I suppose that I should start from the beginning.
Henry (exchange student from Ghana) decides to go with us to the concert at the last minute. We don’t have a ticket for him, but hopefully the line to buy one at the door won’t be too long. He is on crutches and a soft cast….
So we pick up Daniel and Johnny and that makes 5 of us in the car. Fun stuff! Once in Tucson, we wander around trying to figure out where we are. Periodically Johnny or Daniel would say, “I know where we’re at!” Not that it helped any, because we still didn’t know where to go. So finally Mom pulls over and asks for directions. It turns out that there are several 6th streets in Tucson. There is 6th Street, 6th Avenue, and St. Mary’s Street which everyone calls 6th Street.
We pull up and all of our jaws just kind of fall open. It was a really, really, small place. Oh well! Mom makes us 3 go try to buy a ticket, but they are sold out. They were sold out 1/2 an hour before the show even started. So me, Daniel, and Johnny head in, while Mom and Henry wait in the car because there is one ticket between them. Some random person ended up just giving them a ticket. How nice.
Now comes the part when I buy a Mae shirt, and some stickers to go on my waterbottle. I like my shirt. *grins*
The opening band, Name Taken, wasn’t so great, but they were just the opening band, so no one expected the to be great. And then the next band, Mae, came. They were better. Maybe because I had some of their music downloaded, so I sort of knew what was going on. Click Here to hear them.
It was in between Name Taken and Mae that I wanted to move closer to the stage. I got separated from Daniel and Johnny, but I found another girl I knew, so it was ok. I ended up in the middle, and we (the girl, her friend, and me) worked so hard at going nowhere. It was a fight just to keep our positions. In between Mae and Relient K, I got separated from them too, because I went closer. I did end up in the second row, but there was no way that I could move closer or even farther if I wanted to. People were so closely jammed in there that I couldn’t see my waist.
It was incredibly hot. You know how if you climb a tall mountain, the oxygen molecules are few and far between, so even if you take a deep breath it never really satisfies you? That describes the air in there. There were 1,000 people, maybe more, crammed in this tiny little building, all feeling worse than sardines, and all trying to move closer to the stage. I’m sure they were breaking fire hazard laws. All the people in there explains the lack of oxygen, and it didn’t help that someone was smoking. My friends told me afterward that it wasn’t a cigarette either.
Relient K came on, and then I felt more comfortable (in my brain. My body was less comfortable after they came on…) because I knew what they were saying. I started noticing at this time how much water I was losing. My pants were just below my waste when the concert started, but when I realized how sweaty I was I also realized how low my pants were. RK threw a couple of water bottles out into the crowd, like right where I was, but some other people got them and didn’t share. I was really dizzy–the loss of water, the mysterious smoke, and not being able to breathe all contributed.
They ended and the crowd was in the perfect condition to start a mob. Everyone was screaming, “ONE MORE SONG! ONE MORE SONG!” Relient K came back on stage to do an encore. Then everyone started screaming, “PRESS-ING ON! PRESS-ING ON!” I actually wanted them to play Failure to Excommunicate, because I really like that song. But chanting, “FAIL-URE TO EX-CO-MUN-I-CATE!” is pretty hard to do. I forget what song they actually did, but it wasn’t either of those. Like I said, I was dizzy, and I knew that if I didn’t get water soon I would pass out or something.
Then we came home.
Henry didn’t like it at all. He doesn’t like the kind of music, and it wasn’t as “Christian” as he thought it would be. But it’s good that he experienced a rock concert. I think his idea was that it would be like the Steven Curtis Chapman concert, but with a faster beat. I never told him that Relient K’s newest album hit #41 on the secular charts. I guess you can consider them a cross-over band…of a sort. Because they haven’t made a song about how getting high takes your worries away, but they appeal to a surprisingly large amount of non-Christians, so they are a cross-over band of a sort.
guitars.