Last night my wife and I saw the Nickelback concert in Des Moines. It's the first rock concert we've been to in almost two years, and definitely an experience to remember.My brother lives in Ankeny, about 30 minutes away from the arena, so the wife and I hung out with him before going to the concert. We chatted about everything and nothing for a few hours -- time that went by amazingly fast -- and then we were off to the concert.
The arena was amazingly easy to find, and there was little traffic to impede our quest. The only traffic hassle we had was that the event parking was right off of the freeway exit, and I blew by it before I even knew what it was. As I drove by the parking lot, I wondered how I'd get back there, but in the end it didn't matter. We ended up in a parking ramp that had a skywalk connection to the arena. We ended up walking a little further, but it was all indoors, we didn't have to pay the $6.00 for event parking, and we didn't have to deal with the traffic congestion before and after the concert.
The biggest downside to our experience was that we ended up in the nosebleed section, but that was okay too... I'm turning in to an old fart, and I no longer feel the need to be constantly on my feet, jumping up and down and screaming until my voice is shattered. Sitting in the nosebleed section allowed me to sit and quietly enjoy the music. For the record though, when I get good tickets, I'm screaming and jumping up and down with the best of them... I just need my oxygen tank immediately before and after the show.
Of course, no concert is complete without the funny stories about the stupid drunk people. We ended up sitting next to a couple of women that I affectionately dubbed the she-mullets. The she-mullets were a pair of women in their late thirties who were apparently trying to relive their glory days... of course, judging by their fantastically awful mullets, it may have been more accurate to say that they had never left their wild-n-crazy glory days... maybe because nobody was kind enough to tell them that they were too old to continue acting like teenagers, and they were too cronked to figure it out for themselves.
When I refer to these women as the she-mullets, it only paints a partial picture... maybe this will help you more fully understand just how white trash these chicks were... When they showed up, they had a beer in each hand and were already staggering drunk, both were dressed in clothing that was about a size too small for their frame, and then to top it off there was a he-mullet in the row behind us that was hitting on them. It would have been truly comical to watch if we had been another row or two away from them. As it was, every time they walked by, I nearly gagged from the particularly noxious combination of cheap perfume, tobacco smoke (despite the fact that the place was no-smoking), spilled beer and hair spray.
The guy that was hitting on them did so by swapping stories about concerts that they'd been to... after overhearing one or two of the concerts they'd attended, I leaned over to my wife and informed that I could probably shut them up very quickly and efficiently by out-cheezing their concert stories with my "just average" concert stories, but I had become too much of a yuppie snob to bother. We both got a kick out of my ability to admit that I'm a cheezy snob. But hey, the she-mullets were so obnoxious that even the young couple a couple seats down were laughing at them.
During one particular beer run, when the she-mullets staggered back to their seats with two more fists of beer (this would have been their fourth trip or so), one of the she-mullets left her purse in the aisle... the aforementioned young couple came over to me and the wife and wryly said that they must have left the purse in the aisle so the crack pipe could cool off. A few minutes later, the she-mullet went to retrieve her crack-pipe carrier, but was so drunk that she kept dropping it. After she was finally able to pick it up and crawl back to her seat, I looked at the young couple and mimed the process of picking up a hot crack-pipe carrier.
The most spectacular she-mullet moment came during the concert, when they started banging their aged heads to the music. The she-mullets were fantastic in their headbanging pseudo-mating ritual. The hair spread from their skulls as if they were peacocks during the mating season. The nostalgia came flooding back as I saw the she-mullets perform their mating ritual in their natural environment.
Yes, the she-mullets provided us with hours of annoyance and entertainment, but we went there to see Nickelback, and I suspect you're more than a little curious how the concert went. Well, I'll tell you, it was phenomenal - and I don't use that term lightly. I've been to over 30 concerts.... I've seen the best of them... Metallica, Ozzy, Rush, Queensryche, LIVE, I've seen the cheeziest of them... Europe, Jackyl... I've seen country, opera, you name it. I will say that Nickelback is one of the tightest musical groups I've ever seen. They did a great job of working the crowd, their technical skills were top-notch, the musical set was superb, and they did an awesome job of using pyrotechnics without detracting from the music. (By the way, Nickelback, if you're ever looking for a guy to burn and blow shit up for you, I'm available.)
In my experience, seeing musicians perform live is the ultimate litmus test of how good they really are. Anyone can take and re-take a track until it's perfect. It requires a lot more skill to come together in a live setting - especially when you have tens of thousands of screaming fans. I've been a fan of Nickelback since their Silver Side up CD came out. I've been looking forward to this concert for months. I'm pleased to say that not only did Nickelback provide me with a great musical experience, they blew away my expectations and in the process created a hard core fan of their live music.
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