In which the Crows perform, Jeanne introduces Seanan to beef, and Seanan remains the Rain King.
The Counting Crows are my favorite band in the entire world. They write the songs that I need to hear; Adam's lyrics, the band's backing, everything just comes together in the way that I know deep down is right. If comparing my writing to Stephen King is the most amazing thing that can happen to me as an author, then comparing my lyrics to Adam's would be the most amazing thing that could happen to me as a musician. I'm not a scary super-fan, but I'm definitely a devotee.
Which all goes by way of explanation to why I, queen of not doing anything on a work night because I need my beauty sleep, attended a Counting Crows concert last night, and am doing the same thing again tonight. I got four hours of sleep. I have no regrets.
Jeanne and I basically monitor the band's message boards for announcements that a tour is/might be/could possibly someday be upcoming, and as soon as we have tour dates, we start plotting tickets. It's an unusual tour where we don't find a way to attend at least two shows. This year, we got tickets for the Wednesday show at the Shoreline (lawn seats), and the Thursday show at the Concord Pavilion (not lawn seats). How much do I love this band? So much that I miss the season premiere of Supernatural for them. Truly my love is deep and pure.
Since I work in San Francisco, we decided to have me take the train to Jeanne on Wednesday, with her driving me home after. (We'll meet in Concord tonight.) This is always fun, since riding CalTrain gives me deep anxiety issues. The conductors are generally convinced that people asking questions are just wasting their time, which is an issue when I don't know where the hell I am, where I'm going, or what I'm doing in this handbasket, and many stations are not clearly labeled. I love the speed and the convenience. I hate the constant feeling that I'm somehow going to wind up in San Diego. It didn't help matters that my train was delayed; however, as Jeanne was also delayed, everything worked out okay in the end.
Once we'd managed to meet up with one another, we went for dinner at a Japanese hot pot place where they brought us platters of thin-sliced beef and bowls of vegetables, and let us cook them ourselves in boiling water. There were slices of pumpkin, chunks of broccoli, and asparagus spears. I was a happy bunny. It's always fun to go to places where playing with your food is part of the expected behavior. Helps me a lot, given my (total lack of) table manners.
As we were running late, we basically booked straight from dinner to the concert venue. Now, the Crows usually do a double-headline thing, and we were reasonably sure that the Wednesday show would have them, then Maroon 5, while the Thursday show would be the other way around. Good news: we were wrong, so while we missed several Maroon 5 songs, we didn't miss any of the Crows. Bad news: we were wrong, so there was no way either of us was getting to bed before midnight. You win some, you lose some.
Frankly, we won.
Our tickets were for the lawn, so we went up, found a spot, spread our blanket, and commenced to freeze to death while watching a band neither of us cared all that much about perform songs we didn't know. Three girls directly ahead of us insisted on standing up for no apparent reason, leading me to issue death threats if they continued doing this during the Crows set. The people to our right were smoking truly impressive amounts of pot. Everyone who's surprised that I went and found us a better spot during the intermission, raise your hand!
The new spot was honestly much better. As always happens, several people left after the first band, and we were able to get ourselves nicely centered in front of the big lawn LCD screen, where we'd have a truly awesome view of the live-feed broadcast of the concert. I love that technology means I no longer need to bring binoculars to see what's going on when I'm sitting on the lawn.
They opened with 'Around Here,' mixed in with 'Hangin' Around.' They had me from 'hello.'
As always, stage patter was minimal; they let the music speak for itself, save when they were doing songs from the new album (which received mumbling introductions). Adam was on fire. I've seen the man live a lot of times, and I have very rarely seen him the way he was last night. He didn't sing the songs, he performed the songs. He lived the songs. I don't think either of us really noticed, or really cared, how late it was getting, because the Crows were flying, and everything in the world was wonderful.
They closed with an arrangement of 'Rain King' that bled into 'Raise A Ruckus' (with Augustana) and 'Mr. Jones' that left us both going 'need bootleg, need bootleg right now.'
We left laughing.
I can't wait to do it again tonight.
Which all goes by way of explanation to why I, queen of not doing anything on a work night because I need my beauty sleep, attended a Counting Crows concert last night, and am doing the same thing again tonight. I got four hours of sleep. I have no regrets.
Jeanne and I basically monitor the band's message boards for announcements that a tour is/might be/could possibly someday be upcoming, and as soon as we have tour dates, we start plotting tickets. It's an unusual tour where we don't find a way to attend at least two shows. This year, we got tickets for the Wednesday show at the Shoreline (lawn seats), and the Thursday show at the Concord Pavilion (not lawn seats). How much do I love this band? So much that I miss the season premiere of Supernatural for them. Truly my love is deep and pure.
Since I work in San Francisco, we decided to have me take the train to Jeanne on Wednesday, with her driving me home after. (We'll meet in Concord tonight.) This is always fun, since riding CalTrain gives me deep anxiety issues. The conductors are generally convinced that people asking questions are just wasting their time, which is an issue when I don't know where the hell I am, where I'm going, or what I'm doing in this handbasket, and many stations are not clearly labeled. I love the speed and the convenience. I hate the constant feeling that I'm somehow going to wind up in San Diego. It didn't help matters that my train was delayed; however, as Jeanne was also delayed, everything worked out okay in the end.
Once we'd managed to meet up with one another, we went for dinner at a Japanese hot pot place where they brought us platters of thin-sliced beef and bowls of vegetables, and let us cook them ourselves in boiling water. There were slices of pumpkin, chunks of broccoli, and asparagus spears. I was a happy bunny. It's always fun to go to places where playing with your food is part of the expected behavior. Helps me a lot, given my (total lack of) table manners.
As we were running late, we basically booked straight from dinner to the concert venue. Now, the Crows usually do a double-headline thing, and we were reasonably sure that the Wednesday show would have them, then Maroon 5, while the Thursday show would be the other way around. Good news: we were wrong, so while we missed several Maroon 5 songs, we didn't miss any of the Crows. Bad news: we were wrong, so there was no way either of us was getting to bed before midnight. You win some, you lose some.
Frankly, we won.
Our tickets were for the lawn, so we went up, found a spot, spread our blanket, and commenced to freeze to death while watching a band neither of us cared all that much about perform songs we didn't know. Three girls directly ahead of us insisted on standing up for no apparent reason, leading me to issue death threats if they continued doing this during the Crows set. The people to our right were smoking truly impressive amounts of pot. Everyone who's surprised that I went and found us a better spot during the intermission, raise your hand!
The new spot was honestly much better. As always happens, several people left after the first band, and we were able to get ourselves nicely centered in front of the big lawn LCD screen, where we'd have a truly awesome view of the live-feed broadcast of the concert. I love that technology means I no longer need to bring binoculars to see what's going on when I'm sitting on the lawn.
They opened with 'Around Here,' mixed in with 'Hangin' Around.' They had me from 'hello.'
As always, stage patter was minimal; they let the music speak for itself, save when they were doing songs from the new album (which received mumbling introductions). Adam was on fire. I've seen the man live a lot of times, and I have very rarely seen him the way he was last night. He didn't sing the songs, he performed the songs. He lived the songs. I don't think either of us really noticed, or really cared, how late it was getting, because the Crows were flying, and everything in the world was wonderful.
They closed with an arrangement of 'Rain King' that bled into 'Raise A Ruckus' (with Augustana) and 'Mr. Jones' that left us both going 'need bootleg, need bootleg right now.'
We left laughing.
I can't wait to do it again tonight.