My Nightmare Experience With Slash, Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson

As the classic song by the O’Jays goes, “I like music, any old kind of music.” I have universal musical tastes and don’t discriminate, being a fan of everything from smooth jazz to hard rock.

This spring and summer has been an “Ol’ Skool Headbanger’s Ball” of sorts for me – unintentionally. By coincidence, I ended up attending two big rock shows in the past couple months – Rock on the Range at the Crew Stadium in Columbus in May and the “Rock of Ages” tour with Lita Ford, Poison and Def Leppard at the Riverbend amphitheater in Cincy on July 2.

The “Rock of Ages” show was okay, overall. The only person I really wanted to see was Lita Ford, but missed most of her set because the show started right at 7 on the nose and her set ended around 7:30 – which I found odd. Most shows give audience members a 10- or 15-minute grace period to find their seats and get settled before the action starts!

Trying to find my seat, I heard the last strains of “Close Your Eyes Forever” and at least got to see Lita perform “Kiss Me Deadly,” but her set was way too short. At first, I was thinking maybe they gave my girl short shrift because of sexism in the music industry. But if that were the case, they wouldn’t have even had her on the bill in the first place. Still, she’s was definitely under-utilized. It would have been interesting to see her come out and join Brett Michaels and Poison for an acoustic power ballad set of “Close My Eyes Forever” and “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” (which Poison inexplicably didn’t even perform).  

To avoid getting caught in a traffic snarl, I left before headliner Def Leppard performed any of their songs that are familiar to me: “Photograph,” “Hysteria” and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” (although I did see them do "Animal"). 

Despite the somewhat disappointing show, I found Riverbend to be a neat little concert venue surrounded by an amusement park. I’d like to go back and take the kids in my family some time.

This year was my first time attending the Rock on the Range festival, which featured bands old and new, from Slash and Megadeth to Five Finger Death Punch and Incubus. Veteran hip-hop act Cypress Hill even took the stage.

Being in the audience at Rock on the Range was like stepping back into the '70s or '80s, with scores of hardcore rock fans banging their heads and pumping their fists in unison. The festival was very well-organized, with acts taking the stage on time and the large crowd remaining under control (at least when I was there).

The main reason I attended Rock on the Range was to see Slash, former Guns ‘n’ Roses guitarist and now a solo artist with his own band. Earlier this year, I happened upon his autobiography at the library and became absorbed in the juicy page-turner. Among other things, I learned that like me, Slash grew up in an interracial family, with a black mother and a white father (my parents are black, my stepparents are white and I have biracial siblings).

Slash put on a good show, did stuff from his new album Apocalyptic Love and other solo material as well as at least one GNR classic. The crowd sang along with vocalist Myles Kennedy to "Sweet Child o' Mine," very nostalgic.

I also enjoyed seeing Rob Zombie. He's a true showman who uses stage makeup, costumes, sets, video screens and lighting to full effect, like a younger version of Alice Cooper. Before Rob Zombie took the stage, I came in on the last part of Marilyn Manson's set. During the show, a guy came up to me and offered me a free wrist band so that I could get closer to the stage. “Thanks but no thanks,” I told him. Get closer to Marilyn Manson? Not my idea of a good time. He scares me. If I met him, it would be like encountering some kind of creature from a horror movie like Frankenstein - which is probably the image he wants to project.

I enjoyed Rock on the Range, but a nightmare unfolded after the show ended. Concert goers such as myself who chose not to pay $15 to park in the Crew Stadium’s lot took our chances on parking in the lots of the businesses that surround the venue. After the show, I came back to Aldi’s parking lot to find that my car was gone.

It's the worst feeling in the world not to be able to find your car, whether forgetting where you parked in a mall parking lot or, heaven forbid, realizing that your car has been towed or stolen. A car is like an extension of yourself, like a portable version of your house, where far too many of us spend way too much time caught in traffic.

I understand that a private business has the right to tow away cars even after hours, but the towing enforcement at Rock on the Range seemed to be selective. Other cars that parked in the lot where I did, including a monster pickup truck that wasn't exactly inconspicuous, were left untouched.

After I snapped out of denial and finally came to grips with the fact that my car had been towed or stolen, I schlepped all the way back to the stadium and related my plight to a security person and two state highway patrol officers, who all told me that there was nothing they could do to help me. They said since the incident happened off the stadium's property, I was on my own.

When it comes to the highway patrol, how far does this "not my turf" approach to law enforcement - or lack thereof - go? If I had told them that I saw someone taking a trash can and breaking out the store’s window and looting or witnessed a drug deal with hundreds of grams of cocaine going down in Aldi’s lot, would they have shrugged and told me it was none of their business?

Eventually, I called Columbus police on my cell and was able to find out that my car had been towed to a lot way down on the other side of town off Greenlawn Avenue. After what seemed like an eternity trying to flag down a cab that takes credit cards (Yellow Cab is apparently the only company in Columbus that does), I finally made it to the impound lot - only to discover that the impound lot doesn’t take credit cards! Go figure! The nice guy at the lot, a young black man, drove me to a nearby gas station where I was able to withdraw money at the ATM and finally spring my beloved vehicle from bondage.

I believe in personal responsibility and I learned a lot from this experience. Number one, I'll use better judgment in where I park from now on. As the saying goes, the cheap comes out expensive. I saved money by not paying to park, but cutting corners ultimately cost me a hell of a whole lot more! I'll also make sure to always carry cash in the event that I get stranded or some other kind of emergency arises.

But I also believe that venues like the Crew Stadium that depend on people patronizing their establishments would do well to have some kind of plan in place to accommodate patrons who run into emergencies. If someone loses their keys and doesn't have a cell phone - or misplaced their phone or the battery went dead or any number of other scenarios - it would be nice if they had a courtesy phone that could be used to call for assistance. At the very least, they should be able to call the police if you tell them that your car has been stolen or you’ve been the victim of some other crime.

What if I had been a reporter for Spin, Rolling Stone or USA Today who was working on a story about the summer music festival circuit and flew in to Columbus to write a story about Rock on the Range? Or, I could have been a reporter for Vibe, XXL or another national hip-hop magazine who flew in to do an interview with Cypress Hill. If I was an out-of-town journalist from a big city like New York or L.A., I don't think my impression of Columbus and Ohio, in general, would have been very positive. My impression would have been that the city and state are inhospitable and the “authorities” aren’t very helpful to people in distress.

The whole experience was like that movie “Judgment Night” where one wrong turn ends up turning what should be an enjoyable experience into a disaster. Although it actually only took me a couple of hours to get my car back (the show let out around 11 p.m. and I got home around 1 in the morning), it was an ordeal – the night that would never end!