a Rolling Stone gathers no moss

I am going to step away from my usual doom & gloom and everything-that-is-wrong-with-the-world attitude for just a few minutes to relate to you a personal anecdote, a slice-of-life if you will, from the past week.




It was almost a spur of the moment decision, beginning with nothing more than a desire to do something 'neat' with my teenage daughter, (gather your flowers while you can and all that...). This is a young woman who likes nothing better than shopping or events of some kind. I don't do shopping real well, so I focused on event possibilities, something that would impress her as well as leave her with a memory to save and share with friends and possibly even her own kids.

Scanning some soon-to-be-deleted-as-spam emails, (one in particular), I got an idea. Without going into great, (make that any) detail with the youngster or her mother, (I told the youngster that I was taking her to see the Antiques Roadshow), I checked the date on the calendar, then considered the logistical questions of the upcoming opportunity, and got started. The process started with some necessary rationalizations, thinking that yeah, it was a school night, but it was only two hundred miles or so, I can do 200 miles easy, and it wasn't a sellout, and a few other minor obfuscations of reason. The process continued with me purchasing tickets for the event on the thursday prior to the sunday night event. Tickets had been on sale for about 3 months, so I didn't expect much in the way of selection, nor any breaks in the way of price, and didn't get any. Unable to talk to a human at Ticketbastard, I called the box office, and talked with a lad named Jason. I learned through him that his software for finding seats was not a lot better than that which is online, so I simply bought a pair of tickets. At that moment, I learned that buying direct from the box-office was more than the Ticketbastard price, the first of many minor insults and 'value-added' costs...

Jason was brutally frank with me about the whole arrangement, and I appreciated it. He explained that the parking arrangements were all over the town, and that shuttle buses would run to and from the designated parking areas. The streets around the venue were to be closed 3 hours prior to the event. With all due repect to the city in question, it is the epitome of a 'one horse town'. The event was to be held outdoors, in the local University football stadium, geared more towards a lot of foot traffic than vehicles. OK, OK, they are trying to step up....

I could already see the glow of my idea slipping. For the next two days I wondered if the value of this would be in the talking about it afterwards, in other words if this was really more trouble than it would be worth. That feeling stayed with me for awhile, gaining a little momentum from the series of minor insults that one goes through in a situation like this. The cost, the lines, the rules --- you know, the bullshit hoops that you have to jump through.

The outbound trip was uneventful, save for a late start and exacerbated by a few @$$hole drivers on the interstate and a particulaly inconvenient stretch of road work, but we got there, (just not before the area was closed off). All the while, I wondered how this would stack up, was this the real thing, or simply a last-ditch attempt to clean out the wallets of the fans? Anyway, as we arrived close to our ultimate destination, we gassed up and decided to chow down at a Taco Bell, then find a place to park. We saw many churches, businesses and other enterprises selling parking for $10-$20 a spot. We settled on a side street, poised for an easy get-away later. It was every bit as inconvenient as the "pay" lots and free to boot. We walked the distance to the venue fairly quicky and then inquired as to the location of the will call office. The answer was a warm and friendly "can't get there from here". The office was in a building adjacent to the stadium, just on the far corner from where we were, thus, more walking, and as the streets were closed off to all but those shuttle buses, it was a slightly longer walk than it normally would have been. We secured our tickets and we hiked back about a mile to cover about 300 lateral yards.

OK, we got in and immediately found ourselves surrounded by about a bazillion folks standing in line for merchandise. Not wanting to be left out, we cut in where we could, (there was one line, out of eight, for credit card purchases, and that was the popular one. I quickly decided to burn a little cash, and it still took 45 minutes to get to the front....).

That being done, we found our seats, (actually taped off sections of a bleacher). We were in a college football stadium, with stands on either sideline, and a clay track surrounding the playing field. The sun was in our eyes at first, and lent the scene a "what-are-we-doing here?" aire, but the blinding light quickly settled behind the stands on the other side of the field, so that was not too bad. There was a sturdy southwesterly breeze as well, which made the location a bit more palatable. I noticed that the western horizon darkened quicker than I expected, and saw a few clouds sliding across the horizon. I hoped that weather would hold another three hours....

So, there we were, at about the fifty yard line, about half way up the stadium riser. To our left, in the endzone was the stage, and it was a monster. I am guessing that the scaffolding below and behind the stage was about six stories tall, and it supported a very large video screen in the upper center, (I am guessing here, but probably 25 x 30 feet), as well as four smaller screens, two on each side of the structure. In addition to the screens, there were the traditional rock star speaker stacks, (hung from the scaffolding, not stacked on the stage), lights and other stuff. There were two tall sound and light towers at about mid-field, and two other sound towers further back. There were three runways off the stage, a long one from the center of the stage out to (damn near) the fifty-yard line, and two others that extended to the far right and left of the field. My guess-timate was that the full width of the stage was about 180 feet. The stage itself was HUGE. While we were waiting, certain ads and bulletins were displayed on the four smaller video screens, (as well as some large Radio Shack banners), one of them offering a seat upgrade, asking interested parties to send a text message to a certain account. I do not own a cellular phone, so I paid little attention except to think that they do not stop reaching for your wallet until the very, very last minute. Well, my daughter does have a cell phone, and availed herself of the offer, (I later learned that she resent the message between 30 & 50 times).

On a side note, during all the walking around that was done prior to getting in to the place, I counted quite a few large eighteen wheel trucks parked here and there. From our seats I could see at least 12 more behind the stage area, as well as three large cranes. Moving this outfit has to be a major undertaking.

OK, the warm up act came out, a trio called the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. (No, I never heard of them either--but they sounded like the White Stripes meet the Clash and they all channel Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison). They were not altogether bad, but they suffered from a scale problem. A trio, (drum kit, guitar and bass amps and 3 guys), parked on the forward edge of the humongous stage. They were tiny, and watching them, (as opposed to one of the video monitors), was a lot like looking off the Sears Tower at the pedestrian traffic on the street below.

As the BRMC finished, the road crew took their equipment down, (that took all of three minutes), and proceeded to get ready for the next act, my daughters cell phone buzzed and she had a text message saying that she got the upgrade. Suspicious, but agreeable, I followed her through the crowd, (that didn't work real well, so she started following me). My fears abated a bit when we got past the ticket nazi's and security guys by showing them the text message. We were now on the floor of the stadium, (not a bad deal by itself),and reported to the equipment stack that was our meeting place, again, securing our positions with the text message.

We were surrounded by security shirts worn by guys that looked like Mr. Clean's cousin from Kazahkstan. There were a couple dozen of us, including a brother and sister who bought tickets for each other as birthday gifts. The brother was turning 16, his sister drove so I assume she was turning 17 or 18, and the two of them were positively giddy. But I digress.

A short guy with an impressive mullet explained that we would be taken as a group to our places, so keep up. We did, walking forward to the front of the audience area. I kept looking for a block of empty seats, ut saw none. We were then led through a chain-link gate to an area backstage, and the whole atmosphere changed. Everybody, me included, felt like Dorothy approaching the wizard to ask a favor. We were issued new tickets, special wristbands and more rules were given to us, no alchohol, no camera's etc.

My daughter pointed out that the guy explaining things was the guy who sang and played guitar in the warmup act, BRMC. OK, cool, the guy is multi-talented.



Note the verbiage on the tickets, the one that was purchased is on top, (minus the stub collected at the gate), the one issued to us is below, the wristband (what's left of it) is above.

We were led around behind the scaffolding, and then up several short flights of stairs, then into view boxes situated in the scaffolding above and behind the stage, looking out on the crowd, and down on the stage. In truth, we were a part of the stage, situated on the drummers left and above the horn section. The wall behind us was part of the overall video display, embedded with multicolored LED's that operated on cue, (and they were bright too...). I thought at the time that we were expected to be a road version of the 'Sold Gold Dancers'. More roadies, some musicians, backup singers moving about, getting ready to do something, then the lights went down. The security babysitters with us kept bringing us glasses of water, juice, etc, just like we belonged there, all the while watching us to be sure that nobody attempted to jump down to the stage.

Here is a picture, (shamelessly taken from another site), modified to show where we started, and ended up.

I mentioned before that my daughter likes events, but this was already way beyond her, or my expectations, and it hadn't even started yet.

A man sat down on the drum riser and hit a few beats, maybe to limber up, then a rather small gentleman, with a headband and a long coat, (he could have been a flasher), stepped out with a guitar, found 'his' spot then looked back to make sure all was ready. Apparently it was so, & Keith Richards started knocking off the chords to "It's Only Rock N' Roll", Mick Jagger jumped/danced/pranced out and the Rolling Stones assumed control of everything that happened within audible distance.



I have been to quite a few concerts over the years, but this was a first, the view was outrageously great, (even from the back). This whole deal started with a desire to give my daughter an event; I was pretty sure at this point that it was working out rather well.





The band was pretty good, very animated, (I mean, besides Mick, who is Mr. Animated), they seemed to have the act worked down to the last detail. That sounds trite, but everyone who has been to an outdoor concert knows that acoustics are at best problematic and usually terrible, but they had it down pretty well under control. The people we were watching were first and foremost professional entertainers, and rock stars second. You paid (through the nose) for a show, and you got one. I would guess that most everyone there felt the same way.



While I am on it, the general demographic in the place was a bit above your average rock concert crowd. With nothing more to go on than intuition, I would put the median age in the mid-forties. Lotta men there that you would expect to see sittin' around the fillin' station playing checkers, lotta women wearing tube tops that should have been retired years ago. But they were all onboard with this, and a good time seemed to be had by all. Of all the things that I wished that I'd have done, there were two porta-potty's situated at the foot of the stairs we ascended. Both had signs that said "Rolling Stones Band Use Only", I wished that I'd copped one of those signs, (it was just computer paper and duct tape). I figured I'd get one on the way out, but it was not to be.

The band played a wide array of tunes from across their career. I did not attempt to keep a written record, (in that position, would you?), but we were conveniently given what turned out to be scripts for the show about 3/4 way through. The handouts underlined the instruction that we were NOT to leave the boxes until escorted out, but it also had the set list, the key the tune was in, the tempo and other notes that I fail to understand right off, but I am certain it was intended to give the sound/light people a heads up about what was going to happen during each tune.



I was pretty impressed with Keith Richards. He has a bit of a reputation as, well, a diamond-in-the-rough, (putting it politely), but this night anyway, he was in good voice for "You Got the Silver", singing it solo, standing at a microphone with nothing but a cigarette that he used an effective prop, and his stage presence was very well executed, (NOTHING just happens in a show like this), right down to the poses he struck at exactly the right moment and the expressions on his face when he did it. The man was stylin'!



About halfway through the set, looking down I noticed that the surface of the stage had changed shape. Musicians were congregating on a section that probably measured 16 x 20 feet, and the drum riser was being pushed forward. As the band played "Under My Thumb", the section moved forward, down the long center runway to a point at midfield, where they played 'in the round' for a couple of tunes.






While they were out there, a giant inflatable logo with the lips and tongue deployed on the center scaffold at the main stage.



When the stage rolled back, and they guys had a drink of water, what was probably intended as the climactic moment ensued, with Mick running across the breadth of the stage coaxing the crowd with his falsetto 'woo woo' sound, (you'd know it if you heard it), then he ducked backstage for a quick costume adjustment, he emerged in red coat and hat as the guitars struck up "Sympathy for the Devil". Mick was all over the stage, as well as above it, dancing and moving in his own inimitable manner in front of the giant screen illuminated for effect, (indeed, the entire stage was backlit, including our boxes).

At the end of the tune, there was a plethora of pyrotechnics that went off in unison, cylinders at the edge of the stage, large (and loud) flame pots at the top of the scaffolding, fireworks, and every light on the damn thing going on and off in a pre-programmed sequence. After that, the show went on, but wound down with two more tunes before the musicians took their bows. The first bow acknowledged the audience and featured all thirteen players, the second bow just the core-four, and finally the Mickmeister alone.





There was a two-song encore followed by fireworks and more pyrotechnics. The band made their getaway while the fireworks were going off, (the fireworks and visual pyrotechnics, as well as a clean getaway being the reason we could not leave our boxes).

At that point, we were escorted off the platform and up the same plywood walkway that the band had left on, through a gate into the lot with all the heavy trucks, and released. As it was at the beginning, we were completely opposite of where we needed to be, so, we maneuvered our way along the fence, back into the stadium, (climbing over barricades---at my age!), and then across the field and out the same gate that we entered through. A mile and a half or so back to the car, (even at that, we got out before many of the bus shuttlers), then to gas station for coffee and a personal break, and then ....onward.

We were pumped. the plan had been to go as far as we thought we could, then stop at a motel, or a convenient exit ramp to catch a few winks, but we just came on in. Home about 03:30AM, late to school the following day, but we got through it.

Now, to get back to my feelings of unease and second guessing. While it was justified, I can honestly report no problems, the experience was expensive as these things go, but worth the cost. We paid through the nose for everything, (even gas was 7 cents/gal higher before the show than after), but we got what we went for, and then some.

There was a review posted on the net Monday morning. See it here.

here is the setlist:

It's Only Rock n Roll
You Got Me Rocking
Monkey Man
Sway
Wichita Lineman (just one chorus)
Let it Bleed
Streets of Love
Bitch
Tumblin' Dice
You Got the Silver
Little T&A
Under My Thumb
Rough Justice
Jumpin Jack Flash
Honky Tonk Woman
Sympathy For the Devil
Start Me Up
Brown Sugar
You Can't Always Get What You Want
Satisfaction



Thanks guys. Come back some time soon.

I'd like to add that the pictures here, (save the scanned images), are not mine, they have been appropriated from various internet sites, and most are from other dates, but they are representative of what we saw. My thanks to those artists who produced them.