Never too old to rock ‘n’ roll, unless it’s after 10

I had the ticket and everything.

Dan Baird and Homemade Sin were coming to JJ’s Bohemia on M.L.K. Boulevard. I’m a fan, so I bought a $15 ticket, which is super cheap considering the price of shows at larger venues. Tickets for the Goo Good Dolls at the Tivoli, for instance, go as high as $178 — for the Goo Goo Dolls?!

Baird is the former lead singer of the Georgia Satellites and “Keep Your Hands to Yourself.” We all remember that song.

His guitarist in Homemade Sin is Warner Hodges with Jason & the Scorchers, the first band that mixed rock, country and punk into a sound that was, as someone described, “a stick of dynamite dipped in kerosene.”

It was going to be a rockin’ good time with some of my favorite music.

And I didn’t go. Why? Time.

First, time may have caught up with me. I’m apparently an old man who no longer has the stamina to handle a rockin’ good time. Second, Dan Baird and Homemade Sin weren’t going to come on until about 10 p.m., and that sounded a little late for my creaky old mindset.

I’m pretty ashamed.

I love music. I have it on 90% of the time in my car. I have an iPod with about 600 songs that plugs right into my car stereo. I can hear The Beatles one song, Led Zeppelin the next, Miranda Lambert next and Robert Cray after that.

Some of the best concerts I’ve ever seen have been in — as a friend once put it — “stifling, smoky, ramshackle houses of noise.” There’s a triballike feel in a club that only fits 100 or so people. You’re crammed in side by side, sweating and enjoying yourselves. You don’t put yourself into a situation like that unless you’re a diehard fan.

So I swear, the next time a band I like comes to Chattanooga, plays a club and doesn’t come onstage until 10 p.m., I’m going to go. I’m going to prove to myself that I’ve still got it; that I can get home after midnight and get up at 6 a.m. to go to work. Prove to myself that age has nothing to do with whether I can take it.

I’m going to do that. Really I am.

Shawn Ryan