Senior Citizens Rock the Desert

So, we had a little excitement on the COB last night. The USO brought the band Bad Company in for a concert. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I’ve got to admit that it was a lot of fun.


The fact that Bad Company is still playing concerts anywhere raises a few obvious questions, which I felt I should answer for you:
1) Aren’t they kind of old?
Yes, yes they are. Wikipedia says they started recording as a band in 1974, and most of them had been in other bands before that.  For perspective, I think that my parents were still college students at that point. That officially makes them old.  (The band, not my parents.)

2) Where have they been for the last 20 years?
I don’t know, perhaps playing concerts in the middle of middle-eastern deserts?  I definitely haven't heard them anywhere outside of classic rock stations.

3) Can they still play?
Believe it or not yes. There wasn’t a single walker, oxygen tank, or set of dentures visible on stage (although who knows what goes on backstage). And, while I obviously don’t have any prior concerts at their prime to compare this to (given the fact that I wasn’t alive during their prime), I have to give them credit. For the most part their lead singer sounded like their studio records, to include being more or less in tune. (Which is a lot more than I can say for a few other rock acts I’ve seen live.)

The lead-up to the concert was funny and even made me feel a little old as I sat in clinic trying to explain to some of my medics who Bad Company was. I think we finally determined that most of them had heard at least one or two of their songs, they just didn’t recognize the band name. In my defense, the band’s probably a little old even for me. (And the appearance of their lead singer would certainly support that… talk about somebody who’s showing his age!)
I was much more excited about this band than some of the previous acts we’ve had on our COB. The USO does a great job bringing in folks to entertain us, but I guess you can’t please everybody. The last 2 acts centered around a former Pussy Cat Doll’s solo act and some country singer who’d been on American Idol (Kelly Pickles?). Neither one was much of a draw for me.
Either way, the concert was fun. It wasn’t a huge crowd, so we ended up within 5 or 10 feet of the stage. (My ears are still ringing.) They played most of their old hits, and managed to make a pretty hilarious mistake by pulling a bunch of soldiers up to have them sing the chorus on “If You Needed Somebody”, only to find out that most of them didn’t know the song or any of the words. (In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t know them either. I had to scroll through the band’s Wikipedia page to pick out what the song’s name was.) It got a little awkward at times because, let’s fact it… these guys are not young and our parking lot stage was definitely not a stadium packed with screaming fans. (Was Bad Company ever big enough to play to a stadium packed with screaming fans? I don’t know.) But, all in all, it certainly beat spending the night watching a movie on the laptop.