On K’s birthday we were driving to Champaign to see Weezer/Foo Fighters at the University of Illinois. For some reason, many of our favorite bands did not come to St. Louis this year so once again, we were road tripping it. It had been a stressful couple of months. Our company had recently bought another company and things were crazy. I had planned to take the next day off, but K planned to work since Champaign is only about 2 and a half hours from St. Louis.
I was shocked how many people in the audience were hardcore Weezer fans. While I like a few of their songs, I’ve read one too many interview with Rivers Cuomo and his reluctant rock star shtick. These frat boys sitting behind us were all “Dude, are you gonna stay for Foo Fighters?” “Dude, I don’t know”. “Dude, I just want to see fuckin Weezer man!” I was thinking to myself, yeah, why don’t you move along fellas. We had great seats but the numbering in the arena was weird. I never got a handle on it but let’s just say I had confronted someone for being in what I thought was our seats and it turned out they weren’t. And we in turn got confronted by two separate groups of people thinking we were in their seats but we were in the right then. It was strange. During the Weezer show, they pulled a guy from the audience who got to play along with them and they gave him an acoustic guitar.
Foo Fighters, as usual, put on one hell of a show. Having seen them a number of times in the past, this seemed like the biggest stage production of their careers. I was impressed and was now in disbelief that I was not really looking forward to the show due to the stresses of work that week. This is exactly what I needed. Dave did scale a very small ledge in the arena, walking pretty close to us on the balcony. Call me a mom, I almost couldn’t watch, afraid he would fall. By the end of the show, it felt like a great big party it was so loose and everyone was having such a good time.
After the show there was a party atmosphere in the parking lot so we hung out hoping that maybe we could get some pics of the band after the show. In situations like that, I always feel compelled to look around the crowd to see if I’m the oldest person there. Since Champaign is a college town, most people fell into the same demographic, but there was one woman who definitely looked older than us. I feel as though as long as I am around the same age as the band, meeting them shouldn’t be weird, but I think some of the young tuffs waiting around with us feel differently on the topic. Hey, Dave’s a year older, it shouldn’t matter!
The kid with the acoustic guitar from Weezer was out there and kept playing. At first it was charming, but it got way annoying as the night went on. His fifteen minutes were up but he was trying desperately to keep all the attention on him. Taylor came out first and signed stuff. I told him to bring his solo stuff to St. Louis and we talked for a minute about that. One of the security guards then stated that the rest of the band would be coming out but people had to stay behind the barricades. It was all very serious. Well, we waited for hours. I kept looking at K, saying do you want to wait? She had to be at work in the morning but she was fine with waiting. Just as we were about to pack it in, around 2:30am, Dave and Chris came out. It was strange how the security guards made such a big deal about us keeping our distance but when Dave came out, he was helping people with their digital cameras, taking pictures, and chatting, all outside of the barricade. I won’t even document the banter I had with him. I really do get starstruck and I was at that moment, so I sounded like an idiot. I did take a picture with him that I would not show to many people. When I sent it to my friend R, in DC, he laughed and said, “You look like that runaway bride from Georgia! Your eyes are like the size of half-dollars, what happened to you?!” There’s another pic that K took that I am attaching that has on the left of the frame, a sliver of my face, and on the far right of the frame, it is unmistakably Dave’s arm. He had just walked away from signing a shirt that I had. It captures the moment perfectly.
So it’s now close to 3:00am and we get a Rockstar at the gas station and drive home. We’re pumped, reliving the concert and the meet and greet for about an hour of the drive. When we finally see the Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis (around 5:30), I am practically hallucinating from lack of sleep. --J
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