That Summer Seemed to Last Forever

My old German student Jenny has been in Hungary, her homeland until age 9, for the past couple of weeks. Our plans of meeting up finally happened Saturday, one of the greatest days in the history of Budapest: T-Mobile’s annual free concert at Heroes Square. Starring Megasztar Ruzsa Magdi and…

Yup, Bryan Freaking Adams.

Now ordinarily you might look at the Canadian crooners reproitre and feel unsatisfied beyond the classic jolting chords of Summer of ’69, but for me, BA’s always meant a little more. You see, everything I do, I do for Bryan Adams. Back at the end of 6th grade, way back before the summer of ’92, we chose his Robin Hood serenade to close out our elementary school career with a tribute to our parents who suffered through so much in the Lakeshore gym-turned-theatre.

I was stoked, as you should be for a free concert in a European capital. Others weren’t so excited, and opted for the utterly commonplace occurrence of an evening of gypsy music at local hotspot, West Balkan. It’s akin, I suppose, to a New Orleans resident skipping out on a Tom Petty show for another night at the jazz club. Regardless, I was joined by Noemi, legal intern Alla and student Jenny.

Magdi opened. She’s the most famous of the Megasztar’s, Hungary’s very own version of American Idol. She switched back and forth between English and Hungarian seamlessly and rocked pretty well. She covered Janis Joplin and Queen to rave reviews. My favorite, though, was a wild take on Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life.

But the 200,000 who showed up in the shadow of Hungary’s heroes didn’t come for Magdi. They came for Mr. Adams. Hungary and Canada have many links. Many Hungarians live in Canada, especially Toronto. Recently, Canada was so moved by some marker in Hungary’s history that they donated a waterfall – a Niagra falls – to the WestEnd shopping mall just four blocks from my flat. And apparently history and political cooperation extends into music. Hungarians dig Bryan Adams.

He popped up, in the midst of the crowd, on an elevated platform to start his set. After a rockin’ intro. His band disappeared, replaced by only an acoustic guitar. He asked us to forgive him, he knew not what he was doing. I wasn’t the only one ready to forgive him. The ladies were squealing at each song they recognized, even if they didn’t know before that it was him who sang it. I was probably squealing, too.

We’d been anticipating, for several hours, and even the several days leading up to the concert, that the singular moment when we realized the chords he has banging out were Summer of ’69 would be one of the greatest moments in the history of our lives.

I am here to testify - today, tonight, forever – that it was. It was good. So very good. Egeszegedre-good. I bought my first real six string. So so good. Bought it at the five and dime. Wow. Waves of goodness. Played it till my fingers bled. Yes. Yes. Yes. Was the summer of ’69.

The moment was so good that I could do nothing but call Kat and Janos and put them on speakerphone so they could taste the moment. I don’t think it worked.

By the time dusk set, he’d rocked through 2 hours of songs, laced with hits if not stuffed full of them. He strained his way through All for One, All for Love as the grandest of finales, he’d given his voice to Let’s Make it a Night to Remember, 18 Until I Die and Cuts like a Knife.

I guess I didn’t have a good answer, swaying with Noemi, Jenny and Alla as he asked, rather repeatedly, if I’d ever really, really really ever loved a woman. No good answer except a wistful smile.

But I do know now that I’ve ever really, really really ever had a man crush on a Canadian rocker. Well, sort of ever really, really really ever…