Monday, June 29, 2009

The Accidental Solo Artist

Because, on occasion, God feels like shouting out randomly to me, "This is why it sucks to be you today!!" I ended up at a concert completely alone this weekend. I'm not a whiner. Well, maybe a little. I'm not whiney enough, however, to complain about the person who stranded me at 7:30 pm on a Saturday in Pontiac watching two bands I know nothing about and drinking copious amounts of beer in hopes they would eventually show up. No, no, I won't talk about how awkward it was for people to watch me drink alone. How dudes MAYBE seventeen years old would come up to 'hit' on me and I would turn them away after refastening their belt buckles so their underpants were no longer show. ("Your mother saw you leave the house like this?!") I'm not whining. It ended up decent and here's why:

I love Blue Moon. Three beers in and I made two new girlfriends in the bathroom over my delicious red top and not knowing how to work the paper towel dispenser (Let's just blame the Blue Moon for that one). I also, randomly and quite conveniently, ran into people I met once almost a year ago in Minneapolis suddenly back from their excursion through South America and making a Michigan appearance to this random venue. Yeah, I'm not even exaggerating that. I had legitimate friends(ish) to stand with during the entire first act, some band called Pilot Speed who were pretty decent. Granted, the lead singer was a little spiritual with the hand movements while singing but overall, pretty decent.

For some reason when my 'friends' decided to leave after the first band, I decided to stay. HEY I have friends here! Two chicks who might still be in the bathroom fighting with the paper towel dispenser and my new high school boyfriend.

And then....Sam Bradley hit the stage.
Adorable. Now, I know I know, he's the Twilight kids best friend and therefore, sure, we're a little biased. However, his singing is fantastic. He's laid back, yet high energy and funny. He hit the merchandise table for autographs the second he was done playing and talked to as many old ladies as those Twilight Crazies could throw at him. I finally got an opportunity to talk to him and could only open my mouth up wide enough to tell him "This would annoy the crap out of me" which, I'm sure he found charming. This might explain why he autographed my wristband "Tim Allen" and moved on to the next obnoxious fan. Whatever, he held my hand for 4.2 seconds and spoke only about how blessed he was for where he's at. If given the opportunity, I totally would have dumped my seventeen year old lover-boy and taken up singer-boy instead but things got busy, the last band Thriving Ivory came on and once again, I'm alone at a concert with a fake Tim Allen autograph.

More beer anyone?

The last band was pretty good as well. What was great about all of these guys was that there were MAYBE one hundred people at this entire venue and yet they came out and shook hands and signed stuff the minute they were done playing and I mean with EVERYBODY. There were some definite creepers there I would have avoided if I had been them and yet they were obviously sticking it out for the long haul until they met everyone there that evening.

I wish my night ended there but finally sober enough to head home I got into a minor scuffle at the 7-11 near my house. I have a feeling the Pete Yorn concert I'm going to in August won't go quite this well/weirdly. Also, I can't get Petey from West Point High to quit calling me....