Once upon a time, long, long ago going to a concert was simple.
You bought your ticket, rocked up to one of the many centrally-located venues in town, drank beer out of plastic cups, got your toes mashed in the mosh pit, and (eventually) went home where you would drift off to sleep to the sound of ringing in your ears with hair still damp with the condensed moisture of a thousand sweaty armpits. Ah, bliss.
Nowdays some things are simpler but others are a good deal more complicated. I mean, yes, you can book your tickets online and have access to them on your smartphone. Depending on the event you might not ever need to print them out. This is definitely a helpful development. However, even if you don’t have to print your ticket out you are also going to be charged a fee for it. This is something that always irks me when I purchase tickets online, the “please let us charge you for using your own paper and toner because we have you over a barrel” fee. It is generally accompanied by juvenile gesturing at the computer screen.
And now of course we have to organise a babysitter for The Master now when we want to go out for the evening.
The last time I had tickets for a concert (Queens of the Stone Age) this unfortunately coincided with the Silver Fox coming down with probable Swine Flu and an uncharacteristic “clingy phase” for the baby. He pretty much screamed and wailed if I so much as stopped rocking him. The SF was banned from touching him due to his horrific flu, and when we attempted leaving him with my mother for a couple of hours in the afternoon he pretty much lost it.
So instead of quality time with the Ginger Elvis, that night I got to spend my evening comforting an inexplicably unhappy baby with one arm and eating pizza with the other. The closest I got to an alcoholic beverage was inhaling a little too deeply of the hand sanitiser that I forced the SF to use before he touched anything. I was in bed, exhausted, by 8:30pm.
The Master is a bit older and used to being left with either of his doting nanas so heading out to The Foo Fighters concert later this week should be no problem.
Except for a couple of things like the fact that the gig starts super early. Gates open at 4:30pm. The Foo Fighters are on at 7:15pm, right around the little dude’s bedtime. His nana can handle the bedtime routine if she has to so this on its own isn’t too much of a drama.
But then there’s the parking which for some bizarre reason cannot be paid for with cash. Nor is online payment available. Instead, the SF will have to go to the venue during business hours and buy a prepaid pass.
So you can buy the ticket to the actual event online but if you want to park there you have to physically go to the venue a day or two beforehand. I’m aware that complaining about this probably falls into the territory of “first world problems” but it does seem like a weird sort of arrangement to me.
And just for the sake of prudence I thought I’d better read through the event information in case there was any other tricksy things we needed to know. Phew, because I was about to go to the concert loaded up with glow sticks, whistles, selfie sticks and vuvuzelas. That could have been very awkward. Although, it is nice to know that we can take some homemade sandwiches or scones or such with us. I wonder what the most “rock n roll” sandwich filling is? Egg salad? Roast beef and chutney?
But fingers crossed we can actually make it out to a concert together this week without any mishaps (like the time our battery went flat waiting to get out of the carpark after Flight of the Conchords).
Get to many concerts? Are the parking arrangements always this convoluted? Best rock n roll sandwich suggestions?
First published on Stuff, 17/02/2015
(Featured image, Public domain)