$5 Concert: Dennis DeYoung at El Rey

The Styx frontman will Mr. Roboto-up Wilshire Boulevard for a special performance.

If you're into ballpark figures, and specifically percentages, we'll guess there's a 79 percent chance that you enjoyed your first school dance to -- arms outstretched, feet shuffling nervously -- the one-of-a-kind vocals of Dennis DeYoung.

We'd even lay those odds if you weren't in middle or high school from the 1970s to the early '80s, ish, when Mr. DeYoung's band Styx ruled airwaves and hi-fi's with a velvet-gloved grip. Or make that a metallic grip, if you prefer, given the fact that Styx brought the inimitable "Mr. Roboto" to the world.

The Chicago-raised singer left the band he fronted for nearly three decades, decades that spanned a critical period of FM radio dominance and the rise in vinyl. But "Babe" and "Lady" are still very much in his repertoire and heart, and he'll be singing those theatrical synth-lovely Styx songs at the El Rey Theatre on Tuesday, March 18.

That's nifty for the Styxians out there, for sure, but it gets niftier: The concert, a "special live performance recorded for AXS TV broadcast," is, wait for it, just five bucks to get in.

Did we just time travel back to 1978? And were concert tickets even $5 then? 

You shall pay fees, so, no, this isn't an even fiver. But consider that you'll stand in the historic El Rey while "Sail Away" reverberates around your mind, transporting you back to the school dances of yore where outstretched arms and a fat comb in the back pocket were de rigeur.

What's your favorite Styx song? And if you start warbling "Babe" can you stop within say, a day? Like we all once danced to Styx, even if we weren't in school during their rockin' heyday, we all know the words to "Babe." It'll be a pleasure to hear the writer summon them, in his own voice, for a special show on Wilshire Boulevard.

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