Been to any good concerts lately?

[WillMagic]

Saw Coldplay six weeks ago at Shoreline. First real concert I've ever been to. My cousin from Kansas was in town for a few days, and had an extra ticket, so really, how could this possibly go wrong? Free tickets to Coldplay?

Here's how.

We didn't have real seating. We had lawn seating. I'm told we need to show up 3!!! hours early to have any hope of securing seats where we could even see the band. Otherwise, we'd have to watch the LIVE concert that WE WERE attending on a projector screen. We got there three hours early and proceeded in a 30-minute long ordeal to park in the middle of some massive dirt lot in the middle of the bay. We then walked for 20 minutes to get into the amphitheatre, to find that no, we would not actually be able to see the band from our seats, but we would have sycophants from Make Trade Fair come and badger us about WalMart and the poor, poor coffee farmers. This actually provided some entertainment, as there is nothing more fun than flustering a Fair Trader.

Sycophant: Hi, would you like to sign the BIG NOISE petition?

Me: What would you be making this BIG NOISE about?

Sycophant: Oh, we'd just be raising awareness, you know, making noise about poverty, showing the world leaders that people care about poverty.

Me: You care about poverty...wow. Original. So what policies would you have the world leaders enact?

Sycophant: Uh...

Me: Well, how about CAFTA? Are you in favor of that?

Sycophant: What now?

That kept me occupied for about fifteen minutes...unfortunately there were still an hour and forty-five minutes till Coldplay came on. And then the sun went down. And it was super-cold. So cold... I waited in line for half an hour to pay $65 for a Coldplay hoodie that I would never wear in public in order to avoid scorn. While in line another, more intelligent sycophant from Make Trade Fair jumped me. I dispensed with him, thinking that maybe this concert was like Mario Bros. and at the end I'd have to defeat Chris Martin in the boss's lair.

I got back to my seat in time to catch the beginning of the opening band's act. Woo-hoo! Music.

Too bad they were AWFUL. Imagine a Staind-Creed hybrid, but more monotonous and with less range. I tried to listen to my Ipod instead, but this being Shoreline there was no way my earbuds could outpace the massive speakers in front of me.

So after an hour of this shitfest, Coldplay finally comes on. And they were very good. I mean, wow. What a great music video. I'm so glad I got to wait for three hours in cold weather in order to watch that music video.

And then sit for another half an hour in the dirt parking lot, waiting to get out.

So, short answer to your question, no.

Will