Rocker girl

We don't have Hannah Montana at our house. Sure, we do listen to a couple of Miley Cyrus songs we've downloaded, but for the most part, the girls aren't into the teen phenomena. No Jonas Brothers, no High School Musical, no Hilary Duff. That music, says Leah, is for kids.

Nope, what the small ones in the household are into is David Bowie (thanks to Leah's obsession with the movie Labyrinth), K.T. Tunstall, Nickelback, Elton John, and ABBA. On Christmas day, they ended up watching Mama Mia! with the grown-up daughters of my friend Shell. (Fortunately, the whole who's-my-dad? portion of the movie seems to have gone over their heads.) Since then, it's been all Dancing Queen all the time at my place. Well, that and a mixed CD of Canadian rock that I made for Alissa, and liked so much that I made me a copy too: 54-40, State of Shock, Tom Cochrane, Barenaked Ladies, Blue Rodeo, Great Big Sea, Colin James, Cowboy Junkies, Big Sugar, etc., etc. You should hear them singing along.

Thursday evening we were heading into Stittsville to go grocery shopping. The radio played AC/DC and then Def Leppard. I was in a contemplative mood, and it brought back memories of concerts gone by. Memories of the good times spent with friends at concerts in Detroit when I was in high school. I remember taking the tunnel bus over from Windsor to Detroit, running the gauntlet of guys trying to sell you weed and scalped tickets, and then up through the parking garage to Joe Louis Arena or Cobo Hall to see AC/DC, or Rush, or Styx, or Alice Cooper, or Bob Seger, or Iggy Pop, or Blue Oyster Cult, or the J. Geils Band. Sneaking mickies of rye past security at the door. Chartering a schoolbus to take the entire senior class out to the Pontiac Silverdome to see the Stones once, and the Who another time. Buying concert teeshirts, and holding Bic lighters up during power ballads (nowadays they just hold their cellphones open. It's the end of an era, I tell ya.) Yeah, those were good times.

The final chords of Pour Some Sugar On Me were playing. I glanced in the rear-view mirror to see what the girls were doing. Rae was gazing aimlessly out the window. But Leah, my Leah, was playing air guitar. The tradition lives on.