it's early in the morning, but i'm relatively well rested. i got picked up early at matt's after the show. i kind of wanted to get out of there...
and, with hair. thankfully.
i actually didn't have the slightest interest in shaving my head, but i was under quite a bit of pressure to. it hit me completely off guard. it's something to do with corgan shaving his head? i don't know, i wasn't able to make full sense of it. it can't be as simple as "i'm going to see a band with a bald singer, therefore i should be bald, too." - even if that's the most sense i could make of it. but, people did nonetheless shave their heads! i dunno. maybe i can be iha, then? i like my hair!
or, maybe that just reinforces my point about aesthetics? irony aside, how about this instead:
"i just want to be me." - billy corgan
eh?
i enjoyed the show, but i don't have any kind of reference point to compare it to because it's the only concert i've ever been to. well, actually that's not really true. i'd been to concerts with my dad before, but it was stuff he enjoyed and just happened to drag me along to: blue rodeo, jeff healey and i'm sure all kinds of other things i don't remember. these were at bars and open air festivals, though. this was legitimately the first concert i'd ever been to in a hockey arena.
was it far away? absolutely. was the sound bad at points? yeah. but, i actually had a decent view, if not the best sound, because i was off to the side of the stage.
as an aside, i'm pretty sure that a good percentage of the set was not actually being performed. but, that only takes away from the show if you can tell, and most people probably couldn't. they had all kinds of stage props on top of it that recreated scenarios in the videos (tonight tonight, rocket), so it's not like the question of whether they were actually playing or not was really central. that is, the show had a theatrical component to it. there were also several points - jams - where it was clear that they were playing, too. or, at least, billy was because he was obviously openly improvising.
dad and i talked about it on the way back, and he's glad i had fun but he also suggested that seeing a band in a smaller space is a lot more enjoyable. i think i can see what he means. i mean, it would have been better, for sure, if i had a more direct view. it would have been better if i was more directly in the stereo spread. it would have probably been better if there weren't thousands of people screaming, too. i can't compare yet, though, because i don't have the experience.
i'm glad i went. i knew all the songs. i sang along. i rocked out. i bought a hat. and now i can say that i've been to a concert....
it looks like somebody put some footage up already, how about that:
https://archive.org/details/tsp1996-09-13.ana1
i'm going to be recording for the rest of the day and all day tomorrow. maybe i'll finish a new song?
