I can’t tell if I was excited last night because I was seeing a rock ‘n’ roll band, Cheap Trick, I’ve loved for a very, very long time, in a setting as intimate as the Troubadour, or because I was with two of my good friends I’ve known since the 80s. We’ve bounced around cities together for decades and somehow ended up in the same one. I’m just so blessed. They’re my brothers, really. As a matter of fact, one of my buddies and I were in our first rock band together, as teenagers in the 80s. That’s how far back we go. And we probably even covered a Cheap Trick song.
Cheap Trick added a show at the Troubadour last minute. My buddies texted to come to the show. I had that brief hesitation — oh, I don’t want to fight traffic on a weeknight, drive from Pasadena to West Hollywood, blah blah blah. Then I thought about the recent tragic passing of Irish musician Glen Hansard, who was my age and such a profound influence on my music when I first discovered him through The Swell Season and The Frames, back in the early 2000s. The point is that we never know how long we’ll have our friends. We never know how long we’ll be here. I know that sounds dramatic, and everyone says some version of “live today, you don’t know about tomorrow.” But I also thought, Cheap Trick are a great band, and these dudes aren’t young anymore, and hell, I don’t know how much longer they’ll be able to play. Glen’s passing really made me rethink how important it is to just say fuck it. Go. It doesn’t matter the cost, the location, what you must wake up for in the morning. Just go.
And my God, I’m so glad I did. It was one of the most fun shows I’ve been to. Me and my buds, crackin’ beers, and part of me thought, I shouldn’t drink on a weeknight. That’s bullshit too. It was fun. Of course, we all have limits. But a limit shouldn’t become an excuse to not go.
There was a point I almost cried during one of the songs — “Surrender,” and oh, how fitting that song was to the whole experience. Not just to surrender to the moment, but to take notice of the age gaps in that room, as well as the gap between the first time I ever saw Cheap Trick live in the 80s and now. I wrote a memoir about music that came out in 2022 called “Somewhere in the Music, I’ll Find Me”. Yes, I’m plugging my book. Maybe it’s like in my book, how that first rock ‘n’ roll show I saw started this massive desire in me for rock music, and the Cheap Trick show reminded me, all these years later, that it’s still a big part of my life. It’s still something I get to do. Maybe it was because at this show I was fully sweaty, happily stuck in a tight crowd for 90 minutes, was intimate with every single person around me — not in the kissing sense, though we’re close enough, and I think I got felt up, and I probably felt up a couple other people too, because that’s what happens in a rock show audience. There’s no malice intent behind it. Bodies rub off bodies. But there was this respect in the room for the band on stage, and for each of us. I looked around and saw young people in their twenties, people my age, people many years older, and we were all just feeling it together. Many of us had fallen in love with this band as kids, and look how much we’ve all changed, how many lessons we’ve carried with us, and here we all were, packed into a sold-out Troubadour.
One of the songs took me straight back to the 80s, flooded me with memories of being a teenage girl, fun, loving, silly, devoted to being a musician and with something to prove. And here I am now, a woman, feeling that same excitement for the future, that same energy, still with something to prove. I’m so glad I said what the fuck, I’m going to the Troubadour.
I’m sure I stunk when I left. I was sticky, there was beer spilled on me at some point, sweaty beyond belief. Normally, I’m repulsed by sweat, but there’s nothing better than sweat in a rock bar. And there is no reason to complain ‘cause back in the day we’d also be covered in cigarette smoke. When I used to be on stage, fronting a heavy metal band back in the 90s, the second I started sweating, I knew the show had really begun. I’d leave the stage so drenched I could wring my clothes out, and sometimes it wasn’t even my sweat. It was everyone else’s, on me, and that’s fucking glorious.
I hadn’t been packed that tight into a crowd for a rock show in a long time, and somewhere in the middle of it I found myself thinking about the pandemic and how nobody really brings it up anymore, and yet there I was, remembering exactly what it felt like back in 2020 to wonder if we’d ever get to do this again. Surprised myself with that one.
So go live your life. I haven’t fully, for a long time. I’ve hunkered down, gotten anxious about this or that, some of it was put onto me, but honestly the anxiety is ridiculous. A rock show in the middle of the week with your buddies? Nothing beats that for me. And apparently for the other 300 people in attendance. They needed for themselves too.
I’m not saying abandon your wellbeing or health. God knows I’d never say that, considering what I’ve been through. But have that slice of bacon, have a drink, enjoy that cigarette. Believe me, I’m sure most of the audience last night is on a statin. EMS was posted stage side too. I’m not sure if it was for the band or for all of us with AARP cards, but it’s nice to know we had backup.
Go get sweaty because tomorrow you’ll probably put yourself right back on notice. And we must live. We’re still here.
Thank you, Glenn Hansard for all that you have done musically, inspirationally, and in this minor way, reminding a girl to keep going on.
©️ 2026 Laurie Markvart
Laurie Markvart's Diary 