If you don't know who Air Supply is, think "1980's Soft Rock". They are all about the love ballads:

• Lost In Love
• All Out of Love
• The One That You Love
• Making Love Out of Nothing At All

Do you see the theme? (Hint: starts with the letter L)

Anyways, let's get this out of the way first. I am not a fan of Air Supply. They are one-step below "tolerable" on the rating scale, whatever that is. "Mildly painful to listen to" would be about right.

So when offered free tickets to see them in concert, my wife did not even have to ask me. She said yes for herself and no for me. I love that about her - she knows when not to ask. That's a good attribute for a spouse to have.

Her friend had three tickets, one for herself, one for her boyfriend, and one for my wife. The only stipulation was that I would have to drive them there - which is fine. The concert was at a casino - they go to the concert and meanwhile I am playing Blackjack. I don't mind spending a few hours in a casino every once and a while. Everybody was happy at this point.

Well, I would describe "the boyfriend's" state as not so much happy, but ignorant. He had never heard of Air Supply, being a heavy metal/punk rock fan. He literally said to me, "Air Supply? Who's that?" I described them as being similar to Van Halen - a little white lie designed to keep him blissfully unaware and me in the casino until the concert had started... Self preservation.

Well, someone must have clued the boyfriend in to who Air Supply was. He pulled out of the deal the night before. Now, there was a ticket free. My wife was still kind enough to tell her friend that I would still not want to go. I was stupid enough to say "Well, if you can't find anyone else, I will go." When will I learn???

So I'm at the concert. Great seats by the way - 2nd row center. Amazing seats actually for any other concert.

The concert starts - first couple of songs are actually "covers" from other bands. Not too bad. Tolerable at this point.

The middle of the concert was a disaster. The human mind tends to block out painful experiences, so I don't really remember much. The half time show was just the back-up musicians performing one song - pretty good actually. But once the main act was back on stage, back to the suckiness.

And then to close the show they did 3 of their hits back-to-back. They invited the audience down in front of the stage, so my 2nd row tickets became 8th row. But that was fine, everyone was on their feet and singing along. Not too bad, based on the audience participation. The energy level of the audience does improve the experience.

Air Supply, as a band, is made up of two guys pushing 60 (one is 56 years old). Some of the show was really corny. There was a point in the show when one of the men was doing "air keyboard" for about 5 minutes. The real keyboardist was playing the song, but the lead singer was prentending to play keyboards in the air. At another point, one of the leads was using the other's fingers as a pretend keyboard for 5 solid minutes. A lot of unnecessary ass shaking. And a lot of unnecessary tight clothes.

Anyways, to my point. I will gladly give Air Supply a lot of props for their past success, and obviously their hard-core fans are pretty happy to be able to see them in concert. They are probably making lots of money on this tour, and great for them. Really - they deserve it. But the show they put on Saturday night could have been much better if they had just (a) dressed nicely instead of tight pants, leather pants and chest-showing shirts and (b) took some of the unintentionally funny (corny) bits out and just performed. The show could have been a 6 out of 10, but was instead a 4 out of 10, just based on their clothes and corny antics.