This year we went to see my favorite band, the Foo Fighters. I can't tell you how much I wanted to see these guys. Every time they came around in the last 10 years or so, I had something going on, or I had to work... something prevented me from seeing them. this year, I figured, no more, I'm going to see them.
As usual, we got their early so we had a place to park that wasn't to far away and we weren't fighting the crowds to get to the amphitheater. The opening band was pretty lame and we put up with them for an hour. They were called the Silversun Pickups, and while they might have been nice for a $5 cover to get into a bar with live music on a weekend, I wouldn't have paid much more to actually go see them alone.
The Foo Fighters were spectacular. They played for two and a half hours, and the music was non stop. There were very few breaks in between songs, they just played. It was really pretty awesome. If I had to say, it was one of the best concerts I have ever been to if not THE best.
Our seats were pretty decent, though I had quite a time getting them. The day they went on sale, I got online to get them and ended up in Section 8, Row T, and that was maybe 90 seconds after they went on sale. If you get any farther back than section 8 you may as well skip it. That's just my opinion though. I figured I should be happy I even got the tickets. The Monday before the show the director of Summerfest was on the radio saying good seats were still available, that sometimes extra tickets are released the week of the show when they know the exact configuration of the stage, or seats that the band may have been holding back for one reason or another are released for sale to the general public. So I checked every day to see if I could get better seats. Every now and then a couple seats popped up in a better section a few rows closer, but they weren't a drastic improvement. Then the day of the show, Thursday morning, I checked and there were a couple of seats in a better section (more toward the middle of the stage) and they were in the first row (no, not in front of the stage but in the first row of the next grouping of seats - the yellow section if you know the Marcus layout).
So now I had two sets of seats. I knew a couple of people who wanted to go, but didn't have seats and didn't want to sit up on the grass, so I figured I would be able to get rid of the original tickets easily, even if it was short notice. Well I was wrong. Everyone I asked said they couldn't go for one reason or another. Kris and I asked everyone we knew. I even went next door and asked our new neighbor if he wanted them (at a discounted price) or if he had any friends who might be interested, but we had no takers. We took them along in the event we saw someone outside the park who was looking for tickets. But no luck.
We got into the amphitheater and were walking to our seats and I said something to Kris about them as we were walking in. We were looking up at the lawn section and Kris said we should just go give them to someone up on the grass so they wouldn't go to waste. And I thought, yeah, why not. Kris said something about how cool it would have been when she was 22 or 23 and someone would have just walked up to her and given her tickets down in the reserved section for a concert she really wanted to see, so I thought, sure, I'll do it. As we were walking in we saw a couple sitting up on the grass right against the railing. They looked hot and tired, like they had been there all day. I know that in order to get in free you used to have to get there right when the park opened. I don't know if that is still the case, but I do know the GA seats go very fast (I think they give out wristbands now) so it is a good bet they had been walking around for a few hours at least.
So I grabbed the tickets from Kris and walked up the stairs to the grass, and said, "excuse me, how would you guys like to go sit up in the reserved sections?" The looked at me like I was crazy. I said, I had an extra set of tickets down in Section 8 and I couldn't find anyone to use them, and I didn't want them to go to waste so if they wanted them they could have them. They said sort od skeptically, "OK, what's the catch". I said, "No catch, here you go. Enjoy the show", and handed them the tickets. They took them, looked at the tickets and said "Oh my god, thank you so much." Then Kris and I went down to our seats to wait for the opening band.
All in all it was a pretty good night. We felt good for doing something nice for someone, and saw one of the best concerts I will ever see in my life. So I guess it'll be a show I won't forget anytime soon and I hope for that couple we gave the tickets to that it was a memorable show too.
So anyway... we had a pretty good view of the stage from our new seats, right down the aisle. I smuggled Sarah's camera in and it doesn't have a great zoom on it so the flash doesn't help, and in order to get a good shot in the dark you have to hold it VERY steady. Luckily I did manage to get a couple of good shots.
Note the guitar that Dave Grohl is using in the last couple of shots. It is the checkered guitar of one Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick (who is playing Summerfest next Saturday). He explained that Rick Nielsen was letting him use it , and told a story about how Cheap Trick was one of the reasons he wanted to become a musician. They even played a refrain of Surrender. It as just one of the many memorable moments from the show.
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