Concert Idiots - A Guide

One of my main forms of recreation is going to concerts. Most people know I'm a big music guy and I pattern a lot of my hobbies around music in one form or another. There are things I love about the energy of seeing one of my favorite bands in concert...the anticipation once you get to the arena...shelling out mad money for cheap merchandise, singing along with the show, allowing yourself to be gulled into the whole 'false encore' thing that everyone does...etc.

But there are negatives. Huge crowds, pushy people, pickpockets, big city traffic, shrivel-dicked security guards, and extremely overpriced food and drink to name a few. But by and large the thing I dread the most about any concert I attend is the fanbase. Almost exclusively, the performers I enjoy had their heyday a minimum of 20 years ago. Thus the fanbase is usually far older than yours truly, and brings with it a strange mixture of fan types, most of which I tend to avoid like the plague. What I'm about to write will come off very Holden Caulfield-ish to most people, but that's the beauty of the internet. I can write this, you'll read it (or not), you can type out a scathing retort, and I can not give a damn...then the cycle begins again.

So behold...the moron gallery of your local concert venue:

1. The "Back in the day" fan. This guy is usually a portly guy in his late 40's to early 60's who is the owner of a ragged old tour shirt that he bought 25+ years ago. Invariably, his quest to slur conversation at you will begin with some permutation of the phrase "Boy I saw these guys way back in _____ at the ____ arena. Boy what a show! Of course you probably weren't even born yet UH HUK HUK HUK." These fans are very peculiar in that their fandom of the band in question seems to ebb and flow with the band's radio profile. When "Run to the Hills" was first on the charts, this dude was all about it. He probably started a Clive Burr mailing list or some shit. But here we are almost 30 years later and I bet he couldn't name who the hell that 3rd guitarist on the stage is, and holy hell, who's that ugly dude playing drums! Another one of this guy's favorite phrases is, without fail, "Wow, these guys are still together!" AVOID

2. The leather-skinned groupie-wannabe. This is an older woman with skin that'd even make present-day Ric Flair stop for a sec and just go "daaaaaamn." Usually clad in the standard issue way-too-revealing camisole, wrinklified tattoos and jeans, this lady thinks she's STILL the hottest ticket in town. With her mouth-breather husband in tow, she walks with an ill-deserved assuredness everywhere she goes. She couldn't name one song by the band you're about to see 30 years ago and she'll be damned if she can now. She wasn't a groupie then, but she damn sure wants you to believe she was. Can usually be seen buying mixed drinks or beers with a pre-loaded Visa debit card and stumbling to her car laughing maniacally after the show.

3. The group of barely legal to drink girls looking for an excuse to get drunk. This is one phenomenon I never can understand...people who need an EVENT to go to in order to get 3-sheeted. Why not go to the bar? Failing that, why not just sit at home on your couch and get fuckin' hosed? Why would you shell out all the ridiculous Ticketbastard fees and buy tickets to a concert you don't even care about, just so you can pay 5 dollars a beer and dance like a moron to songs you've never heard of? Furthermore, why would you take away the opportunity for a REAL fan to buy some tickets? These are questions that will forever go unanswered.

4. "FREEBIRD" guy. Enough said. Permission to kill on sight.

5. Overly talkative guy. This guy can't get enough of conversing with you, and what luck! He's seated directly next to you and as such, escape is impossible. Popular phrases include, but are not limited to:

"Why you here alone!? No girrrrl friend!? Huh!?"

"Dude this concert is going to ROCK! I'm so pumped! Are you pumped!? Fuck yeah!"

"Man I love this song! Man, hey, hey, dude! Dude! I LOVE THIS SONG!"

"What're you doing after the show, wanna go have something to drink?" (Not creepy at all. At all.)

6. The "Let us in" fans. Without fail, before every show, when the doors are not yet open, the amassed crowd becomes restless for no reason whatsoever. Like a group of conspiring captives plotting their escape from a hellish prison camp, these loudmouthed pricks can't wait to let the security team and event staff have it.

"Psh, look at em, they're just standing there! Not doin' nothin! Let us in, man, we wanna hear the show!"

"Haha, we should like totally just rush the gate, they'd HAVE to let us in then."

"Dude it was supposed to open at like...6:30 and it's 6:33. Fuck this is bullshit, I hate this place."

"It's like this every time, man. I swear. We pay all this money to come here and they can't even open the gates on time. I bet they do it just to screw with us."

There's also usually one or two absolute frigging troglodytes who start a "let us in!" chant, thus proving themselves unsuitable to reproduce.

Meanwhile the rest of us semi-reasonable people are facepalming faster than you can say Captain Picard. I give security teams at concerts a lot of shit under my breath because most of them are legitimately micropenised assholes who failed police academy, but if I had to deal with these morons all the time, I'd get pissed off too. They just make the horde of fans outside look bad. Usually when I go to a concert, I literally don't utter a single word to anyone from the moment I go inside till I get home later. Why should I?

7. The CD Player. I call them this because their expectation is to go in, hear the songs the exact way they are on the album and then go home. They get horrendously pissed if this expectation is not met. True story:

I was in line for the Fleetwood Mac concert in May of 2009. Behind me were two older ladies, discussing the upcoming show. The first one says "I hope if they play Big Love or Go Insane they don't do those re-worked versions. I wanna hear it like it is on the CD." The second lady enthusiastically agreed.

That's about as close as I've ever come to physical violence at a concert. You don't want to hear Lindsey Buckingham absolutely tear the place apart with one of the most mindblowing single-performer nylon string guitar performances in rock history and would rather hear the original synth-heavy version which is passable at best? The fuck outta here with that shit. This type of fan is liable to complain about extended bass solos, drum solos, lead singer interactions with the crowd/raps, or reworked guitar solos. It's perhaps the most puzzling of all the fan types. Why are you even going to the concert? Because you like spending money so you can stare at a Titantron like a dipshit?