So, how was journey?
So. I went to a Journey concert the other day.
It's official: my concert virginity is gone. I have officially been indoctrinated into the world of live-shows and sweaty crowds and overpriced booze.
What did the Journey concert look like? Well, picture this: me, chubby, sweaty, sandwhiched between my mother - a short Greek woman with long black hair and glasses, who looks like she could be a kindly witch - and my father - a tall, scrawny man-child with ape hands and Angus Young hair - clutching onto my overpriced concert beer for dear life while, in the forefront, a band that was supposed to be Journey but was most decidedly not tried -and mostly failed- to engage the crowd of ten-thousand that sprawled before them.
It was a hot damn mess. In case you didn't know, several of the original members of Journey have come and gone, and the band that was once fantastic and catchy is mostly, well, incoherent... Maybe it was the heat, or the five and a half beers, or the shitty acoustics, but I could hardly understand a word of a single song.
I sat between my mother and father - and later, when my brother and mother switched places - my father and my brother, watching in a mixture of shock, boredom, and disappointment as the band in front of us butchered a legacy that most of us didn't even realize could be toppled. My brother leaned into me at one point, his shoulder nudging mine and snapping me out of a drunken trance in which I stared at the wild lights on stage, so that he could whisper "Now I see why you didn't want to come."
The two women in front of us stood - the only two to do so in the massive sea of bodies swarming the upper levels - and began to wave their arms to a song we could not even begin to comprehend the lyrics to through the gargling of the mic, and my brother and I promptly glanced at each other, glanced back at the women - and burst out laughing.
While my father and I abandoned the show in the search for more of those tiny $6 dollar a piece beers, we met two celebrity look-alikes in the bar line: the poor-mans version of Idina Menzel, staggerting drunkenly against her friends while they snapped selfies, and a slightly drunker, but much less famous version, of Matthew McConaughey, who spent his time in the line dancing dramatically to the bass rocking through the Moncton Coliseum - and my chest- while he waited for his booze.
My most clear memories of this concert are fragments, snapshots, of a night that was both disappointing and some of the most fun I've ever had: beer staining my fingers, the salt of the popcorn from the canteen, the puppy-dog eyes of Arnel Pineda staring out at the crowed as he bounced around on stage - surprisingly light on his feet for a 47 year-old (although he looks about 23), the bass pounding through my head and my chest, nausea sweeping through me as I almost barfed up all the beer-foam, the stadium spinning around me as I staggered to the dingy bathrooms, and, perhaps the best part of the entire night - the lights. All of those colours sweeping out over the crowed were tripping me the hell out, and it put me into the best kind of trance.
The only song I really wanted to hear was Any Way You Want It, but they didn't play it - or, if they did, we didn't stick around long enough to see it. That's right. We cut out about fifteen or twenty minutes before the end of the concert. We crowded into my brother's truck and drove to the nearest Irving/Diner/Subway and bought a couple of six-inches and some chocolate milk. It was there, drunkenly smiling at the matriarch of the native family at the table next to us while I crammed a cold-cut on whole wheat down my throat with all the grace of an anaconda swallowing a live goat, that we started to discuss highlights - or lowlights, depending on how you wanna look at it - of the night we'd had.
My father's favourite part was when the band started playing the Canadian anthem. Or, more importantly, the fact that I didn't even recognize our own anthem because it was so unrecognisable and botched. Don't get my wrong - I got it eventually! - but for the first minute or so of the anthem, I had no idea what it was, or why my dad had dragged me to my feet to stand with the rest of the audience. I slapped him on the arm and tried to ask what the hell was going on, but then gave up and ended up resigning myself to standing for no apparent reason, and started drinking again.
My brother's was the bit where he caught the girl who was sitting in our row doing hard drugs -we think it was e- during the intermission after the opening act, and watching her trance the fuck out during the rest of the show. I actually didn't notice this going on, and didn't know it had happened until after we left, but I do hope the chick was okay and didn't overheat or anything.
My own personal favourite was a nice piano melody the keyboardist of the band did - the only piece of the night I truly liked - while my mother's seemed to simply be the wild antics of those two arm-waving women in front of us...
By this time the concert had let out, and bodies were beginning to pile into the subway around us, so it was time to hit the road again. Upon getting in the car, I realized two very scary things; my ipod had fallen under the seat into an abyss of blackness, and, even worse, I was beginning to sober up.
Since there was a distinct and offensive lack of booze in my brother's truck, I was in desperate need to get home - namely so I could get at the last bit of the pot I had hidden in my bedside drawer. And so, later that night, sitting in my bathroom with the door locked, fan on and water running, I took the last few puffs from my pipe and exhaled through the window screen, and thought back on my first concert experience.
How was it? Well. Loud. Confusing. Hot. Slightly boring. Bright. And blurry - either from all the drinks or the scratches on my glasses, I don't know. Would I do it again? Probably.
I got free drinks, I got free subway. What else is there? I also got to spend a night with my family - which was nice, until it wasn't, because when Greeks argue, WE ARGUE. But all in all, the night was one I won't soon forget. It was smoke absorbing into the air, foam spilling over sticky fingers, an ache in my back from that hard plastic chair, the screaming of ten thousand Canadians frantic to make some noise.
It was a hot damn mess. But then, so am I, really, so I guess it was the best first-concert experience I could hope for.
It's official: my concert virginity is gone. I have officially been indoctrinated into the world of live-shows and sweaty crowds and overpriced booze.
What did the Journey concert look like? Well, picture this: me, chubby, sweaty, sandwhiched between my mother - a short Greek woman with long black hair and glasses, who looks like she could be a kindly witch - and my father - a tall, scrawny man-child with ape hands and Angus Young hair - clutching onto my overpriced concert beer for dear life while, in the forefront, a band that was supposed to be Journey but was most decidedly not tried -and mostly failed- to engage the crowd of ten-thousand that sprawled before them.
It was a hot damn mess. In case you didn't know, several of the original members of Journey have come and gone, and the band that was once fantastic and catchy is mostly, well, incoherent... Maybe it was the heat, or the five and a half beers, or the shitty acoustics, but I could hardly understand a word of a single song.
I sat between my mother and father - and later, when my brother and mother switched places - my father and my brother, watching in a mixture of shock, boredom, and disappointment as the band in front of us butchered a legacy that most of us didn't even realize could be toppled. My brother leaned into me at one point, his shoulder nudging mine and snapping me out of a drunken trance in which I stared at the wild lights on stage, so that he could whisper "Now I see why you didn't want to come."
The two women in front of us stood - the only two to do so in the massive sea of bodies swarming the upper levels - and began to wave their arms to a song we could not even begin to comprehend the lyrics to through the gargling of the mic, and my brother and I promptly glanced at each other, glanced back at the women - and burst out laughing.
While my father and I abandoned the show in the search for more of those tiny $6 dollar a piece beers, we met two celebrity look-alikes in the bar line: the poor-mans version of Idina Menzel, staggerting drunkenly against her friends while they snapped selfies, and a slightly drunker, but much less famous version, of Matthew McConaughey, who spent his time in the line dancing dramatically to the bass rocking through the Moncton Coliseum - and my chest- while he waited for his booze.
My most clear memories of this concert are fragments, snapshots, of a night that was both disappointing and some of the most fun I've ever had: beer staining my fingers, the salt of the popcorn from the canteen, the puppy-dog eyes of Arnel Pineda staring out at the crowed as he bounced around on stage - surprisingly light on his feet for a 47 year-old (although he looks about 23), the bass pounding through my head and my chest, nausea sweeping through me as I almost barfed up all the beer-foam, the stadium spinning around me as I staggered to the dingy bathrooms, and, perhaps the best part of the entire night - the lights. All of those colours sweeping out over the crowed were tripping me the hell out, and it put me into the best kind of trance.
The only song I really wanted to hear was Any Way You Want It, but they didn't play it - or, if they did, we didn't stick around long enough to see it. That's right. We cut out about fifteen or twenty minutes before the end of the concert. We crowded into my brother's truck and drove to the nearest Irving/Diner/Subway and bought a couple of six-inches and some chocolate milk. It was there, drunkenly smiling at the matriarch of the native family at the table next to us while I crammed a cold-cut on whole wheat down my throat with all the grace of an anaconda swallowing a live goat, that we started to discuss highlights - or lowlights, depending on how you wanna look at it - of the night we'd had.
My father's favourite part was when the band started playing the Canadian anthem. Or, more importantly, the fact that I didn't even recognize our own anthem because it was so unrecognisable and botched. Don't get my wrong - I got it eventually! - but for the first minute or so of the anthem, I had no idea what it was, or why my dad had dragged me to my feet to stand with the rest of the audience. I slapped him on the arm and tried to ask what the hell was going on, but then gave up and ended up resigning myself to standing for no apparent reason, and started drinking again.
My brother's was the bit where he caught the girl who was sitting in our row doing hard drugs -we think it was e- during the intermission after the opening act, and watching her trance the fuck out during the rest of the show. I actually didn't notice this going on, and didn't know it had happened until after we left, but I do hope the chick was okay and didn't overheat or anything.
My own personal favourite was a nice piano melody the keyboardist of the band did - the only piece of the night I truly liked - while my mother's seemed to simply be the wild antics of those two arm-waving women in front of us...
By this time the concert had let out, and bodies were beginning to pile into the subway around us, so it was time to hit the road again. Upon getting in the car, I realized two very scary things; my ipod had fallen under the seat into an abyss of blackness, and, even worse, I was beginning to sober up.
Since there was a distinct and offensive lack of booze in my brother's truck, I was in desperate need to get home - namely so I could get at the last bit of the pot I had hidden in my bedside drawer. And so, later that night, sitting in my bathroom with the door locked, fan on and water running, I took the last few puffs from my pipe and exhaled through the window screen, and thought back on my first concert experience.
How was it? Well. Loud. Confusing. Hot. Slightly boring. Bright. And blurry - either from all the drinks or the scratches on my glasses, I don't know. Would I do it again? Probably.
I got free drinks, I got free subway. What else is there? I also got to spend a night with my family - which was nice, until it wasn't, because when Greeks argue, WE ARGUE. But all in all, the night was one I won't soon forget. It was smoke absorbing into the air, foam spilling over sticky fingers, an ache in my back from that hard plastic chair, the screaming of ten thousand Canadians frantic to make some noise.
It was a hot damn mess. But then, so am I, really, so I guess it was the best first-concert experience I could hope for.
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