I took my boys to their first concert this weekend, to see 1964-The Tribute, a Beatles tribute band. The guys have been really been into the Beatles for sometime, and their step-father gave us some tickets for Christmas (he's not such a bad guy-for a Guard recruiter), so we hopped into the car and headed down to the State Theater in Kalamazoo.
We went down early and walked around downtown Kazoo looking for a place to grab some dinner. We found a nice place, although the guys became confused because it had cloth napkins and they didn't know whether they were napkins or handkerchiefs. Wilbur found a quarter on the floor under our table (which he is holding up in the picture) and nelson is holding up an after dinner mint.
The crowd was mixed, aging boomers and young hippie-wannbes coming together in celebration of the music that was John Paul George and Ringo. The band did a fantastic job of recreating the four piece sound of the Beatles, the kids loved it, with Nelson singing along with every song. They did two sets, and left the stage, then Wilbur wanted to go.
"Wait," I said and began clapping rhythmically with the rest of the crowd, "Encore."
Sure enough, the band came back and did a two-song encore.
"I can't believe we encored them!" said Wilbur delighted. I didn't tell him that most bands will do that.
All through the show, there was a man who had imbibed too much sitting behind us, and in between songs, he would holler"Norwegian Wood!" or "This Bird Has Flown" like the band was a bunch of trained monkeys asking for requests. I knew they wouldn't do it, because one, the Beatles never performed it live, and two, there was no sitar on the stage. But it didn't stop this jerk from yelling it out every chance he got. And we didn't let him ruin our good time, either, all the way home we kept making fun of him by yelling out "Norwegian Wood", or "This Bird Has Flown".
I thought I might see my brother Sean at the concert, since he gets into shows like this, but the drunken idiot brought back a recent memory.
In 2004, he and I went to see the Vote For Change Tour at Cobo hall (or maybe it was the Joe Louis) in Detroit. It was a great concert, with Bright Eyes, REM, Bruce Springsteen and John Fogerty. It was sponsored by Move On, in an effort to get voters registered to help elect John Kerry, and more importantly, get rid of George Bush.
The crowd was into it, except, once again, behind us sat another drunken idiot. When ever anyone urged people to vote, or spoke out against the war, he would boo, or yell out "Four more years!" I did my best to ignore him, figuring that there was probably a time when I was that drunken idiot, thinking I was being funny when I was really being a moron, but my brother became upset, and let that one person ruin what was an awesome concert. He then swore he would never see another concert again, and to this day, will not go see any artist at all.
2 comments:
I hate drunk assholes. it is one thing to be drunk, but quite another to be an asshole.
I thought your kids were flipping off the camera at first and I read the title of the post and was a bit confused. but then I read it :)
That's a show I would have liked to see. I checked their schedule, but they won't be in my area this year.
I saw the real Beatles in 1963 at the Olympia Theater in Detroit. It was madness! We screamed so much we couldn't hear them perform, but we didn't care. Just being able to be in the same auditorium with them was heaven! Ah, youth! ;-)
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