This commentary originally ran in September of 2008.

I get a fair amount of hate mail. 

I didn't expect to get a scathing e-mail, however, over a review I wrote five years ago yesterday, of the puzzling Elton John concert at the Harley 100th anniversary. At the time, most of the Talkbackers agreed with me, and for the ones who disagreed, they weren't very spiteful.

We re-ran the review as a "flashback" yesterday, and Monday, I received the angriest, most profane and bizarre rambling manifesto of my 10 years with OnMilwaukee.com.

Unfortunately, the author didn't include his name and even went so far as to mask his e-mail address, routing it through "addressgeneric@gmail.com."

That's too bad, because something this scathing deserves someone to take credit for it. Here is the entire e-mail, complete with its many typos and assorted errors (I especially like the part in which he tells me I need to learn how to "grammatize"). I only censored the ample profanity, since we're a "family" magazine.

Please enjoy this e-mail from an irate Harley rider who apparently loves Elton John, dislikes Kid Rock and hates me very, very much:

You're an idiot.

OnMilwaukee is exactly what I would expect out of Milwaukee..."plow jockey" "one horse" "farmer town" tripe dogsh*t.

I was at the HD 100th. Elton John show.

From the OnMilwaukee article, 'Harley 100th. FlashBack: Elton John Silences The Harley Roar':
"Unfortunately, OnMilwaukee.com was right in predicting that Elton John would headline the secret Harley show Sunday night...". nMilwaukee holds the sole credit to guessing this lineup?! OnMilwaukee was the only one "in the know" and the rest of us were anxiously waiting for OnMilwaukee to guide us to the HD 100th. Promised Land"?! You f*cking pimps in the media are just the most sickeningly vain putridly narcissistic f*cks!

From the OnMilwaukee article, 'Harley 100th. FlashBack: Elton John Silences The Harley Roar':
"With the Harley folks clad in black, it looked more like a funeral as the stunned crowd stood motionless as John launched into his set of new, soft rock tunes and old favorites. Then, people started to leave. In droves...".
Black cladding suddenly makes people bikers?!
It did NOT look nor feel like a funeral, you assh*le.
People did NOT leave in droves.
I was there.

From the OnMilwaukee article, 'Harley 100th. FlashBack: Elton John Silences The Harley Roar':
"After a few new songs, John played his classics...".
New songs?! EJ OPENED with 'Funeral For A Friend' into 'Love Lies Bleeding' from 'GoodBye Yellow Brick Road'! EJ was playing "classics" (gad, I abhore that word) from the first note. Learn your discographies. Maybe they weren't the limited songs and versions your aural-retarded self is used to hearing on Milwaukee radio wasteland...God forbid anyone would listen to more than one or two cuts off an album.

From the OnMilwaukee article, 'Harley 100th. FlashBack: Elton John Silences The Harley Roar':
"But the damage was already done...".
WHAT DAMAGE! The show was fantastically enjoyable.

From the OnMilwaukee article, 'Harley 100th. FlashBack: Elton John Silences The Harley Roar':
"Perhaps, though this is just a guess, as many as 30 percent of the audience just went home...".
How the f*ck do you know what percentage of people went where, you assh*le?!

From the OnMilwaukee article, 'Harley 100th. FlashBack: Elton John Silences The Harley Roar':
"The Doobie Brothers...Solid, but sleepy.".
Gad, you're an numbnut jerkoff.

From the OnMilwaukee article, 'Harley 100th. FlashBack: Elton John Silences The Harley Roar':
"...Kid Rock. Clearly the highlight of the evening,...".
When Kid C*ckSucker is better than ANY rock act out of the 70s, much less the highlight of ANY evening, I'll actually buy a Kid C*ckSucker anything. Until that time, I wouldn't hire Kid C*ckSucker to wipe my ass after eating too many tacos.
Kid C*ckSucker sucks...and probably sucks c*cks.

From the OnMilwaukee article, 'Harley 100th. FlashBack: Elton John Silences The Harley Roar':
"...to a party that was supposed to be completely bad-ass...".
Let's see...$75,000.00 per year accountants, marketing chumps, lawyers, and, the only category as bad as lawyers, human resource folk who can afford to buy a HD motorcycle suddenly think of themselves as badass (NOT bad-ass, Mr. Writer) bikers?! In other words, anyone who buys a cycle is suddenly a hardcore biker?! Most of these HD bike
owners my little sister could fell with a waft of her perfume. So you and OnMilwaukee think this "badass" crowd needs "badass" music? You had something bad at the 100th. alright...Kid C*ckSucker is about as bad (terrible) as it gets. That horse's ass moron wouldn't know music from his sphincter. And he's your typical Michigan...ugly, as Mr.
Sanford always so eloquently put it.

Now let me tell you something you assh*le ignoramus. I was there at the 100th. EJ show. I'm a professional musician, a biker (a REAL biker), and a 47 year old man. Elton John, sans his appalling private lifestyle, at the very least was, and sometimes still is, a consummate musician, artiste, and professsional and deserves all the respect as a musician he spent a lifetime working for. When the first strains of
'Funeral For A Friend' followed by 'Love Lies Bleeding' opened his show at the 100th., I was ecstatic. I looked around me, literally, at the faces of those near me whom I estimated were about my age and mostly what I saw was bewilderment. It was not the fact that it was EJ that took the crowd by surprise but the fact that they couldn't "place" the first few sythesizer notes of 'Funeral For A Friend'...which everyone from that era should know unless you were living under a pet rock in the 70s.

I am a Child Of The 70s. I am not a "pretend" or "wanna-be" 70s pseudo. I am the real thing. The Doobie Brothers could NEVER put on a bad show and EJ, who once auditioned for Rick Wakeman's spot in Yes, was and is a superstar of current culture...HD 100th. or no HD 100th..
By the by, EJ could buy HD if he wanted to. Who really should be respecting whom here?

Tim McGraw is good and I like his music...but he has never
accomplished anything to compare to the 70s. He'd be the first to admit that. The Doobie Brothers need no critique from a bad reporter like you nor from a crowd...simply sit back and enjoy. EJ is a legend...and if the 100th. crowd would have understood what such a legend was entertaining them, those vain narcissistic wanna-be bikers with money would have given EJ the respect he deserved and deserves.

What surprised and embarrassed me most about that show was not EJ...it was the disrespect and treatment he received from people from even my 70s generation...the actual people that purport to be his fans and grew up with his music.

No matter what or whom, any 70s rock legend picked for the 100th. would have been appropriate, would have been enjoyed by THIS connoisseur of fine legendary rock, and should've been afforded the respect they worked hard to earn.

Most bikers today are pseudo-bikers...pretending wanna-bes that, for my part, look and act like clowns and make me sick. Even though it has, yes, become a lifestyle, these pseudos have, like all good things in life, turned it into a joke and a parody of and upon itself. If any of these pseudo-bikers really had to stand up in a fight, yea, brawl, they would run for their mommies...or get their asses kicked.

Most attendees at the EJ show were pseudo-bikers and
sheeple..."hey...if the guy next to me is disrespecting EJ then my sheeple brain tells me to go along with the crowd...I don't want to be a loner!".

A true biker is a spirit of freedom, independence, and, mostly,
individuality. These pseudo-biker white collar sheeple are clowns, a circus to watch, and a terrible bastardization of a true American art form. But, like anything genuine, people soon learn how to commoditize, commercialize, capitalize, and destroy the genuine article.

EJ was a good choice if for nothing more than his legendary status. It was the sheeple that spoiled their own show...not EJ. EJ was there simply to do what he was hired to do. If sheeple left, it was their choice to leave. I stayed for the entire show...and not just to listen to music I had been waiting for but to listen to EJ music and the legendary man. I wanted to hear Elton John.

One again, you're an idiot...you deserve NO respect. BTW, you, like the rest of your feeble-minded generation, REALLY REALLY REALLY need to learn how to spell, capitalize, punctuate, and grammatize...you are supposed to be a professional (I use the term VERY loosely) writer...a
dog could command the English humanities of writing better than your sorry ass! How do I know? Besides being a professional musician and a REAL biker, I was a writer at one time for a well-known rock periodical.

You have much to learn and a loooooooong way to go, Andy. Like usual, your vain vacuous neophyte copy-hungry wanna-be generation simply "doesn't get it". If you weren't 70s, you'll never ever understand.