Good Times Had By All

I have never been much of a concert-goer. I prefer studio tracks as opposed to the incessant ramblings of drug-addled rock stars that seem to forget their own music halfway through a song and end up singing a completely different song by someone entirely other than themselves. Add a dose of being shoulder to shoulder with drug-addled fans - some of whom clearly sprinted to the concert from six miles away. Directly from their job on a sheep farm. Where they have been pulling a 72 hour shift with no time for a shower. (Yes a-hole at the latest concert I attended, I'm talking to you - grab some Lever 2000 on your way back down the hill.) You can throw in to that mix my ever-advancing age-related grouchiness (I haven't always been this way...so shut up) in general. But there are a few bands that I like enough to endure the messy, grimy, smokey filth of a concert. Last week, one of those bands came to a town near us.

It was pouring down rain on the ride to this latest event. Sheets of rain I tell you and so I stopped at a Target on the way to pick up an umbrella for me and a poncho for the hubby. In those 10 minutes in the store, the rain stopped. (This to me was like all those times where my hair was not cooperating and so I made an appointment for the next day to have it all chopped off and wouldn't you just know it...my hair is straight out of a magazine the day of the cut.) And as soon as we arrived, it was looking like we would have clear skies all night long. Wrong!

The venue at this particular concert is breathtaking to say the least. And I'm not just talking about the view. No, I thought I was going to have to lie down at least three times on the hike up to the entrance. The worst part is that it doesn't look bad. So as we start out, I'm chatting away with our friends, making jokes and talking about our upcoming vacation with them. About a quarter of the way up, I had to stop talking altogether and concentrate on getting my oxygen level back up to at least 90.

The concert started on time (!) and the headlining band was the first on the set! The opening band (can you call them that if they don't actually open?) came out after the first song and so began a night of nearly 4 hours of great music with a ten minute intermission. The band seemed lucid this time (1 out of 3 times now) and it was truly enjoyable.

The rain started again in earnest about 15 minutes into the concert. I started scrambling for the umbrella and threw on a poncho. Soon though I realized that I didn't care about the rain. It was THAT good! So good in fact, we didn't even notice at first when we all became enveloped in a cloud of smoke so thick that it was hard to see that the people directly in front of us were passing a huge joint amongst themselves. And so we stood there rain soaked, watching and listening to one of our very favorite bands on the side of mountain, while the skies poured down on us. It never did stop raining until we left. But oddly enough, none of us cared.