It isn’t particularly easy to travel, even short distances like into Dublin and back, without eating an incredible amount of junk food. Bus stations and things don’t have a lot that’s especially good for you, or not laden with sugar. None the less, I managed to get through the weekend without sugar, because I maintain that the cereal I had which tasted exactly like Cracker Jacks was not intentionally a sugar binge. Anyway, so that’s three days down, and hopefully this week will be a bit easier in the cravings department.
The Nickelback concert was pretty good. The damned opening band played for an hour, which, I mean, they were good, but that could’ve been a main event all by itself. I was ready for them to be done by about the 8th song. They did fourteen. Then it took another half a bloody hour to get set up for Nickelback, during which time it got progressively hotter and more miserable in the hall. They do a thing in Dublin where security hands out cups of water which people take a sip or two of and hand back, which is great, except people were being such dickheads that it actually made it worse (and there was this gobshite a few people over who was tall, so he kept getting cups, and then he’d just drink the whole thing instead of passing it back. I wanted to apply an elbow to his kidneys repeatedly.). I couldn’t figure out what the hell was wrong with everybody, given that all the other concerts we’d been to had been really well behaved, and then I realized I’m TOO OLD FOR THIS SHIT, and all the other concerts had also been filled with people too old for this shit, so they didn’t act like assholes.
Anyway, Nickelback themselves were fairly awesome. They’re a good live band, and I knew all of the music in passing and more than half of it quite well. They had some great video backup stuff for “If Everyone Cared” and “Savin’ Me”, and made some funny cracks (“We’re Canadian rednecks. That means we like blowing shit up, but we have perfect grammar.”), but near the end of the show they did the dumbest fucking thing I have ever heard of at a concert.
They threw cups of beer into the audience.
I got knocked aside, stepped on, and hit in the head by jackasses rushing forward. So did other women around me, as these big guys–I mean, over 6′, genuinely big–smashed through us trying to get to the fucking beer. Which they did not do, but nor did they retreat after failing to get their beer, so not only had I been flung around, but I basically couldn’t see the stage for the rest of the show.
Even their encore of “Rock Star” was really not enough to win me back, after that. Nor was I especially happy (before “Rock Star”, but after the beer) when they invited everybody to jump up and down during some song, because it was so hot I could barely get enough air as it was, and it was literally impossibly not to jump, because everyone around me was and the only way I could avoid being beaten up was to move with the crowd. Ted managed to make a space for me to hold still in after I nearly passed out.
Yeah. I’m too old for this shit. :P
I had a similar experience at a Flogging Molly concert a few years ago (seriously, a mosh pit at a Flogging Molly concert?) after which I too realized that I’m just too old.
LOL! Just found your blog and have been chuckling along. Last year I brought my then 14 year old daughter to the Nickelback concert. What a zoo that was at least i had gotten seats up from the floor a bit. The this summer I took her to see Good Charlotte, NEVER again will I go to a general admission show. Enough said. Back to the arcives.