I recently overheard a workplace conversation between two hipsters. They were discussing their weekend plans with their young children. One said they were going to the aquarium. Now, to me the aquarium is a glass rectangle, sitting on a shelf, containing cloudy water, tinted rocks, plastic seaweed and five impossibly colored, fingernail-size fish with an average life expectancy of fifty-six hours. I guess things have changed.

Apparently, there are now life-size aquariums, like gigantic glass-bottom boats, where kidnapped fish and water animals are on display. Like water-filled zoos, humans can pay $125 apiece and gawk at these poor finned creatures while eating ice cream and wearing My Other House Is Underwater sweatshirts. So these two millennials go on gushing about the aquarium and one says, “Ya, the kids love it, we have annual passes.” Annual passes? I think to myself, holy shit, take the damn kids outside! Have a catch with the little bastards. Before they’re forever doomed to have their lunch money stolen by kids on the playground, take ’em to a ball game, or better yet, a rock show.

Me and my kids have seen well over seventy rock shows. I think I did them a public service by exposing them to the angry mob, explicit lyrics and the twenty-minute drum solo as soon as they could walk. Seriously, what’s better, your kid saying, “Remember when we saw Iron Maiden at The Forum on the Maiden England tour?” or being asked, “Remember when we saw the clownfish and it got lost in the algae?” Maiden crushes clownfish every time. Music teaches us stuff guppies can’t.

I learned from Van Halen that “5150” is the police code for picking up a crazy person and that FUCK means For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge (and that being branded with these four letters was a scarlet letter in medieval days). I thought that word was a fairly recent invention, and while maybe not uttered for the first time at a rock show, certainly perfected there with repeated use. But our musical journey doesn’t always have to be F this and F that, if need be, it can be sweet and innocent. Carole King wrote “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” at age eighteen. It was #1 for the Shirelles in 1960 and stayed in the top ten for seven weeks. She wrote “Locomotion” in 1962 recorded by Little Eva, her babysitter.

Rock bands do numerous things with great frequency. They write songs about love, aka hot chicks. To get in the zone, they party, they curse between songs, they fight like all families do, they use ambiguous lyrics so you’ll think they’re talking about the devil. Alas, they also tend to break up, as booze, drugs and four-letter vocabularies hurt their problem-solving skills. People are flawed and relationships are tricky. Chemistry can be pursued but never really harnessed. Rock’s imperfections, might-have-beens, near-misses and sometimes heart-breaking developments are why we go to shows, debate songs and performances and generally worship at the altar of the Gibson Les Paul. Weird stuff happens, the rock gods shuffle the cards according to magical, unseen rhythms. The Buffalo Springfield broke up after just eighteen months when bass player Bruce Palmer got busted for pot and was deported. Band member Neil Young said Palmer was the glue to the whole thing and that had he stayed, “We would still be together today.”

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In January 1969, Led Zeppelin played their first show at the Fillmore West, opening for Country Joe and the Fish and making $2,500. In February 1969 they played their first show at the Fillmore East – they opened for Iron Butterfly and stole the show with “Dazed and Confused” at which point Iron Butterfly canceled the last show. How cool would it be to have a ticket stub from one of those shows? Nowadays people heading out to a rock show are all about the hundred dollar t-shirt. I’ve certainly bought my fair share because, well, what are you supposed to wear to formal events and business functions if you don’t have any band t-shirts? Still, one of the very best things about going to a rock show is that every concert comes with a free souvenir – the f’n ticket stub, man! The concert ticket is the Holy Grail of worthless collectibles. One of life’s most perplexing developments is the whole print-your-own-ticket phenomenon. Who would fuckin’ do that? A piece of paper spit out of a laser printer isn’t a ticket. It has no musical soul, no Ticketmaster credibility! The concert-goer that gains admittance with an 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheet of paper is a disorganized slacker who cannot possibly be committed to the evening’s musical cause. He’s a last-minute, seat-of-his-pants rocker and I hope I never have to sit next to him (unless he buys me a beer).

You can’t put a price on rock & roll, man! … But if I had to … Learning the real meaning of the F-word from Van Halen: $11.99. Writing songs for your babysitter: $100. Hearing Zeppelin in 1969: $1 million. Seeing the legends of rock, saving tons of real concert tickets and letting your freak flag fly with your kids: priceless.