Awesome Friday. Absolutely awesome.
Well. Not everything was awesome about it, but the awesome parts of it far outweighed the crappy parts in both number and degree of awesome.
Met up with my friend and his girlfriend Thursday afternoon to hang out for a few hours and go over some details about the concert and other stuff. He said we were leaving at 3:30 am; his girlfriend said if I wasn't awake at that time I was going to be left, and there were statements made (not necessarily by her) about the state and functionality of my window air unit in such case.
To which I replied that that would be fine, and then when they returned I would be reimbursed quite well. Wasn't entirely the reaction they were looking for. =P
Went to bed midnight Thursday. Up at three on the dot; showered, dressed, and fed by the designated time, at which I received the admonishing message "if ur not up, gtf up already".
(as I type, the sky is marching upon us for war)
I responded. I didn't hear from him again until five. Interesting.
So we're off at five for really long drive to Memphis, including a stop for gas, and a stop for breakfast at about 8:30. Yay Hardee's. Once it becomes clear to me that I'm not going to be able to sleep in the car, I abandon the effort and read some of the 4.0 Players Handbook stuff. I did a lot of this Friday at various points. Just so you know.
We got to Memphis about ten-thirty, and my friend found the cheapest of the three hotels on the stop. I got slightly excited, thinking we'll have a bit of time for a nap of sorts, since we've got eight hours until the concert. It's at this point it is revealed to me the extent of the girlfriend's passion for Coheed & Cambria: she had planned on camping out in line as early as she could, and neither of them thought to prepare me with this detail. Whoopee.
So she readied herself, straightened her hair, put on her makeup (sitting all the way on the counter?; she's not a small person, btw), and we're off again.
When we got there, we found out we had been beaten by three people from Florida, who apparently had arrived at Minglewood Hall a half hour after we left town that morning, and had been sitting in the gate section ever since. Jeeze. C&C fans are crazy people, I found out all through that night. At any rate, since it's hungry-time, my friend headed down to a rib place and brought us each back a rack of Memphis dry-rub ribs, which were delicious, and then we waited there.
For eight hours.
I read a lot. There's also something odd that happened involving C&C black cards and the girlfriend being very carpe diem and probably just a tad bit rabid (I was out of sight at this point), but nothing really important.
At any rate, come seven and we're let in. It's SRO, but mostly because there weren't any chairs. I ended up about four people back from just left of dead center of the stage, which I figure is pretty doggone good, and since I also figure that the currently-present rabid Coheed fans will try to press as close to the stage as possible as early as possible, I go ahead and stay there until the show starts.
Which is another hour. Whee.
The opener band was a group called Dearhunter. Six-member band; leader and second guy double guitar and keys (in reverse order), two other guitars, and of course the bass and set. Anyone who plays guitar sings at some point.
(Is it just me, or are there, like, only four bassists in bands in the history of Ever who sing? It's odd.)
Anyway, Dearhunter was okay. Not bad, certainly talented, but also kind of a generic play-real-loud-sing-real-high-and-act-real-crazy band. It occurred to me after the concert was over that they probably took a page from C&C's book on the vocal side, since the vocals were written a bit up there in the male register. I will say that the last chart on their set-list was a really cool funk, and I actually grooved along with it pretty hard until it turned back into the PRL stuff. Definitely could see them growing a bit.
The act-real-crazy part got to me a bit, though. I mean, showmanship is one thing. ZZ-Top, for instance, doesn't do jack in their shows. They come on stage and just stand there and play awesome rock. It's their thing. Metal guys rock out, fists up, bodies bent over, heads spinning. It's their thing.
These guys, especially the bassist and the keys-guitar secondary guy, were just horsing around, really. I was never really sure why the bass player would drop into his rock-out mode because he never rocked out when it would have felt like it; it was more like he would all-of-a-sudden decide he needed to go nuts and then would do it. (To add to the weirdness, he looks like the older brother of a very conservative Bible-toting gentleman acquaintance of mine. The images don't mesh very well.) The keys guy, though, was almost Aspergic in his stint, though. Big difference between head-banging in a big groove and flailing around like you're in the cast of The Exorcist while you're holding down a long tone.
Or, let's say, rubbing the side of your face sensually across the smooth part of your cherry-red Korg while you haven't got a part to play.
Weird kid.
And of course after the show I overheard someone asking him (Dearhunter stood behind their own part of the vendor's table afterwards) how hardcore the band was, and he said "Oh, all of us, we're all major hardcore. Before each show we have this pact to where we have to kill a guy." Then he looked sheepish and said "I know, I killed two people."
Probably weighed all of seventy pounds, too. Weirdo.
I'm gonna give the other two bands their own page each. PT will go first, and C&C will follow because that was show order. Which, personally, I thought was a bit of a gyp, especially since Coheed was the one who got to play encores (and actually posted the encore program online, so it wasn't really an encore so much as a brief intermission), but there were a lot of people there just to see C&C so what can you do.
Oh, right, and I yelled "FREE BIRD" at a roadie doing soundcheck because someone has to be a jerk. (^_^)
