Thanks to a generous boss, a couple of pretty, young co-workers and the random nature of my life, I found myself in the mosh pit at a Huey Lewis and the News concert Friday night.
That’s right, a Huey Lewis Mosh Pit.
Huey Lewis wrote the soundtrack for my formative years. My boyfriend and I saw him in concert at Alpine Valley on one of our first dates, and we watched Back to the Future (in which Lewis played a cameo role and for which he received an Academy Award Best Song nomination) on another date.
More than 28 years have passed since then. The boyfriend became my husband and three of our four children are now older than their father and I were when we rocked out to “Do you believe in love?” back in 1985.
Meanwhile, Huey Lewis and the News rolled on. In fact, Huey Lewis has produced or appeared on 22 albums from 1978 through 2010. He and the News released 13 albums from 1983 to 1992 and they’re still touring today.
Rockers either grow old gracefully, or they grow old obviously and Huey Lewis clearly falls in the former category. For the most part, he sticks to what he knows and augments his original still passionate band members with a couple of extremely talented musicians.
I grinned widely as I attempted the same awkward dance-to-the-music-while-simultaneously-snapping-cell phone-videos-and-pics-of-the-band executed enthusiastically though probably arthritically by my fellow aging mosh pitters.
We sang along with lyrics that seem relevant today. “It don’t take money, it don’t fame. You don’t need no credit card to ride this train….”
Midway through our joint belting of “It’s Hip to Be Square,” I texted my husband a concert picture.
“Huey Lewis,” I captioned. “If he’s still got it, so do we.”
That’s the Power of Love and the contagious optimism of a man who has shared his music and apparent youth serum for more than 44 years.
Here are a couple of really short clips. As I said, I was dancing and shooting pictures and videos and reliving my college years, so take these with a grain of salt, or a shot of grain.