i/o

Inspirational song: Growing Up (Peter Gabriel)

I've learned this cool little trick to make once-in-a-lifetime events better--I put my phone down and pay attention to the thing we spent hundreds of dollars to see. It worked wonders tonight. I'm so glad I did it. I have a couple photos of my own, I can get a few from Mr S-P, but mostly I have memories.

When friends had tickets to see Peter Gabriel that they couldn't fully use, Mr S-P purchased two of them for us. The third ticket was used by the one remaining purchaser, who rode with us. While it was never explicitly stated, I am considering this my birthday present, and I am considering myself very fortunate to have gotten it. The show was amazing. Concerts are so much fancier than they were when we were kids. For example, I remember the David Bowie Glass Spiders tour being heavily choreographed, with overstimulating lights and effects, and I was turned off by it. Now a carefully produced show like this one had computer effects and art and movable screens and, and, and... The sound engineering is nothing like shows were in the past. Spoken parts were clear. Bright lights danced without blinding us. Video and animation effects were mesmerizing. I turned to the friend we went with at one point and said, I guess tickets cost hundreds now because they have to pay those computer programmers who do this cool stuff, because wow. They earn it.

Traditionally I would know all the songs before going to a show. I'd have already bought and memorized the new albums, plus I'd know all the back catalog like I'd written it. With this artist, I'm years behind. I knew a few of his then-new songs when we saw him at Red Rocks in 2011. Since then, I have been an absentee fan. The first half of the show was new music, with a narration. I heard it all for the first time tonight. Thus it was extra helpful that I wasn't trying to take videos or selfies. I paid attention and followed the arc of the narrative.

And then he played a bunch of old stuff and everyone around me stood up during the real rockers. To preserve my ability to exit the arena, I stayed seated until the last song, the second encore. They ended on the song Biko, and as the audience chanted the ending, each performer walked off stage. It ended with the drummer, until we were left with just a photo of Steven Biko. Beautiful way to close.