Ever wondered how the tradition of yelling "Freebird!" at a concert started? No? Well what the hell's wrong with you?
Anyways, the WSJ digs deep into this pressing issue of the day and devotes mass quantities of ink and bandwidth to it (not quite sure how the Laffer Curve got worked into the angle, but whattaya gonna do) ...
Kevin Matthews is a Chicago radio personality who has exhorted his fans -- the KevHeads -- to yell "Freebird" for years, and claims to have originated the tradition in the late 1980s, when he says he hit upon it as a way to torment Florence Henderson of "Brady Bunch" fame, who was giving a concert. He figured somebody should yell something at her "to break up the monotony." The longtime Skynyrd fan settled on "Freebird," saying the epic song "just popped into my head."Mr. Matthews says the call was heeded, inspiring him to go down the listings of coming area shows, looking for entertainers who deserved a "Freebird" and encouraging the KevHeads to make it happen.
But he bemoans the decline of "Freebird" etiquette. "It was never meant to be yelled at a cool concert -- it was meant to be yelled at someone really lame," he says. "If you're going to yell 'Freebird,' yell 'Freebird' at a Jim Nabors concert."
Well, now I know how to conduct myself when Jim Nabors goes a-touring next time.

1 Comments
Take THIS, barbarian!!
Some people have such pedestrian tastes...