Nickelback

Here we are, sharing a rain jacket while waiting for a rock concert to start because John doesn’t need no stinking jacket. Until he was about to put a bag over his head.

And for some reason, he-who-compulsively-checks-weather failed to do so. Apparently he didn’t check “because it’s no longer monsoon season so we shouldn’t be getting monsoon rain.” You tell that logic to the weather.

BTW, the amphitheater was empty in this shot because we’re early, and the opening band sucks. Although not all that many people came to see Nickelback either. You should have seen this place when Santana came. He is New Mexico’s beloved musician. The whole state came to hear Santana.

Ok weather update! I watched lightning for 10 minutes before John finally admitted to believing me.

But neither of us noticed the gray mass behind us.

One minute everyone was slowly waving their lit phones in the air, hundreds of fireflies paying tribute to the band. Then simultaneously all the phones went dark and the entire crowd became a sea of disposable ponchos and garbage bags.

My first thought when seeing the approaching deluge was, uh-oh, if I’m going to be stuck in the car for awhile I better pee first. Apparently half the other women there thought so too. I was in still line for the restrooms when the venue asked us to please make our orderly way out to our vehicles. By the time I got out of the loo, we  knew we weren’t going to make it out to the car fast enough. That’s partly because we had deliberately parked waaay out there so we wouldn’t get stuck in the mass of traffic at the end of the concert (brilliant us).

So we ran, but it was too far for me to sprint, so it was more like my regular slow jog. Bonus! I got in two jogs in one day! The first jog was in the morning when I found out someone else had bought the house I wanted, and I was mad and needed to blow off some steam. So I definitely got my exercise in for the day.

Anyway, we were only halfway to the car when it started pelting. We were running in the blinding, driving rain, while concert goers arriving in vehicles were shouting at all of us asking, “Is it canceled? Is it canceled?” I can understand they would want to know. But they were dry in their cars and we were being assaulted by rain and lightening. So we weren’t in much of a mood to stop and talk. I just kept yelling, “No, not yet! Not yet!” Because the officials had told us all to take shelter for half an hour and then they’d let us back in.

By the time we made it to the car we were wet through.

Here’s John modeling in a wet button-down shirt contest. Looking good!

But lucky him, he happened to have an identical dry shirt in the car. He had gone straight to the concert from work, so he had brought a second shirt and changed out of his work shirt for the concert, and left his work shirt in the car. The hilarious thing is, the shirts are identical. They are both blue, button down shirts. He says, no they aren’t the same. The collar on his work shirt buttons down, but the collar on his casual shirt doesn’t button down. SO THEY ARE WAY DIFFERENT! Sometimes he doesn’t get how crazy he is. But nonetheless he had a dry shirt to change into.

By the time we got back to the concert, I was hungry, so I ate non-organic kiosk food, which I regretted later. I’m really having to be careful with that.

There were three bands. The opening act wasn’t very good.

Unfortunately this was my last photo because I had failed to charge my battery. And the good stuff happened later. But I’ll tell you all about it.

Then we had Daughtry. They weren’t bad. Chris Daughtry is slightly odd and slightly amusing in an odd way. He reminded me of my wood floor guy, Chad Delong, who’s also slightly odd and vaguely amusing, and is writing a post-apocalypse novel set in Albuquerque. From his description, it sounds very gory and depraved, but that’s an entirely different story.

Then we had Nickelback. The lead guy, whose name I don’t know and I’m not willing to bother to look it up, is an asshole. I won’t be going to one of his concerts again. At first, he was just a bit annoying. He made stupid jokes about drugs and alcohol and made a big show of drinking something alcoholic onstage, and somehow we were supposed to be impressed with his coolness. Not. But that wasn’t the main issue.

He decided he’d pull a couple of people out of the audience onstage for karaoke. Great. He picked a blond chick in a very tight black dress. No surprise. How he even found a blond in the front row of a concert in Albuquerque, I don’t know. She and I were probably about the only blonds there. Why she was wearing a tight black dress to an outdoor concert in a thunderstorm, I also don’t know, but John and I weren’t dressed quite appropriately enough for the weather either, so who’s to judge.

The Nickelback guy only wanted her, but he accidentally ended up with 3 or 4 people onstage, which really upset him and he called it a “shit show” and ordered them back off the stage. But he wasn’t getting a lot of cooperation from his own people (or maybe it was the local hired help who were undermining him) because we ended up with a trio onstage: a cool-looking black guy, the hot blond in the tight dress, and a slightly overweight native american woman. Who. Was. Fantastic! She had the most fabulous attitude! And talented!

But the Nickelback guy clearly didn’t want her up there. He made fun of her for being drunk (even though 3 minutes before he was acting like it was cool to be drunk. And she wasn’t any drunker than anyone else on that stage). He set her up way off the the far side of the stage and turned off her mike. He centrally located the blond and gave her tons of attention and pretended the black guy didn’t exist.

The song started. The blond chick didn’t know the lyrics. But the native american chick obviously knew ALL the lyrics and was going for it! She had the moves going and the rhythm going, and having a great time up there. She was totally inspiring (from way over there on the very far edge of the stage with her mike off).

But here’s where it got good. Most of the audience couldn’t see the stage all that well. But what we could see very well was the enormous screen behind the stage. So what the camera man does is very important, even with a live show.

The camera man panned to the native american girl and a cheer went up. This wasn’t a mocking cheer or a pity cheer, this was clearly a “YOU ROCK!” cheer. He panned back to the center of the stage and the cheer died. He panned back to the sidelines where she was rocking out and the cheer rose louder. He did this several times and each time the cheer was louder than the last. I don’t even know if they knew what was happening on the stage, because they couldn’t see the screen behind them. But we knew it, and we were loving it.

She was up there nailing it and we were all like, you show him, girl, you show that asshole. This woman stands for us. This is Albuquerque. She’s Albuquerque. She’s us. Without her, it isn’t Albuquerque. And you don’t make fun of Albuquerque.

So when she wakes up the next morning, feeling unappreciated, fat, broke, hung-over and sidelined (like we all do at times) and her friends tell her, “No man, you were great, you killed it up there, you totally rocked, you were the best!” I just hope she believes them and doesn’t ever forget it, because that is the truth of what happened.