A "strolling" Clash concert

I dreamt that a former colleague from some 20 years ago, an Englishman named John, had invited me to go to a Clash concert at a big shopping mall. This was a "strolling concert," meaning that the band would perform each song in a different location, and the audience had to follow them around.

I met John at the mall, and we found the band in an area that looked as if it was normally used as a church. There was no audience to speak of, just some shoppers milling around. The band members were very old, and a couple of them were women, and I didn't think they looked like the Clash.

John was very excited and ran across the stage/pulpit, quickly shaking hands with each member of the band. I thought this was a little strange but followed suit. We then went back to the audience area. We had stopped at the food court, and I was holding a plastic tray with a plate of fried catfish.

The Clash started playing. The music was pretty soft and meandering, not even remotely similar to punk rock.

I ran into a pair of Mormon missionaries. "Elders!" I said "Going to a concert on a Sunday?"

One of the elders just said "Sunday!" dismissively, as if he thought that was a weird thing for me to bring up.

The band finished their first song and left, getting into a special elevator that was off limits to the general public. The audience had to find their own way of getting upstairs and then find the band. I figured by the end of the concert, only really serious Clash fans would be left.

John found a place, just to the right of the elevator, where you could turn a crank and a rickety ladder would come down from the ceiling.

John went up the ladder, and I followed -- more slowly because I was carrying a tray of food. I noticed that I had my cell phone in a plastic holder hanging from a lanyard around my neck, as if it were a company ID badge.

I found myself in the bowels of the building and had to clamber over a lot of pipes and things, still carefully holding my tray, to reach the next floor of the mall.

Among the shoppers on this floor was a cartoonishly well-endowed woman in a zip-up top that was mostly unzipped. Everyone was staring at her. One woman said loudly to a friend, "I don't know what everyone's staring at. She's obviously over 30 and has nothing going for her." The man who was with the top-heavy lady whispered something in her ear, and she zipped up her top.

I found John sitting at a table in a bar. The band was not visible from there, but it was close enough that we could hear them. I was glad that we had a table now, so I could set my tray down to eat instead of carrying it around.

"You want to get some drink with that?" said John. If we were going to use the bar's table, we had to order something. John had some sort of fruity-looking cocktail in a highball glass. What kind of faggot orders a mixed drink? I thought.Well, he is European. What I wanted was Jim Beam, neat, but I didn't want it to seem like I was trying to be more macho than John. I would have to order some kind of cocktail, like fucking James Bond. (This is how I was thinking in the dream. It doesn't match my waking personality.) What could I get? A Manhattan? No, anything in a martini glass is too pretentious. Old Fashioned? Tom Collins? No, both too sweet. Cherry Coke? No, that's some kind of soda pop thing. Tim Collins? Isn't there something called a Tim Collins?

The band had already moved on. Should we follow them? No, forget it, we can still kind of hear them.

What a strange idea, a strolling concert! What a strange dream this is! No, what am I saying? This isn't a dream, it's real life!

And then, just after rejecting that incipient lucidity, I woke up.