Thursday, August 23, 2007

Two concerts this week.

Yeah, so Meg and I went to see Velvet Revolver and Alice in Chains on Monday night, at the Tweeter Center in Camden. The Tweeter Center is an outdoor venue, with a large covered seating area, as well as a large "grass" area. Because of a particularly rainy few days, coupled with several large concerts over the part week, the term grass was more adept at describing the stuff in people's pipes, rather than the stuff clinging to the bottom of people's shoes.

We arrived at the T-Center around 4:30 PM, in a driving rain, temperature around 65 degrees. I'd borrowed a 10'x10' tent from my father, so that we'd be at least somewhat dry whilst cooking and drinking. Between 7 of us, we went through 6 pounds of hamburger, a case and a half of beer, a big-ass bottle of Jagermeister, and two big bottles of Gin & Juice. Man, were we shitfaced. Plus, we had a few inside the concert. We had a crackhead try to sell us 'shrooms and hash, to which my buddy Joe replied, "No, I'm edge," while drinking a Killian's. Crackhead replies "Ah man, that's cool, too," in kind.

Alice in Chains rocked the fucking house. I mean, just tore that shit down. I was worried that they'd lose something in the translation, what with Layne Staley being dead and all. William DuVall, AIC's new lead singer, did an AWESOME job. He sounds exactly like Layne, and Jerry Cantrell is every bit the guitar player he was 10 years ago. They haven't lost a step at all, and I can't wait until their new album comes out.

Velvet Revolver rocked, too. Not as much as AIC, but hell, they played "Interstate Love Song" and "Patience," as well as a few other GNR and STP hits, so I was happy. Of course, the performance of VR was underscored by the fact that my buddy Deepak, one of the crazy Indians, got even more shitfaced than the rest of us, decided he needed to go to the bathroom, and during the movement of him towards the bathroom (with my wife and I holding him up), he fell, and we all went sliding down the hill, in the mud. Fun. Secondly, my wife, of course, intoxicated as well, decided to climb over a railing, to try to sit in a covered seat. So once the "ticketing manager" saw this, even though VR was almost done playing, the place was DEFINITELY not packed, and CERTAINLY not sold out, gave her, and the rest of us shit. He actually told us that he wanted to see all of our tickets, you know, to ensure that we had legally entered the stadium for the concert. Now, this is in a stadium, designed to hold, maybe 10K people, and there were all of about 1,000 in attendance, because of the weather. I seriously thought Meg was going to slug him, then I thought I was, then I thought her father (yeah, her dad came with us....he's a damn cool guy) was going to slug him.

Anyway, after that, we all piled, drunk as skunks, into the Taurus, and drove back to the house. We missed the end of VR's set, but we were all about done with the cold and rain, and the ticket fiasco just about pushed us over the edge. Wifey was up, in the shower, and out to door to work by 8 AM, while I lay in bed all day, exhausted, and ridiculously hung over. Oh well, watched some NASCAR, played some guitar, and hung out with the pup.

Yesterday, I got a call from my sister, who said she had two extra tickets to the Collective Soul/Live/Counting Crows concert, up a the Lakewood Blueclaws stadium, about an hour from my house. Called the wifey, but she said that she was too tired from the other night, so I called around, and my buddy Rick went with us to the show. All my comments from the previous post about this tour apply to this concert. Stuck around long enough to hear Counting Crows play "Mr. Jones," then headed out to hit a bar.

We met up with my friend Joe, his brother Lou, and my buddy Ryan, at a bar called the Marina Grille, up in Brick, about 15 minutes from Lakewood. $1 Miller Lites...oh yeah. Unfortunately, we were over an hour from home, and I didn't feel much like getting in an accident or getting a DUI, so I had two beers, hung out for awhile, bopped around to the (halfway-decent) cover band, and chilled with my sister, her boyfriend, Rick, and the aforementioned friends. Good times...