[ATTENDED: August 14, 2016] The Avett Brothers
Sarah and I were supposed to go see The Avett Brothers but our child care debacle meant that only I could go. Other people did bring their kids to the show (there were quite a few kids, actually). Once I showed up, I suggested that she come with the kids but they were settled in for the night by then. This would have been a much more fun show with Sarah–The Avett Brothers are a fun band meant to be shared with your neighbors.
But at the same time, among a sea of really short people, the two guys right in front of me were gigantic. And worse yet, they talked to each other throughout the show by leaning in to each other. I tried to watch the first two songs between their giant heads but they kept leaning in and blocking my entire view. So I moved to the side of them and the guy next to me asked me to move back to give him more room. Well, since I had paid for two tickets I was using the space. So if Sarah had been there, we would have been really tightly packed and one of us would have seen nothing.
When I joked that since Sarah couldn’t come I hoped the show would be terrible so she wouldn’t miss anything, she retorted with a line from the great Amy Schumer Abusive Relationship sketch: “I hope the next time you got to a concert that the band doesn’t play the song you want to hear and instead they just play songs from their NEW ALBUM.” And that came true when they did not play the couple of songs I really wanted to hear and did in fact play six songs from their new album. I like a bunch of Avett Brothers songs quite a lot, although I don’t know a lot of their catalog. I don’t have their first releases and I haven’t gotten their newest album (although I have listened to the new album a few times and did like it).
So if I’m not a huge fan, why go? Well,I had heard that their live shows were epic–fun and wild with sing alongs and foot stomping and covers and all that good stuff. So my expectations were high for a good time. The crowd seemed largely into it–although as I said the people on either side of me were real drags. It was even weirder when during a couple of slow songs, there was a lot of chatter around me. I think everyone was distracted by the flashes of lightning that filled the sky in the distance. Knowing that previous shows were cancelled, those flashes were worrisome. The lightning stay far away and were actually very cool to see and despite the threats, it never rained on us and nothing was cancelled. (more…)
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