Monday 29 March 1999

The Offspring kick ass! That about sums last night up. Offspring at the Salem Armory. Silver chair was there and two other bands, (everlast and the living end). Living end put on a good show, and I just didn't get everlast. Silver chair rocked, but their vocals just were not being amplified enough. Actually, for the first 2 - 3 songs you couldn't hear a word.

But the Offspring ... I have never seen them live before, and I'm sorry I haven't gone out of my way to see them before. I lost my pager right off the bat. I felt it go off of my belt during living end and that was when I realized that I had not taken it off in the car like I had intended on. Oh well. Total bill for the night looked like this 

Ticket                   25.00
Ticket master Rape        5.00 (service charge)
Ticket master Rape        4.00 (convenience fee - yeah right)
Parking                   4.00 
Post show Gator-Aid       2.00 (1.70 for those of you counting - and I'll explain later)
Pager                    30.00

Total                    70.00

Now for most bands I would not consider 70 worth the price of admission. But I have no problem, the show was worth it. Now there is a kicker to this story. I left work early to go home (I'll get to that soon). As I was sitting here playing Brood War the phone rang. I didn't know who was calling at 14:30 (2:30pm), but I answered and what I got was, "Did you lose a pager?"

Apparently my pager was not taken from me so much as it was rubbed off. He said he found it clipped to his pocket. One of the things I had done was to page myself a couple of times before I went to bed. I figured that someone had taken it as a souvenir, and it was lost, gone, bye, bye. By the way, this brings the cost of the night back down to the $40 range - so WAY worth it.

Now before I go on, here's a quick lesson in the anatomy of a festival seating show.
Stage
Moat and Security
Rail
6 - 20 bodys deep in the "press"
front "edge" of the pit
"THE PIT" - a place for brave, angry people having a lot of fun bouncing off of each other.
back "edge" of the pit.
Generally the pit is not quite as wide as the stage and is surrounded on all sides by "the edge"

Now to the gator-aid. I think I put myself into a small case of heat exhaustion last night. I spent 3 bands worth of time in the press (not to be confused with the pit). For the Offspring I spent the entire show one body back from the rail. It was like a sing-along up there. I love the offspring, but the people right next to me (all nine of them) seemed to know every word to every song. Of course, with the offspring that's not that hard, come on, who doesn't know every single line of "self-esteem"? I now have to go out and buy the 3 cds of theirs I don't own.

Back to the heat exhaustion. I think that the only place to see a hard core band is with festival seating. This is one of the reasons that I try to avoid shows at the rose garden, or the memorial coliseum. They have this funny thing with assigned seating. Now if you were dealing with chairs I could understand that, nothing like 8 dead at the who concert trying to get in. But with the concerts I've seen there's not much of a problem. Ok, if you are under 5 foot, don't go to the pit, please. If you are female and you are up in the press, make sure that the guys around you get to know you and start feeling protective of you. There is nothing like a mosh pit to bring out the primal in human. By the time the offspring were done I was one off the few people up at the front who was less than 5'9, and most were 6 foot plus. All were male. Now I'm going to get some shit from people for being sexist. And I think I'll change the subject now.

The pit is like one big sauna, I spent about 4 1/2 out of 6 hours exercising in a sauna. I was SO dehydrated by the time the show was over. If it had lasted 20 more minutes I'm not sure if I would have made it, or if I would have been hauled out. As it was I got out found the circle K and got a quart of gater-aid. The rule with gator-aid goes like this. Drink it till it tastes bad. When you need it, gator-aid tastes like mana from heaven, when you don't it tastes like drek.

IT TASTED - SO - GOOD!

So I need to get out of here and get my pager.

Oh, one other thing, I got an e-mail from Freya, she's actually going for a diplomatic solution, which is way cool, now if I can just keep my temper and attitude in control, I'll be happy. Mike should be there, if and when we talk, and she has a way of being that should keep Freya and me in check. More as things develop.

 

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