I Have a Big Fat Crush On Rob Thomas

So, finally the day arrived, and Jen, Danni and I headed out to see Matchbox 20 in concert last night. It friggin' ROCKED! Jen was a bit confused for a while and thought that we were seeing Dave Matthews. lol I know she knew who we were seeing, but she kept saying Dave instead of Rob.

What Jen refers to as a "slight navagational error" on her blog is just really me not knowing where the heck I was going. My name is Shelley, and I'm navigationally challenged. I was born without an internal compass. I need to have a GPS implant, or something. Either that, or I need to remember to print out directions before I go anywhere, because apparently "Get off the I-10 at 83rd Ave and you should be right there" isn't good enough for me. Actually, what happened is I turned left on the first major road after getting off the I-10, and had I gone just a bit further north instead of turning, we would have been right there. Oh well, we were early and we found it eventually. We were even in our seats when the opening act started.

The first opening act was a group of guys called Mute Math. I had never heard of them, but Danni had and she said she liked them. They were ok, but they ended their show by breaking up a lot of stuff on stage and walking all over their drum kit. Seems to me if you're a really popular band that makes a crapload of money, you could afford to destroy your stuff at the end of a show (although I'm not sure why you'd want to), but Mute Math? I wonder if they totally kill off any profit they make doing that. I have a picture of one of the guys standing on top of the bass drum, but it's on my camera at home. I'll have to add that in the morning.

After they were done, Alanis Morrisette came on. She was...Alanis. She's still strange, still a self-described "bitter rocker chick", and still letting us know that it's not fair, to remind you, of the mess you left when you went away. She played for about an hour, I think...and yes, I was surprised that she had that much material. I think I recognized three of the songs, and she did mention that some of the stuff was new.

But, on to the important stuff...Matchbox 20! Thank goodness that Jen's camera was doing a great job, because mine totally was not zooming enough. MB 20 rocked the place for almost two hours, doing a mix of stuff from their new album, their first album, and some stuff in between. Danni was a little bummed that they didn't do the song "Mad Season." I really like that one too. Anyway, it was an awesome show, they have so much energy and you can tell they just put everything they have into it.

This picture makes it look like we had way better seats than we really did. I mean, they were decent seats, but off to the side of the stage. I wish we had been a little closer to the middle. Luckily, Rob looks great from any angle. Jen's camera rocks.

I wish I could remember what song they were singing here, but I can't. I did take some video during the concert with my digital camera. There seems to be no zoom at all while taking a video with this camera, so this video actually makes it appear as though we're farther away from the stage than we really were. I know the band is blurry, but at least they sound good! This is a little excerpt from "Real World."



I just had to steal this pic off of Jen's blog. There was this older, drunk lady behind us. She looked like this:



Haha! I didn't even realize last night that her shirt said "High Maintenance." That's funny. Anyway, at one point during the show, they turned off all the lights and Rob asked the audience to participate by everyone taking out their cell phones, blackberrys, or "otherwise annoying devices", and turn it into something beautiful. When everyone held them up, it did look kind of cool, like thousands of stars shining in the darkness. However this lady behind us was pitching a fit, and bemoaning the "old days" when everyone smoked, and swayed with their lighters. Hey, I remember that too, but not as many people smoke now, and hey...embrace the technology, lady.

She then proceeded to tell us that she had been at a Tom Petty concert, and that Tom himself had threatened to come down off the stage and kick anyone's ass who had a cell phone out. Ok, first of all, I wouldn't have paid money to see Tom Petty. Second, that old, skinny, frail-looking guy is going to kick my ass? Well, bring it on, Tom. Let's see what you've got, old man. Heh.

I know my video up there isn't all that great, so I'm going to close this post with a You Tube video of the actual MB 20 video of one of their new songs, "How Far We've Come". This is the song they opened the show with. I love this song, and I love this band.