Last night was … amazing. Awesome. So great. I had SUCH a good time at the concert, and the music was AMAZING. I tweeted (ugh, that word) quite a bit before/during/after the show, partly so I could remember all the awesome stuff that happened.
I really wanted to take the BART into the city for the concert, but I didn’t want to risk not having a way to get back home afterward, since the last BART would have left around midnight. So I drove. I HATE driving here. The freeways SUCK, the drivers suck and you know those hilly road San Francisco is known for? They TERRIFY me. I had nightmares about them before I moved out here, so I pretty much avoid driving in the city as much as possible. Unfortunately, getting to the bar for the show led me down one of those hilly streets. It was the street Mariam and I drove on to get to the Golden Gate Park when we were here in October, and when I realized that that was where I was headed, I started praying like crazy that I wouldn’t have to stop at the top of an incline. This is how I know God loves me: I hit the first red light where the street was still pretty level, and it was greens the rest of the way. No stopping on the incline. I even was able to find a parking spot about three blocks away! It was awesome!
I made it to the bar about 5-10 minutes before Randy Rogers Band came on. The Independent is a small, dark venue, and it wasn’t super crowded. Apparently, it has a coat check! I kind of didn’t realize those things actually existed in the real world. They didn’t have the beer I wanted, so I went with cheap:
@AmysJoy I forgot how bad Coors light is
@AmysJoy I miss being where XX is readily available
Randy Rogers Band was GREAT. They opened with one of my favorite songs, “Somebody Take Me Home”. The set was short, about an hour long. Randy Rogers has the flu, and he sounded a little off, but not bad. Before they started “Kiss Me in the Dark”, Randy “hope[d we’d] find someone to make out with who didn’t have the flu”.
@AmysJoy Randy Rogers wants me to find someone to make out with! Yes please!
Aaaaand then some drunk bitch climbed up on stage. She got right up on the guitarist before she was escorted off the stage, but not out of the club, which surprised me. And then her friend told me that she’s known Cross Canadian Ragweed since “long before” they were CCR, but this was the first time she’d ever gotten to see them. Except…they’ve been doing this 15 years, so that would have put her at 10 AT THE OLDEST for her to know them before. I totally believed her. I have noticed there’s always that one person who KNOWS the band at shows like this, which isn’t to say that they’re not telling the truth, but it is annoying and kind of just makes them sound like a tool. Don’t be that guy. Also, don’t be the guy who orders a pink drink from the bar. I TOTALLY judge dudes who order girly drinks (unless they’re gay, in which case, it’s okay). Be a man for God’s sakes!
Anyway, Cross Canadian Ragweed. Awesome. This is the fourth time I’ve seen them, and it was the best show. It was VERY high energy, almost no slow songs (no “Sick and Tired”, no “17”, no “Fighting For”, no “Flowers”, no “Run to Me”, no “Cry Lonely”). I was gonna say they didn’t really play a whole lot off their new album, but looking at it now, they played over half of it. You know, you get used to hearing songs in a particular order on the CD, you don’t expect to hear that order during a live show. My favorite part of the album is the way three songs flow into each other. They mesh really well, and CCR played those three songs in the CD order. It was awesome. Their show was only (“only”) 2 – 2.5 hours, but it felt like so much longer. In a good way, not in a Public Enemies way. Cody was quite chatty last night. He’s not usually a big talker, so it was kind of a nice change. People were shouting out requests, and he assured us we’d hear “Alabama”. He also assured us that we would NOT hear “Carney Man”, which is on their first album and kind of a dorky song. Every show I’ve been to, he’s made a point of saying that they’re not playing it. Then he told a cute story about his kid getting to sing with B Dylan (Bee Dillon? I don’t know. Half the time I can’t understand what he says because he’s got an accent and talks really fast). DEAN DILLON!
@AmysJoy Cody Canada: “thanks for the tequila; it makes me talk a lot.”
And then he forgot the words to “Boys From Oklahoma”. He tried to recover, but he “already forgot again. Fuck it.” And he just went back into the chorus. It was kind of awesome. And also hilarious.
This show was just … guh. Amazing. I came out of it feeling great. Riding really high on a wave of AWESOME. I love these guys, and they DID NOT disappoint. My only complaint, which is the one I always have about their shows, is that the instruments are turned up so loud, it gets a little hard to hear the lyrics. I took a ton of pictures (this one’s my favorite) and a few videos. The sounds pretty shitty on most of the videos, but the picture quality is pretty great. This one and this one have the best sound, but the worst picture. Oh well.
I’m so glad I went, and I’m really hoping Reckless Kelly gets out here soon.
The Alluring Danger of Dilettantism 