Touched By A Creepy Rockstar - Family Values 2006

No, I'm not too old for this shit! In fact, this show started at an hour when most youngsters are still in school. This made for a pretty cool crowd. I hate annoying teenagers at concerts.

I've been to the Tweeter for enough festival type shows to know that you should always get actual seats. I've experienced the lawn seating in the rain first hand and it sucks. They were calling for rain and on the way there. It drizzled. But as we crossed the Ben Franklin Bridge into Camden, the skies opened up and it looked like it was going to be a nice day.

We got there, got the lay of the land and went in to see Deadsy. A few weeks ago, we saw them open for Flyleaf at the Chameleon Club in Lancaster. They're creepy. And yet, I find myself inexplicably drawn to them, especially the blonde guy on synthesizers. They more or less did the same set from a few weeks ago, ending with a cover of Rush's "Tom Sawyer" in which the singer dropped the "mother fucker" bomb. As in "Mother Fuckin' Tom Sawyer gets high on you..." or something to that effect. With that, they won me over. If you mother fucker a Rush song, you're now my new best friend. I decided that I liked them enough to buy the CD.

This worked out well. As it turned out, they were selling them at the FYE table for $15 and the band was coming out after their set to sign them. Figuring I'd probably end up buying it sooner or later anyway, I bought it and got in line to have it signed. I felt like someone's mom. There were all these Goth kids in line with me. A guy with a camera panned the crowd who cheered. I stood and laughed, feeling so out of place. The guys in front of me went on and on into the camera about how they liked Deadsy's version of "Tom Sawyer" so much more than Rush's. I'm sure this will hurt them someday if they ever want Canadian citizenship.

I got the front of the line. The guys were apparently instructed what to say to people as they walked through the line. "Thanks for buying the CD. We're doing a club tour in a few weeks..." blah blah blah. I told the first guy that I saw them at the show at the Chameleon and thought they were great. His face lit up a little. The synthesizer guy was even cuter in person. I looked him in the eye and had a hard time turning away. It was creepy. Another one of the guys in the band had fake blood all over his face. They all signed with symbols rather than their fake stage names. It's a big act, but I loved it.

We went back to our seats to and saw the end of 10 Years and all of Dir En Gray. Dir en Gray was quite a sight. They're these crazy little Japanese rockers. Up next was Flyleaf, part of the reason why we were there. Paul is absolutely obsessed with them at the moment. Honestly, of the four times that we've seen them, I think this was their worst performance. Something seemed a little off to me.

Since they were doing a meet and greet and Paul is practically stalking their singer Lacey Mosely, we bought CD's to get signed. One of Paul's co-workers' daughters likes them and he thought it would be nice if we got her an autographed copy too. I think he just wanted me to go through the line with him so that I would take his picture with Lacey Mosley on his camera phone. And it's funny because when we got to the front of the line to get the CD's signed, Paul asked Lacey if he could take a picture. When I offered to take the picture for him so that he could get in it, he said no. Fucking wierdo! The band was very nice and introduced themselves and shook hands. But this put me in an awkward position since I was getting the CD signed for the co-worker's daughter and I didn't know her name for them to put on the CD. The picture that Paul took is below.



She's so tiny!

During this time, Dir En Gray did a meet and greet, but did not sign anything. We commented to one of the FYE people that it was probably because they didn't know how to sign their names in English. She smirked and kind of nodded.

We made it back to our seats for the last half of Stone Sour's set. It wasn't bad. Next came the Deftones. I must admit that I know little about them. In fact, the only song that I knew that they did was a cover of the Cure's "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep." But I liked them. I just haven't had much exposure to them. They were good.

I thought our seats were pretty good since they were right by the soundboard. The sound at a concert is always best there. But throughout the show, there were these girls in front of us who had seats elsewhere, but kept coming to our section to hang with other friends. They would stand in front of us, putting their asses right in front of our faces. Being short people, we decided to move over to the other end of the row. This put me right next to the railing blocking the seats from the soundboard area in the last row of the section.

During the Deftones' set, this guy in the section behind us decided to stand against our section and dance. He kept bumping our seats and I swear his sack hit Paul on the head a few times. It took all I had to not turn around and say, "Excuse me. Could you please stop t-bagging my husband? Thanks!" I guess we could have moved back to our other seats. The annoying girls had been chased back to their section by security. But by this time, we had heard rumors that Korn was to come out and do the first song of their encore on a platform in the mixing board area, giving me a front row seat. I place my knee firmly on the railing. I wasn't going anywhere.

Korn came on. And despite all those warnings from Gloria Estifan, the rhythm did in fact get me. I really got into it and started dancing. I called Griff during "ADIDAS" since we used to listen to that all the time. I was excited. They played all the regular singles and some things here and there from the new CD. It was a good mix. I looked over and saw members from Dir En Gray sitting on the platform in the mixing board area. Soon, security started beefing up and flashing flashlights. They placed a water bottle on the platform. I knew the set was coming to a close.

When they finally came out, they walked right past me to get on the platform. Everyone crowded around. They did their song, but I couldn't even tell you what it was because I just couldn't get over how lucky I was to have my seats. Paul took these pictures.






When they walked off the stage, everyone crowded around again trying to get high fives. I put my hand out and Jonathan Davis gave me little twinkly fingers against my palm. Yeah, I wouldn't want to touch half those people there, either.

They got back on the stage. Jonathan ran around in a goat mask for a little while and then they finished with "Are You Ready?" and a lot of purple confetti. Someone shot t-shirts into the crowd with potato guns. It was a really good time.

We also had the quickest and easiest escape from Camden that I've ever had. We got out and got on the bridge before traffic backed up. I'm not sure what I did to deserve such good concert karma (save for the guy bag tagging Paul's head), but I hope it happens again.

Why the two little girls from The Wreckers have very big balls

Paul and I have been extra concert happy for the last few weeks. A few weeks ago, we went to concerts three nights in a row. This week we went to shows on both Thursday and Friday. And they couldn't be more different.

Thursday we saw the Wreckers at Penn's Peak in Jim Thorpe. Penn's Peak is a nice place to see a show. It's in the middle of nowhere, yet very easy to get to. It's fairly small. And they don't charge for parking.

If you know me, right now you're probably thinking, "What is Chrissy doing at a country show?" Shut up! I like the Wreckers. I also know all the words to Garth Brooks' "Ain't Going Down 'til the Sun Comes Up" and can even sing them drunk. I'm not completely opposed to country music. I just don't prefer it.

There was no opening act. The MC for the evening looked like she came straight from the old "Magic Garden" TV show that I used to watch as a child and had the personality of a piece of toast. But the show itself was very good. Each of the girls came out and did solo performances in the middle of the set. Michelle Branch did a rendition of Tom Petty's "You Don't Know How it Feels," but none of her solo stuff. They played for roughly an hour since they only have one album's worth of material.

There really weren't a lot of people there, so we moved up closer to the stage. There was "pit" area blocked off from the regular seating area and a large aisle separating the two sections. People (including two little pre-teen girls, probably at their first concert ever) would walk up to the aisle and snap a picture. Security would then chase them away. People were also getting pulled out of the pit area left and right for using their cameras. At one point, this huge security dude stood right in front of everyone who was seated trying to find people to bust for camera use. He then entered the pit area and several people were ejected.

When the girls came out to do their encore (a cover of "Strawberry Wine"), Michelle Branch said, "By the way, we don't care if you take pictures or video. So none of that is coming from us." I laughed my ass off. One of the security guards who had been watching the pit area walked from his post, storming out. The bad girl in my just loves seeing security get it sometimes.

Up next: Family Values that don't involve the Christian Coalition.

Minor Details

It's been a while since I've posted anything here. Well, that's not entirely true. I wrote a very profound and emotional blog on Monday night, but Myspace ate it. I clicked to post and got some weird error message. When I tried to go back, my words were lost forever. That blog could have resulted in a cure for cancer or world peace, but now I guess we'll never know.

Okay, maybe not. But here are a few minor happenings in my little world.

I'm going to Hawaii! Yaaaaaaayyyy!

That's right. Paul and I booked a seven day cruise for February. It's my big reward for finishing the MBA. That will make state #49 with only Alaska left. And with any luck, that will happen in June.

School started. And it still sucks.

Soon it will be over. I'm at the point where my general attitude is, "Ok. I'm here. What do I need to do to get this over with?" My finance professor seems cool. My capstone professor is going to be somewhat tough. He has a pretty strict policy on missing class and unfortunately, I have to travel to North Carolina for work next month. As a result, I will have to outline the chapter covered that night, find an internet article relating the chapter, and do a five minute power point presentation on it. I'm not happy about this considering this trip is work related. It's not like I'm just blowing off class.

Concerts! Concerts! Concerts!

Last week, I went to three concerts. I haven't had the time or the desire to recap them in full. Besides, Paul already did. So, I'll just give my Reader's Digest thoughts on each one.

Flyleaf at the Chameleon Club - It was really fucking loud in there. The first band was great, but I don't know who they were. Deadsy was creepy. Flyleaf was okay, but we saw everything from above and behind. We missed a lot of the facial expressions and the sound was somewhat muffled.

The Magic Numbers, Sonic Youth, Ween and the Flaming Lips at the Allentown Fair - I had never heard the Magic Numbers before, but I dig them. Sonic Youth played mostly newer stuff, but they were great. I was a little confused as to why they got such low billing. The crowd loved Ween, but I still think they're fucking weirdoes. And the Flaming Lips? Wow. Just wow. Once they started, I totally understood why they had top billing. Their show was so over the top. They shot streamers and confetti into the audience throughout the show. They had these huge five foot balloons that they released into the crowd. There were people on stage dressed as Santa Claus and Alien chicks. At the opening of the show, they had some sort of quotation about our lives being just a blip in the massive continuum of time and space and that we should make our lives epic journeys. It gave me all sorts of warm fuzzies.

Asia at Penn's Peak - This was okay, I guess. Steve Howe who is roughly 107 years old and the former guitarist of Yes played a few Yes tunes. They also covered Video Killed the Radio Star because the keyboard player also played in the Buggles. I have to say that the weirdest part of the show was intermission when I went to the bar to get another beer and ran into a former grad school classmate who is from nowhere near Jim Thorpe.

I had a few weird dreams this week

The first dream was that Madonna came to visit my neighbors. She had all these busses and limos parked on my street. And all the old people on my block seemed to know her personally. Madonna set up a giant Tilt-A-Whirl type ride across the street for the kids in the neighborhood to ride.

My other dream was that I was riding a skateboard up the hill on Hunter Street in Tamaqua at 2 am on a Tuesday morning. I ran into one of my friends who said he was going to the bar at the Citizens' Fire Company and I went along, but I don't remember that part of the dream. In the dream, I woke up at 9:50 am, extremely late for work and panicked. This panic woke me up and in the first few seconds I thought I really was late for work, even though it was only 3 am.

Well, I think that's everything going on here. Hope everyone else is doing well.