Diamond Dave: In which I confess my terrible taste in music at the age of 15

My friend Eleanor introduced me to The Bird and the Bee last year when they came to the Iron Horse. Just two of them on stage - Greg Kurstin on keyboards and the sweet, darling Inara George on vocals. I was completely charmed. Their biggest hit at the time was probably 'Fucking Boyfriend' which sounds like a cute little synthpop song until you listen to the lyrics. By the time they wrapped up the show (with a cover of the Bee Gee's 'How Deep is Your Love'), I was hooked.

I've been listening to their latest album, 'Ray Guns are Not Just the Future', quite a bit at work and it never struck me until today that one of the tracks - 'Diamond Dave' - was actually about David Lee Roth. It should have really. I love the idea that sweet little Inara may have been a huge fan. Because (and I can't believe I'm about to admit this publicly)... I was. My very first concert was DLR himself, live at the Worcester Centrum on his Skyscraper tour. My friend Clare's older sister (for reasons still unknown to me) volunteered to drive three 15 year-old girls to a show two and a half hours away from home. Our parents (uncharacteristically for protective small town Vermont parents) let us go. Poison opened for him. They were nasty and spit on the crowd. Dave was awesome, the total showman we expected. Our little teenaged heads nearly exploded when he rode a surfboard, hung on wires from the ceiling, over the crowd while singing his cover of California Girls. When we got home we plastered our bedroom walls with posters and pages from the program. My obsession didn't last long (teenagers are fickle and I quickly moved on to more broody serious bands), but I still have the t-shirt. And, as cheesey as he is these days, there's a little spot in my heart for Diamond Dave.

Here's The Bird and The Bee doing their tribute to the man himself: