After the opening band's set, the crowd rushes to all 43 bars and beer stands. Fans are buying two and three Buds at a time. Mullets stand on end. Fans buzz in and out of bathrooms. While I'm in there, the drunk guy at the urinal next to me slurs along with the piped-in music: "DUR-ee DEES, DONE DIRT CHEAP!!!"

I'm standing near the stage, already exhausted and thinking of the two-hour drive home after the show. Suddenly, three things happen: Everyone in the room screams; I am trampled in a crush toward the front of the room; and Troy Lucketta ticks off four furious beats before the entire band kicks the door in with the first four chords of "Comin' Atcha Live," a song undoubtedly written specifically as a set opener. The room thrums like railroad tracks, and fists pump, and fans scream, scream, scream, and with the words "I'm a mean machine/I'm the kind you don't wanna meet," Jeff Keith, one of the greatest (and probably the most underrated) rock singers of all time, lets us know what we're in for.

He sounds incredible. The band sounds incredible. The rhythm section, drummer Lucketta and bassist Brian Wheat, are thumping the asses of the assembled throng, while guitarists Tommy Skeoch and Frank Hannon are blazing up one wall and down the other -- harmonized guitar solos, if you can believe that -- playing in a way I'd thought lost forever, a sort of 33-played-on-45 white-boy-blues I now remember these two excelling at. I had never imagined a Tesla show being this good, the band being this tight, this alive and well and generally kick-ass. The only time I would've bothered imagining in the first place was back when I was buying their albums, the first time they got popular. Ten years later, the band sounds better than ever. Who knew?

As "Comin' Atcha" finishes up, and the fans somehow manage to scream louder than before, Jeff Keith does himself one better with a rawk-out staple, an honest-to-Pete rock star yowl of the name of the town where tonight's gig takes place: "Thank you very much Oklahoma Cit-eeeeeeeEEAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!"

At this point I realize that for all practical purposes, I've actually been transported inside my copy of the band's most successful album, 1992's live "Five Man Acoustical Jam," the only Tesla CD I kept a copy of after late-teen embarrassment set in and I sold nearly all of my butt-rock collection. (On that album, right after Track 1, "Comin' Atcha Live," we hear from Keith, "Thank you very much Philadelphi-aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!")

	Print story E-mail story

It also occurs to me that this is something everyone should get to do at least once. More than eight years after, I'm spending an evening inside one of my favorite albums from high school.

It's as if I'm actually in "Five Man Acoustical Jam," and not just in the album, but in my '74 Dodge Dart. I'm a big, dumpy 16-year-old with a mullet and a trench coat, banging heads with my two reject friends on a Saturday night, driving around after not going on dates with girls, and still singing along:

"Love will find a way."

Not to this car it won't. But that doesn't matter a goddamn bit, 'cause all the love we need is right here in the car, and yeah it sure sucks we can't get dates, but who gives a shit? We've got a car full of rock 'n' roll -- honest-to-god rock, not the kind they crank out in freezing offices inside glass towers somewhere in L.A., but the kind you can only get out of working your ass off, crashing on friends' couches, rehearsing in shitty garages and playing empty clubs for half the door. Stuff we've never done, us three losers in the rusty Dart in Nowhere, USA. But all of that is stuff that we three sophomores from suburbia will never have to do, because these guys on the stereo have done it for us, and we're riding it down a four-lane waste of fast food restaurants with big parking lots, headed nowhere at all and having a hell of a time.

Here at the concert, Tesla is blasting in front of me, and I don't care if I'm being nostalgic. Because I'm here, and it's a uniquely rejuvenating experience.

I'm thinking about how I sold my entire butt rock collection in embarrassment, trying to pretend like I was never so uncool. I bought Charlie Parker records and tried to pretend that I'd always had great musical taste. In reality, of course, I was actually just a 16-year-old moron with a different Van Halen T-shirt for all five days of the week.

When I got rid of Tesla, Hagar-era Van Halen, Skid Row and Guns N' Roses I was practicing a ritual everyone goes through eventually, one that takes as many shapes as there are people trying to reinvent themselves after their adolesence is supposedly over, wiping from history the loser they once were. Besides, there was Pearl Jam to listen to! Nirvana! I sold my copy of "Nevermind" in 1995. I sold my copies of both of Guns ‘N' Roses' "Use Your Illusion" albums in 1993. I miss "Use Your Illusion" more. Ditto the entire Skid Row collection. Ditto Tesla's "Mechanical Resonance," "Great Radio Controversy" and "Psychotic Supper."

The rest of the night in Oklahoma City, the rest of the show, went exactly like that first song. The fans screamed, and the fans sang, and most notably when "Signs" started up, I sang right along with them.

Remember this, I kept telling myself, always remember this one thing: No matter how far you think you've come, you will always be, in some very important way, the same person you were when you were 16 years old. And that is nothing, nothing to be ashamed of.

Now playing: Read all the recent movie reviews by Salon's critics