The coliseum

As a non-sports-oriented teenager circa “Saturday Night Fever,” I associated Carolina Coliseum with rock concerts exclusively. It was a major basketball venue too, of course, some might say a basketball cathedral, but to me the Coliseum meant double-dates and short-term hearing loss.

The music was almost incidental. A few of the bands I liked, but I bought just as many tickets to see headliners whose albums I had no interest in owning. KISS, for example. One gaudy, head-rattling spectacle after another.

No, regardless of who was on stage, the overall experience varied little. Madding crowds and vertiginous seating, dry air thick with pot smoke and pheromones. When I was a child, I swarmed as a child. And Carolina Coliseum is where I did it.