tour because AXL had once said publicly that he never thought the band would get back together. "Not in this lifetime," he said. But there he was onstage again with most of the original band members. I'm sure the whole tour has been surreal for him.

 

That all being said, I would be full of shit if I were to say that the band members looked like they were best buds again. For the most part, they seemed to stay in their own spaces on the very big, non-intimate stage and only interact with each other on a very minimal basis. I mean, in old live videos, AXL would run around the stage, put his arm around Duff and Slash, sing into the mic with them...that kind of thing. But there wasn't much of that going on. There are clearly wounds in the band that will never completely heal. I don't know if they'll ever have that buddy-like dynamic onstage ever again...

 

Probably not in this lifetime, anyway.

 

Nevertheless, just the fact that AXL, Slash and Duff are actually back on tour with each other is miraculous enough. Even Steven Adler (as I mentioned before) played a few songs with them at a couple different shows throughout the tour (he wasn't in Foxborough, unfortunately). The only last remaining member out there is Izzy Stradlin and, as far as I know, he's not on any major bad terms with any of the members. I just think he prefers not go back to his days playing with GNR. Maybe he was traumatized by all the band drama, or maybe it was just the craziness of fame that traumatized him. Who knows.

 

I'm not sure if it was planned or just coincidence that—at one point during the night—Slash and the rhythm guitar player Richard Fortus did an instrumental guitar version of the Pink Floyd song "Wish You Were Here". It was a beautiful rendition and I couldn't help but wonder if it was a call for Izzy to join them onstage. I almost got a little misty-eyed during that one, too.

 

Before you knew it, 11 o'clock had rolled around and this was around the time when GNR played the crowd-pleasing sing-along song "Sweet Child O' Mine". At the end, AXL shouted "thank you!" and the band cleared the stage. Thinking the show was over, some people actually started to leave (ha, what idiots!), but I smelled an encore on the horizon. I leaned over to Pablo and said "They're going to play 'Paradise City'. There's no way they won't play Paradise City." Well, after a couple minutes, the band did come back onstage and actually played a four-song encore, the last song of which was, indeed, "Paradise City". And what a finale it was. There were all sorts of pyrotechnics and fireworks. Plus, it featured a guitar solo that Slash played with his guitar behind his back.

 

"Boston!" AXL shouted to the crowd as the song's ending came to a crescendo. "Good...fucking...night!"

 

And that was it. The concert was over and the band left the stage, though they did come out one more time to take a bow. They all had their arms around each other at this point, which was nice to see. It didn't even really look forced either. The drummer threw his drumsticks into the crowd and the guitarists threw their picks. I think AXL even threw his microphone.

Then, it was a friggin' mass exodus out of the stadium. Pablo wanted to buy some souvenirs to bring back home to Spain with him so we spent maybe 15 minutes or so waiting in line at the "merch truck". He ended up buying a hat and a poster. As for me, I was thiiiiis close to buying a cool, 1980s-style mesh hat with the GNR logo on it, but I decided against doing so because it was $25. A day or two later I looked online for the exact same hat and saw that I could get it probably for about ten dollars. I had a feeling that would be the case, though I suppose it wouldn't be the same as purchasing the hat at an official GNR merch truck.

 

A photo of the merch truck (on left) I took before the concert.

After Pablo acquired his souvenirs, we both tried to find our way back to my car, though we had difficulty retracing the same steps we took to get to the stadium. Both the train station and the dirt path were difficult to find. Nothing was lit up and I had to use the trusty flashlight feature that was on my smartphone. There were times when we were a tad concerned we would get mugged and we did pass one particular shady character at the dark, currently-out-of-operation train station who was seemingly waiting for a "night train". Fortunately, we made it back to my car in one piece and I proceeded to drive Pablo back to his host family's home in northern Natick.

I got Pablo back to his host's house by a little after one o'clock. I was back at my own house by about ten minutes before two. Not too shabby.

 

Overall, the night was a smooth success. Pablo was safe and sound and we had both witnessed one hell of a concert that night. It wasn't an expensive night, either. That one thirteen-dollar Bud Light made my wallet a little lighter, but what can you do? It could have been way worse.

More notably, I guess I sort of scratched something off my bucket list. I saw Guns N' Roses live, and, although it wasn't the entire band intact, it was still pretty damn close. And probably as close as I was ever going to get.

 

As fun a night as it was, though, there's still one thing that's kind of vexing me. I'm still wondering why I couldn't keep the cap to my four-dollar water bottle. I should have asked more questions. I had a right to know.

…

 

 

MATT BURNS is the author of several novels, including Weird Monster, Supermarket Zombies!, The Woman and the Dragon and Johnny Cruise. He’s also written numerous memoirs, including GARAGE MOVIE: My Adventures Making Weird Films, My Raging Case of Beastie Fever, Jungle F’ng Fever: My 30-Year Love Affair with Guns N’ Roses and I Turned into a Misfit! Check out these books (and many more) on his Amazon author page HERE.

 

 

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35 YEARS OF TURTLE POWER: A Tribute to 1990’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie

Revisiting the Blair Witch Project

My Childhood Obsession with Rambo

 

Video Store Memories

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Charlie (a story about Burns’ recurring nightmares featuring Charlie Chaplin)

 

Short memoirs/nostalgia:

CAPE CODDING IT: A Cape Cod Vacation Memoir

GREYHOUNDING IT, BABY! A Guide to taking a Greyhound Bus Long Distances

 

Visiting Mom in the ICU (short story contest winner)

 

A Love Letter to the Emerald Square Mall (about the death of the shopping mall age)

NEVER FORGET the Fun-O-Rama (a traveling carnival memoir)

Some Wicked Good Times: A Love Letter to Newbury Comics

Skateboarding in the 1990s

WAAF Goes Off the Air

Remembering That Time I Tried to Stop a Shoplifter at the Wrentham Outlets

The Strange, Surreal Moment of Being Called a DILF Inside a Panera Bread Restaurant on a Wednesday Afternoon

Weird Times en la Weirdioteca

 

Gaming/computers nostalgia:

 

RIP PowerBook G3

PROXOS IN THE PLEX: A Goldeneye 007 N64 Retrospective

 

100 DAYS of ZELDA: Revisiting Ocarina of Time

I Dream of Dream Machine (a memoir of the local video arcade)

 

I USED TO BE A GAMER: The 8-bit Nintendo Years

 

 

Writing Tips/Advice:

 

THE AUDIO BOOK EXPERIMENT: Tips and Advice on How to Record Your First Audio Book

Getting Your Novel Done

 

Making Your Good Writing Great

Getting Your Screenplay Done

 

Writing the Sequel

 

Writing the Trilogy

No-No, Learn to Love the Rejection: Some Sage Advice for Writers in Search of an Agent or Publisher

 

The Story Behind Supermarket Zombies!

The Story Behind The Woman and the Dragon

RIP PowerBook G3

Well, I knew the day would come eventually. It had probably been a year and maybe a half since I fired up my Mac PowerBook G3 and, alas, when I tried to boot it up just the other night, there was no more life in it. I pressed the power button several times, desperately trying to resuscitate my beloved machine, but it was to no avail. If only I could have performed CPR or mouth-to-mouth! I couldn't do this, though...mainly because it was a computer and not a human being. Instead, I unplugged and re-plugged, blew softly on the keyboard, gave the tracking pad gentle kisses, recited seven Hail Mary's with an Our Father for good measure, but it was no use. My PowerBook laptop was officially dead at the age of 16.

Indeed, it was 16 years ago when my parents gave the laptop to me for a high school graduation gift. It was the best Mac laptop on the market at the time and it had eight whole gigs for a hard drive! Holy shit! I needed a computer for college and I convinced my parents that the PowerBook was the best one to fit my needs. See, the dawn of digital video and digital video editing was just on the horizon. The PowerBook was being marketed as the first user-friendly laptop out there that had "Firewire" ports where you could import and export video from a digital video camera. Then you could edit the video with new user-friendly software called Final Cut Pro. My plan was to major in film at Boston University, so I figured this was the laptop I NEEDED to have. There was no better one out there that would suit my needs.

Of course, it's almost laughable these days to think that a computer with a eight gig hard drive would be a practical computer to use for video editing. Today, only about five minutes of rendered high-definition video would take up eight gigs of space. But the early 2000's were the days of non-high-definition video so you could actually fit about 40 minutes of raw video footage on the hard drive at a time. This is still not much at all, especially if you were looking to make a feature film or documentary where you usually have hours and hours of raw footage to edit. Nevertheless, I was still able to make some really cool short projects with my little PowerBook; I just had to be a little conservative about what shots I wanted to import. But I'll get to all that in just a bit.

The Canon Optura PI

About a month or two after I got my PowerBook, I went out and bought my first digital video camera for about $1200. I worked two jobs that summer - one as a cashier at Stop N' Shop and the other as an "associate" at CVS pharmacy - to save up for the purchase; plus, I had a lot of high school graduation money saved in the bank. The camera was a Canon Optura PI model and even today I would still consider it a good camera, though it was non-HD and it shot in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio (i.e. non-widescreen).

I videotaped a lot of silly stuff when I first got the camera. For some reason, I shot some footage of my friends using a Pogo Stick and jumping into a snowbank. How silly! Then, I documented a trip my friends and I took to a thrift store called "Savers". Riveting stuff, right? I also set the camera up on a tripod and filmed myself playing the drums. Oh, and I think I got a lot of footage of my Basset Hound Oliver playing with his bone. 

It wasn't long before I got sick of shooting nonsense. About a month after my camera purchase, I cut the crap and decided I was going to shoot and edit my first short film.

That short film was a horror movie called GUTTER.

A "publicity" still from GUTTER.

This movie - for the most part - made no sense whatsoever. I played the role of a psycho who is out to murder two teenage dudes who happen to be watching "Full House" in a finished basement. One of these dudes mysteriously disappears at one point in the movie and is never mentioned again. It's basically a continuity error that would make Ed Wood's continuity errors look like mere blemishes. But, yes, I wore a creepy horror movie mask and I went and murdered a teenage Full House fan played by my friend Tim who puts up a little fight and then the movie basically ends with me posing in Christ-like formation. There was no reason for this apparent religious symbolism. Fans of GUTTER would later try to "read into all of it" and I unfortunately had to tell them not to waste their time. "It's all bullshit."

Despite the fact that GUTTER was pretty terrible, it will always have its place in the Matt Burns history books as the first edited movie I ever made. The only 'editing' I had ever done before that was in a high school video production class but that was during the pre-digital-era and we edited with the archaic "on-line" (or was it off-line?) tape-to-tape machines.

Although I did manage to get my hands on a pirated version of Final Cut Pro (don't tell anybody) I never actually used Final Cut until several years after having my PowerBook. Instead, I paid about fifty bucks to download a program called Imovie onto my computer. Yes, these were the days when Imovie wasn't pre-installed on Mac computers. If you wanted the program, you had to buy it.

So I bought Imovie for fifty bucks and boy did I make good use of it. I edited GUTTER during my winter break from college and, at the time, I was pretty amazed with the final product. It was an edited film that told a story through the Eisensteinian (not to be mistaken with Einstein) art of montage. Of course, it was a pretty bad story with many plot-holes, but it was a story nevertheless. What impressed me the most was the realization that I didn't need to buy any expensive 16mm film or try to rent out a Steinbeck film editing machine from God-knows-where. I had the power to make movies with my video camera and my laptop. That's all I needed in this new digital age. It was pretty awesome.

My next major film endeavor came that next summer when I made another ten-minute short narrative movie called "British Dingo from Ireland". The title of that movie was basically born out of my inability to speak in an Irish accent without it sounding either British or Australian, so I figured, well, why not create an ambiguous character who may be all three?!

And I did just that. The character was named Mr. Dingo and he was a shady dude who wore a scally cap and a black trench coat (I was kind of ripping off the movie Boondock Saints, which was popular at the time). All Mr. Dingo cared about was money and he recently got himself involved in a big drug deal with some shadowy characters named Kado and Pristine. But Kado and Pristine try to double-cross Dingo and screw him over. The drug deal goes sour and Mr. Dingo finds himself in a fire-fight.

The "fire-fight", of course, involved toy guns and lots of gun sound effects that I believe I downloaded off Napster. The film also involved some pyrotechnics and when I say 'pyrotechnics' all we did was light a firecracker in a Miller Lite beer can to simulate the can being hit by a whizzing bullet.

The trailer for British Dingo from Ireland.

The full BRITISH DINGO FROM IRELAND movie.

When it came down to editing "British Dingo from Ireland", I really pushed Imovie's parameters. I remember that the first version of Imovie only provided two soundtracks for you to work with. This meant that you could usually put music on one track and then sound effects or dialogue on the other track. The problem was when you wanted to use background music, dialogue AND multiple sound FX at the same time. In editing programs today, you basically have unlimited tracks to work with so, say, if you have a car accident sequence and you want multiple sound effects (the crash, the horn sounding, glass shattering, hubcaps rolling, not to mention musical score and maybe even some dialogue, e.g. "holy shit we're crashing!") you have plenty of tracks to layer all the sound on top of each other. But when you only have two sound tracks? Well...your options are limited.

A rare photo of me editing "Dingo" on my PowerBook.

What I ended up doing is putting sound effects on the same track as music, which Imovie allowed me to do and the sounds would end up playing simultaneously. But you weren't supposed to do this, so it significantly slowed down the computer. In fact, in many cases, it slowed down the computer to such an extent that my poor PowerBook froze on me several times. I was beginning to realize that Imovie was really only useful for extremely simple editing. My movies were already becoming too complex what with their multiple sound fx, music and dialogue tracks etc.

Surprisingly, I didn't quite see all this as writing on the wall telling me I should really make the switch to Final Cut Pro. Well, maybe I did see the writing on the wall but I ignored it, mainly because I liked and knew how to use Imovie. 

So, short story long, I kept using Imovie. But it was with my next movie that I pushed it too far...

The movie was called "GAS" (later renamed "Only Entertainment") and the first version of this movie was made between my sophomore and junior year in college. It was a super-ambitious cat-and-mouse film about two teens who are playing Mario Kart, one gets pissed that the other dude beat him, they say "wanna take this outside?" and then a real-life car chase ensues. Reality mirrors fantasy and all that deep stuff. Despite the fact that I had no stuntmen and no permits to orchestrate any stunts, I surprisingly made the car chase look rather realistic through the use of montage and sound fx. 

Now, as I mentioned above, there are two different versions of this movie. Imovie was able to survive the first version of this edit, the version entitled "GAS", but then came the summer between my junior and senior year in college. I had just read filmmaker Robert Rodriguez's book Rebel Without a Crew, which is a very inspiring memoir of him making his first independent movie El Mariachi on a shoe-string budget. I was feeling all energized after reading the book and I realized, damn, I could do a whole lot better with GAS. I mean, it was a pretty solid movie but it could be waaaay better. All it needed was some better editing.

So I reedited GAS with A LOT MORE cuts and A LOT more sound FX and, well, this was when Imovie said, "No more!" Not only did the program die on me but it crashed my entire computer. My senior year started at the beginning of September and my poor little PowerBook didn't work until about the beginning of October. I had taken it to a repair place on the BU campus and they kept giving me the runaround whenever I asked what its status was. After several phone calls and numerous complaints, the computer finally came back fixed and it never crashed until the day it died in 2016. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the main reason it didn't crash was because I upgraded to the very first version of MAC OS X (i.e. Panther) later into my senior year. MAC OS X was being marketed as a system software that was virtually un-crashable. From my experience, this turned out to be true. My lovely PowerBook never crashed again.

As for GAS - now titled ONLY ENTERTAINMENT - I was worried that, with the computer crash, the newly edited version would be lost forever. And although Imovie didn't work at all after the computer was fixed, I was still able to export the finished movie to a DV tape and it was successfully saved. I was thrilled.

The full ONLY ENTERTAINMENT movie.

But, yes, Imovie was officially dead and - to no surprise - a new, more up-to-date (and legal) version of Final Cut Pro was on my Christmas wish-list that year. Santa Claus apparently decided I had been a good boy and I found "Final Cut Express" under my fake Christmas tree on Christmas morning. Final Cut Express was a more condensed (and affordable) form of Final Cut Pro. It had a few less features than its non-express counterpart, but it was still about a thousand times better than Imovie.

The first movie I made with the new Final Cut software (and last short narrative movie I made with my PowerBook) was a movie called WENDEL'S REVENGE. This was another silly movie that kind of fit in the horror genre. It's about a crusty dude named Rat Bonze who drives by his arch-nemesis Wendel and throws a dirty pair of underpants at him. Wendel takes offense and then hunts down Rat Bonze with the intention of killing him, hence the title "Wendel's Revenge". Sounds pretty avant-garde, right?

Here's the full WENDEL'S REVENGE movie.

I shot WENDEL'S REVENGE during winter break of my senior year in college but I didn't get around to editing it (with my new Final Cut Express software) until the summer after I graduated. It took me a little while to get used to the Final Cut software but it was so much more fit to handle a complex masterwork like WENDEL'S REVENGE. More importantly, it never made my computer crash! I was in love with Final Cut from that point forward and I must have created hundreds of projects (short films, wedding videos, documentaries and other videos) since. The only other editing programs I've used aside from Final Cut are Avid for my actual student films I made at BU and later on I tried Adobe Premiere but to this day it hasn't become a program I use very often, or really at all.

WENDEL'S REVENGE was the last short narrative movie I made on my PowerBook, though I did use it to edit numerous wedding videos, music videos and even a documentary called A PARALLEL WORLD (watch it HERE) where I investigate a haunted house on Cape Cod and attempt to communicate with the entities. All these projects were done between graduating college in 2004 and 2009 when I bought a new desktop Imac. I bought the Imac because I knew it was time to make the transition to working with hi-definition video. 

After 2009, I did still use my adorable PowerBook, mainly for word-processing, because by that time it had really lost its ability to do much else. It had long lost its Internet capabilities around the 2007 area and even then I remember it being very slow and sluggish. Web browsers were just getting too fast and complex for my poor eight-gig PowerBook.

The word-processing, however, still worked great. I had both Microsoft Office on it and my screenwriting software Final Draft. I can't even tell you how many things I wrote on my cute little PowerBook G3 between the years 2000 and, oh, 2014. In college, I of course wrote many a thesis paper, many of which got me A's...well, a couple A's. BU was pretty tough so I mostly got B's. One or two C's. 

Looking back, the most notable (college) paper I wrote on my PowerBook was a 50-page paper on the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yes, 50 whole pages! The assignment required me to analyse the Stanley Kubrick masterpiece shot-by-shot and write about the "elements of suspense", which included sound, music, mise-en-scene, camera angle, camera movement, lighting and the editing from one shot to the next. It was an extremely tedious process, but I think it was very valuable. Today I know 2001 like the back of my eyelids and it taught me everything there was to know about the language of film (of which Kubrick was a master) and how to use that language effectively. 

What was great about my PowerBook was that it had a DVD drive built right into it, so I could have the 2001 DVD playing in one window and then write about each shot in another window. What a machine! I loved you so much PowerBook. We had such great times together!

Oh, and I should mention I got a B-minus on that paper because I had "too many grammatical errors". A teacher's assistant graded it. Total crock of bull! I spent forever on that paper.

After college, I no longer had any thesis papers to write but my PowerBook certainly didn't suffer from lack of use. What I didn't expect is that - after graduation - I would get bitten by the writing bug. First, it was screenplays and then, later, it became prose. So, as a writer, my PowerBook became my most valued possession. Every screenplay I ever wrote was at least initially written on that laptop. And I've written dozens of screenplays over the years. I also wrote about five of my six novels on that laptop. Then there were all the poems I wrote, and essays, short stories, erotic tales of sweat and nudity...you name it!

Even when I purchased my Imac desktop in 2009, I still did the majority of my writing on the laptop because, well, it was portable and it allowed me to write in different environments with different types of energy. A lot of times, these environments would be libraries, like the Boston University Mugar library and the Boston Public Library, which were two favorites of mine. But I also liked bringing my PowerBook to places like Starbucks, Panera Bread and other coffee shops where the caffeine became the fuel I needed to turn me into an insane writing machine.

By the time 2014 rolled around, I noticed that the screen on my laptop was getting dimmer and dimmer by the day. My eyes were getting strained when I used it and, pretty soon, I just couldn't use the laptop anymore.

On Christmas 2014, Santa Claus once again decided I was a good boy and he left a new laptop under the Christmas tree. It wasn't a Mac, though. It was Dell and it was a rather simple Dell at that, only worth a couple hundred bucks. But it was a nice little computer and would be great for word processing and Internet use. 

I must say, however, that it felt like treason making the switch to a Dell. I swear on some nights I could hear my little Mac PowerBook weeping in the far corner of my bedroom where it collected dust until its eventual death. It felt hurt knowing I had found another laptop to assist me in my writing endeavors. Its heart was broken.

The Dell laptop has served me well over the past year and a half (I'm using it to write this blog right now), though it has also been a pain in the ass at times. It will never live up to my Mac PowerBook G3, even though it will try and fail.

Anyway, rest in peace, Mac PowerBook G3! What I shall do with your dead corpse I do not know. I'm still not ready to part ways with it. Maybe I'll keep you for the rest of my life. Who knows: if I ever become a well-known writer, maybe some sort of Smithsonion-like museum will want you in its possession. I mean, it would be like owning the typewriter Hemingway wrote his books on. Or Fitzgerald. Or Hunter Thompson. You get my drift. And that's not to sound arrogant or anything. The fact of the matter is that I'm on the same level as all of those writers. Well, let's not get nuts here. I'm well above them.

Boy, we had some great times together, PowerBook G3. I will never forget you. In fact, I think I probably wrote most of my significant work on you. I won't quite be sure of that until I'm on my death bed, though I feel it's probably true. You were good to me. I hope I was good to you. You lived sixteen years so I think I could've done worse to you. Know what I mean? I'm sure you do. You always understood me.

Love. Always.

Matt