The answer, my friend

  I’m not one of those who is bashing the Willie Nelson/ Bob Dylan concert. I had a great time Saturday night and everyone else I know did too.

Perhaps I’m a little biased because I live a few blocks from Grayson Stadium. While everyone else was rushing over to claim their space — only to get caught in a torrential thunderstorm, or “gully washer” as a friend called it — we were at home on 50th Street drinking gin & tonics, waiting for the menacing black cloud to pass over.

Having waited the storm out, we sauntered up to the stadium drier than Effingham County, just as Willie slid into his traditional opener, “Whiskey River.”

Other than a handful of jerks in the very front row — whose jerkdom I corroborated from several independent eyewitness sources — the crowd seemed uniformly mellow.

Indeed, over the last few years I’ve been impressed at the peace-loving nature of most concert crowds I’ve been in. Younger concertgoers today are just not into bad vibes like they were back when I frequented rock ‘n’ roll shows.

When my crowd would go to concerts — mostly metal shows back in the early to mid ’80s — we would go knowing that a certain percentage of guys in the audience went to shows primarily to get in fights. It was considered a real occupational hazard of concert-going back in the day, and if you weren’t into it — as I wasn’t — you knew to steer clear of the hard-ass crowd who weren’t there to enjoy the music.

Saturday night, however, I was able to push my way — if “pushing” is even applicable — near to the front with my seven-year-old daughter. Not only that, but she was able to lead the way most of the time.

At one point, with her up on my shoulders, one young guy there with his girlfriend turned to me, pointed to my daughter and said, “That is the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen.”

And then, almost as an afterthought, he looked down at the unopened can of Coors Light he had in his hand. “Want a beer?” he asked. Sweating in my (unnecessary) rain poncho under the joyous but weighty burden of the 48-pound little rock fan on my shoulders, I eagerly took him up on his spontaneous act of generosity.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. The dude wasn’t just being nice. That was the X talking.

It’s true that the choice of drugs has changed since my younger days. We were purely drinkers back then — beer, bourbon, Bacardi 151. Nowadays the younger crowd smokes a lot of weed and does Ecstasy, neither of which were nearly as big back in my day.

But say what you will. I’m not one to look a gift horse — or a gift beer — in the mouth.

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