Concert? What concert?

Last week Luc and I attended the Tragically Hip concert at the Orpheum Theatre here in Vancouver. The music was fantastic, but the overall experience was irritatingly unsatisfying. It began by Luc and I arriving in the midst of the Hip's second song - they didn't have an opening band like we had anticipated, like every concert in the history of concerts that I have attended. We weren't too put off by this, we were just happy that we went straight to the venue and not to Pita Pit first like we had originally planned.

We managed to blindly grope our way to our seats in the dark of the auditorium. A slower song was on and everyone was seated - and about one minute after settling in, I had the head of the kid in front of me leaning back into my lap. No joke....the seats are that tight and he was that clueless. I "accidentally" kneed him in head (gently) and I think he got the drift...until he did it again a few minutes later. Luckily a crowd favourite came on and everyone stood, relieving me of my lap duties.

The group directly in front of us consisted of a few middle aged guys and one guy's son (the head in my lap), who was about 12 years old and delightfully round in the belly. At first their dancing was cute and funny, but three more songs into the concert and I still couldn't stop giggling. I realized that I had been watching the 12 year kid dancing like a 40 year old woman more than I was watching Gord Downie do his awkward jig onstage. Can you blame me though, the kid was way better.

Luc was seated on my right and on my left was a group of teenage girls, who had bought concert t-shirts before the concert and were all wearing them....that's one of Luc's personal favourites, the concert t-shirt wearing concert-goers. By the intermission I was more well versed in the romantic escapades of the girl beside me than I was in the set list. They were chatting and snapping pictures and being all together way too distracting. It's really my own fault, I should have been singing along and not listening to the top 5 reasons why Brad was the total worst boyfriend ever...EVER.

If this wasn't enough, two rows ahead of us was a group of guys who played musical chairs the whole time...the WHOLE TIME. Up, down, back and forth, switching seats, jumping over rows...I was tempted to break all their legs just so they would sit still. Not to mention they were smoking weed that smelled like rotten ginger. If you're curious as to what that smells like, buy some ginger root from your local market, peel about half of it, leave it in the vegetable crisper for a week or two, then inhale deeply.

It's sad, but I remember more about the people around me than the actual entertainment on stage. The music was good background noise for the circus show going on around us though.