Idol Worship

Tonight I'm heading up to Casino Rama to see Bryan Ferry.

In August 1988, a wee lad of 14, my parents had an extra ticket to his Bete Noire tour in Toronto. I agreed to go simply because there was nothing good on TV that night. I hated Ferry and his Roxy Music cohorts. Ugh, that was music my parents listened to. There weren't nearly enough gritty guitars... But I went.
We got to Exhibition Stadium, and I looked at all the middle-aged, middle-class fans with distaste.

The lights dropped, as the steam rose from the audience. As the curtain dropped, the first notes of Limbo started. 60 seconds in I was hooked. I was dancing on my chair for the entire show, a 100% convert. At the end of the show, I elbowed my way to the front of the queue to buy a t-shirt.
I then spent 10 years obsessively listening to Roxy Music and Ferry's solo material. Weathering the barbs of friends who didn't "get it." It wasn't fashionable to like glitter and glam. In the late 90s, it suddenly became trendy, and fellow musicians were jumping on the bandwagon.
For a laugh, i wore my Bete Noire memento to a rehearsal and my drummer gasped "where did you get that?" At the concert, I glibly replied laughing on the inside.
Around that time, his portrait was tattooed on my left forearm, along with similar icons of David Bowie and Keith Richards.

I have spent the last 23 years trying to see him in concert again, and always in vain. The first tour that hit Toronto after '88 found me broke and unable to afford a ticket. The next couple, including Roxy Music's reunion in 2001 (ish), found me forced to be elsewhere.
A few months ago, he announced a North American tour. I noticed that while there was no Canadian gig listed, there was a suspicious 6-day break between New York and Ohio. That's too long a break... I trolled the internet until discovering a sneaky, not-well-publicized stop in Rama.

So now I've got fantastic seats to tonight's show. Prepare to be bombarded with posts about one of my musical idols and more Ferry-inspired music blasting from my studio in the near future.