concert

Holy cow, the concert kicked some major ass. I don't know if I've ever had so much fun.

The warm-up band was this guy named David (dah-veed) Garza... basically, it was more of a comedy act. Unfortunately he didn't mean for it to be this way. Real young guy, just him, his guitar, and a drummer he didn't sound like he'd played with very often. The guitar was loud and crunchy, like a wannabe metallica, and the lyrics were unintelligible. All I could make out was something along the lines of "Attack of the BEES THE BEES THE BEES" which sound like really really retarded lyrics for a song. So basically, we tuned him out and watched the clouds turn pink while the sun started to set. Fortunately, he only played for about 30 minutes so we just kind of lived through the opening act.

Then Train took the stage. They were really good. I decided that I need to buy their CD. I enjoyed their performance, and when they hit the opening piano licks to their hit "Drops of Jupiter" everyone in the audience stood up and sang along. It was a really good show. Those guys are awesome...

After Train ended their set with "Drops of Jupiter" I went and took a piss break and bought a poster for my dorm room.

At about 9, matchbox twenty took the stage. Their setup was just plain ass-kicking... they had an elevated part with three flat-screen TV's on the front which would play surreal video clips (parts of music videos for the ones that have videos, random things for other songs), and on top was the drumset and a grand piano. Anyway, they opened their set with an extended version of "Crutch" (track 3 on mad season) and then launched into "Real World" (track 1 on yourself or someone like you). They played several of their songs from mad season and a few of the hits and good ones from yourself or someone like you. Before they played "long day" Rob Thomas told a story about the first time they heard themselves on the radio. They were just pulling into Dallas and had turned off a tape they'd been listening to and then all of a sudden on the radio they heard themselves. What a surreal experience that would be. Anyway, then they launched into Long Day which was way better live than on the CD.

Anyway, after almost two hours, they played "Mad Season" (a super long rendition thereof, which kicked ass" and the disco ball came and sprinkled sparklies all over the crowd and they left the stage and the lights went down, but the crowd cheered hard enough to get ourselves an encore, during which they played "If You're Gone," a Beatles cover, and then Rob yelled "This one goes out to all you fuckers in the Lawn" before they kicked off the beginning chords of "Push" which was their final song. I spent the song pondering whether or not that included us, because although we were in the lawn we certainly were not fucking. But then again, one can be a fucker without engaging in fucking, so I guess it did... that song was for me. (:

A random entertaining sidelight: Trojan was there passing out free samples before and after the concert, so there were many elongated pale latex-colored balloons being tossed about in the crowd. I think some of the people with good reserved seating were trying to get them onstage... don't think they ever succeeded, but it was still entertaining.

One more sidelight: we tried to pick a fight with a girl wearing a kal hat... holding up our Stanford sweatshirts... shoulda gone up to her and been like, you're a weenie!!! But we didn't.

Man, that concert fucking kicked ass.

coundowns:
job: 4 days
stanford: 11 days