Thursday and Friday evening I was invited to two concerts.  My date/friend and I had a great time where we met up with other friends, met strange characters and witnessed some silly behavior to put it mildly.   I won’t go on about us, I’d rather tell you about the concerts.

Thursday night’s concert was the Police at Citizens Bank Park where the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team calls home.  I was wondering right off where the group would play and how people would be allowed on the field, as we walked up to the stadium I saw hundreds of plastic narrow pallets stacked, I thought to myself those must be extra from placing over the ball field.  Sure enough when we got in the entire ball field was covered by these pallets.  I commented that the seats at floor level must be expensive and my date told me there were in the neighborhood of $200.00.  Whatever the price they were the best seats as all the stadium seats where just plain far from a good view of the musicians.  It was a good thing they had closed circuit video cameras and huge projections screens.

The concert stage was in center field facing home plate.  Our tickets were off to the side of home plate.  Good seats but as we approached them I saw that there we had an obstructed view of the concert stage.  I mentioned this to our seating attendant and she said check our seats out before we took it further.  We sat down and I was very sure we had a blocked view.  I sought out a representative of the concert and he agreed we needed something better.  We ended up with new tickets and were moved down to row 32 just off center stage.  Now we were one of the lucky ones.  My date was thrilled with my spirit of fixing things and we ended up sitting next to some people she knew.   We were close enough now we could see the performers sweat. 

FICTION PLANE

The first band was Fiction Plane, and the lead man is Sting’s son if you were not keen to this in advance. He of course never mentions this during their performance.   I found their sound as acceptable yet disposable and one tune named “cigarettes” was almost silly as he narrates how he wants the girl he’s seeing to get lost by use of expletives, but he reveals he is of a money family by repeating the question; does she love him or his money?   The song is essentially about a rich boy that is dropping his girl because she is into his money more than him.   I don’t want to condemn Sting’s son as a musician but I felt like this band was going through the motions.  They did sign autographs after their short set. 

THE FRATELLIS

Then on came the Fratellis, a Scottish band with a curly haired Italian looking front man named John Lawler (John Fratelli).  Their best songs were the ones clearly influenced by their regional cultural sound.   When they went for the straight up rock in a hard place sound they lost their originality but this was a quality band and for my first exposure I think they laid down some great hooks.  The Fratellis didn’t do any meet and greets when done and this miffed some friends of ours that were really into them.  As best I can tell they are not related and named themselves after of all things, their managers last name.  So they now have stage names all using their real first names but “Fratelli” as their last name.

THE POLICE

By now it is going on 9:00 pm and the stadium is packed.  I took some video in a 360 direction and it was a sight to see and a great feeling to be there to witness.  

My recollection of the Police is two fold.  First back in the late 70’s and the early 80’s when they finally broke with Zenyattà Mondatta.  I enjoyed them most when they were more unknown with  their first two albums (yes still on LP back then) Outlandos d’Amour (outlaws of love) and Regetta de Blanc (White Reggae).  I was a mere lad in of 14 and 15 then.  Eventually by the age of 18 I had two best friends Dana and Mike. We associated ourselves to the three colors on the Synchronicity album like the band members had.   We were creative at this age and the symbolism to us was profound. When ever we all found ourselves doing the same thing or saying the same word at the same time we’d look at other in satisfaction and say in unison, “synchronicity!”

My second recollection of the Police is when I too sang in a band.  Our bassist Chris was a dedicated and devoted fan of Sting.  While my band was bent on doing all originals, we did in fact have a small ...extremely small list of covers.  The ones that stick out and I have myself on video singing, are When the World is Running Down and Walking on the Moon.  

Here I am watching a band obviously in their 50’s and me just reaching 40, yet it seems like yesterday in my mind ...but standing in a stadium of adults, I was reminded that this band is from another generation.

I eagerly awaited my favorite songs, King of Pain and Wrapped Around Your Finger while being entirely satisfied to hear them play other favorites that I first loved them for like Walking on the Moon, Message in a Bottle, So Lonely and Can’t Stand Losing You.  In the end the Police relied on fan favorites and spanned every album.   While King of Pain and Wrapped Around Your Finger were departure from their original sound, the ska post punk sound was what I most appreciated.

During the concert we saw this poor woman, a good looking, well, alright looking... well, she was alright looking... woman with a guy that was definitely not in her league.  Our whole group didn’t really care about this initially but we did notice.  We noticed because a vendor was selling these hokey lanyards that were meant to look like backstage passes.  As he came around our guy here buys two, (at $15.00 each!) one for himself and one for his date.  She smartly puts hers in her purse.  He looks at his as if "how do I put this on?" or “should I put this on.” and then, he does. The manner in which he had to contemplate this decision was funny just to look at.  I couldn’t help but think, this guy must drive a corvette too.   Oh... the art of people watching.... Where we really decided we thought he was amusing was as the concert wore on he began to dance... if I can call what he was doing, dancing.  This dancing had us in stitches.  He was mostly bobbing up and down.  He had this move he’d do too. Later we started mocking it (sorry, he never knew).  He'd thrust his right arm to the heavens, hold it there a moment and then snap it down as if to reverse a punch where his arm seemed to hold a pose of making a muscle.  It was hilarious.  As I’m standing there with three girls I fell behind them on our chairs trying to breath  ...I was laughing so hard.  The girls are now full on doing the hand thrust complete with facial expression of Yes I approve of this band! meanwhile I’m just trying to not look at the guy.  Thank God the concert was all but over.  I mean at this time the Police are well into their last two songs in the set.  We all felt bad for his date, in fact my date said she had been on dates before where her date had just been embarassing. I think we've all been there. So yes, we felt bad for her.  And him... I guess we were happy for his blissful ignorance.  

Not a bad night of reminiscing, and making new memories with a band I grew up with.  I was and am extremely greatful being taken to such a great concert. 

ON TO FRIDAY

Next is John Mayer.  This concert was Friday evening and my date warned me that the Tweeter Center is not like anything other concert venue.  She told me about a previous concert she went to at the Tweeter. It had rained and the younger crowd just made everyone miserable.   She really did warn about this.  Because where the Police concert allowed everyone to utterly focus on the band, the John Mayer concert performance was overshadowed by the ridiculousness of teenagers.  John Mayer gets a lot of credit in my book, he draws the intellectual cultured listeners and the younger crowd alike.  I'll get to that.

First off we get there early to tailgate and eat.  I packed us roast beef on rye with "sharp" provalone cheese and horseradish sauce.  We had water, cut strawberries, chips, cookies, a plum, grape tomatoes and more.  This goes well because the food inside was rediculously priced.  One slice of pizza was $8.00.  And you know... I hardly ever eat pizza these days anyway.  I just don't eat the same as I had a year ago or ever.  I'd rather have a cup of yogurt or some fruit.  But that's another story...  We are so early that we even queue up to enter the facility early.  We brought a blanket and they even let me in with my SLR Nikon camera.  I’m figuring I’ll get some great shots.  The Philly skyline in the background across the Delaware river would make for some nice photos I’m thinking.   This proves to be true later.  I have some amazing photos. Sorry I can't post them folks, but they exist. :)

But as if noticing there were a hell of a lot of teen age and younger girls in the parking lot wasn’t enough, it became even more apparent as we lined up inside for lawn seating.  We were surrounded by girls, and most of them were under 20. 

Now if you are not familiar with the Tweeter in Camden New Jersey, it is an indoor/outdoor concert facility.  The best seats are indoor, and under cover. Just beyond the indoor seating section, you have a slow upward sloping grass hill in a semi circle around the building.  Flanked on both sides are beer gardens and a lot of food choices.  It is totally commercial here and marketing exploits prevail over a casual concert experience.  One condom maker has a booth. Their gimmic is spinning a wheel of condom choices to win free t-shirts, but the condom samples are free.  It just didn’t sit right with me. 

And there were the teenagers.  I mean for every one man in this place there were 10 women.  Of those ten women seven were between the ages of 15 to 18.  It was nuts.  If I was a young man looking to meet a woman, this was the night and place to be.  It was just plain nuts.  I never in all my life seen more women in one location, never.  This was so different than the Police concert.  As we put our blanket down we moved twice so we could see over a rail separating the lawn from the indoor seating.  It was important that after we sat, there was no obstructed view.  We moved back about 20 feet from the rail.  This was a mistake.  Once the first act went on, a group of 8 girls in front of us (one fighting with her boyfriend off to the side, he pouted all night after making her cry) stood up and the crowd chanted sit down!  Then along with a few others they rushed the rail standing in front of large number of people that put blankets down.  Now all they had a view of was the back of these girls legs.  Oh... as for the boyfriend that pouted.  This guy was an ass.  He laid back on the blanket waiting for his girl to want kiss and make up, which she did and eventually they are sitting there making out.  It was rediculous. I looked at this kid and thought, "future wife abuser."  As you may already know, I'm advocate for people not being mentally abused by others.  I wanted to smack this kid and march his ass out the door and kick him in the ass on the way out.  I just didn't dig his head games as I sat behind him, but alas it was none of my business so I just averted my eyes back to the concert when he wasn't making himself an ass distraction.

My date warns me over and over again. “Expect this, expect that...”  I was trying to accept this non-sense and I did until some ding-dong guy that reminded me of the guy we laughed at last night walks by with his beer and steps on my dates hair and bumps me in the back of the head.  He was the first of many people that just didn’t care who was sitting where.  They were coming through and it didn’t matter.  Occasionally you’d get two young early teen boys running through chasing each other like it was a party.  This was a tough crowd for mature listeners to co-exist with kids.  In the end, when John Mayer took the stage, well after 9:30 at night we stood up with every other single person at the Tweeter Center.  

I thought to myself, “Wow a lot of people rented chairs for the lawn, that was a waste of money.” 

At this point I was enjoying the music and no longer caught up in who was fighting with who around us, or who was stepping on whose blanket?  It was loud and it was great.

JOHN MAYER

Now I have three CD’s by John Mayer and he could have played anything and I’d have been happy but there was one song I really wanted to hear, Vultures and that made my night.  Everything he has recorded lends so well to live performing.  While he’s not a performer in the sense that he gets involved with the audience or relies at all on stage show tricks or antics he does have a great stage presence. 

What I especially liked was how he appreciated his audience.  He made it crystal clear he felt lucky to be so appreciated and his down to earth nature really sold me on him as a good human being.  Yes John has some left leaning political underpinnings with songs like Waiting for the World to Change, I could care less.  He’s a guy that doesn’t appear to be in the business for the business.  His metropolitan blues sound is quietly meshed with what I seem to notice is a deep southern, Louisiana style blues feel.

He made a point of mentioning he was 29 going on 30 and that he felt that despite this ride his career has been taking the past few years, it still feels fresh and he’s grateful for it.  But I could tell he understood how short life is.  I suppose you have to have been 29 once and facing the reality that 30 means you’ll never be in your twenties again.  It is a feeling that smacks you in the face that it is time to grow up, like or not.  It’s an age that marks and understanding that your youth is fleeting, a flower that has bloomed and never will again. John Mayer’s style of reflective sensitive lyric writing is overshadowed now by his move into blues and more so by his exceptional guitar work. 

Now if you don't mind let me hang on to this thing about getting older.  Watching him speak about being 29 going on 30, I recalled his song Stop This Train.  It is about the fact you can't fight the aging process.  Life and getting older is a train he wants to stop but it will never stop.  The story tells about how he confides in his father too.

So afraid of getting older
I'm only good at being young
So I play the numbers game to find away to say that life has just begun
Had a talk with my old man
Said help me understand
He said turn 68, you'll renegotiate
Don't stop this train
Don't for a minute change the place you're in
Don't think I couldn't ever understand
I tried my hand
John, honestly we'll never stop this train

I have to tell you, I understand this feeling.  I don't fear much in life.  I really don't.  I fear sharks, I couldn't bear being without my children and I fear aging.  I don't want to grow old.  I remember being 25 standing in my parents kitchen at a birthday party with my best friend Keith standing there with me, we looked at each other and said, "God, we only have 5 more years of being in our twenties, it's half gone. We'll never get it back."  And every year after that, my birthdays stopped being fun. They were just mile markers that I wanted somehow to stop.  When a musician is honest and tells stories like this, you know he is for real.  Real about his craft and it makes them an artist, not just a performer.

I mentioned he didn’t rely on antics or stage show props.  His smooth hand work on the guitar really pulled everyone in during the show.  Including a live horn section, was a big relief.  In fact while the Police were a three man act, even on stage, John Mayer was an eight piece show.  Sax, Trumpet, bridge guitarist, rhythm, base, drummer, keyboardist and John on lead, it was a big sound.

John Mayer didn’t miss any of his hook oriented or “commercial” tunes.   While I would have enjoyed being closer to the stage, it was a great concert and I can’t wait to see him again.  Oh... another item of note.  My date and I had yet another large contingent of girls behind us that were way out of control but had one in their group whom felt guilty over her friends behavior.  You see we moved up a few times to stop from being danced into and bumped from behind.  Each time we did their group would move with us.  Finally my date turns around and forces them back telling them off like a mother would her young daughters, it was impressive.  Well, while she went for the aggressive approach, I was adding to the mix with a guilt trip, it’s funny now to think about it... While she’s telling them to get back, I’m mildly pointing to the 10 feet of open space behind them they gave up in order press up with us.  I remember saying, “have fun but be considerate will you?  Look behind you.  Look.” They turned to see how they just kept moving over us instead of enjoying the space they had in the first place.  A few minutes later a pretty girl in the mix comes over to appologize for all of them.  She came back later in the concert again and seemed to really want some forgiveness from my date.  I guess in the end all I wanted was for them not to ruin our concert, while I didn't want to ruin theirs either.  I give them a lot of credit, they didn't give us a hard time, they were just inconsiderate when they got "too" into it.  I don't think I can say this is the type you should expect if you hit the Tweeter.  I really advise you to stand a good 40 feet back off the rail if you are on the grass or stand close to the rail, but don't think you are going to lay down on a blanket or sit in a chair unless you are a good 50 feet back.

So to any of you thinking of going to the Tweeter, my date was right. This place draws a younger crowd and they are typical of any teenager in today’s world that doesn’t have their parents supervision. They give up manners, and simply forget how to be polite and respectful of anyone.  Expect people to step on your blanket unless you carefully border your blanket with your neighbors on all four sides! LOL  To quote my date, "If there is a blade of grass showing, everyone uses that as a path way to walk through your space." And they will step on your blanket regardless.  Either pay for proper seating or know you will be standing on the lawn if you hit the Tweeter. :)  This was still a great concert after adapting to the surroundings and a couple incidents that were nothing in the grand scheme of life. :)

I hope you all enjoyed my concert stories.