In celebration of our nation’s 241st birthday, Hubs and I attended our first “big name” outdoor concert (since moving to Colorado last year) at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater in Denver. We saw the band Train, with warm up acts Natasha Bedingfield and O.A.R. Now if you’re into seeing live concerts as I am, your first question is likely going to be “how was the show?” I’m going to answer that question first because the concert itself is not going to be the primary focus of this post.

The concert was GREAT! We weren’t terribly familiar with the warm up bands, knowing only a few of their songs from listening to them on Sirius XM over the past couple of years. But both were pleasant surprises. Natasha can really belt it out, and, as Hubs noted, she has quite a knack for “liturgical” dance. I commented that I’d like to hear her rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee” by Janis Joplin. Her songs are very pro-female, melodic, and catchy as hell (like that earworm known as “Pocketful of Sunshine”). O.A.R. impressed with some really inventive reggae, jazzy beats and strong vocals. And then came Train. Spectacular, people! They played all their best songs (IMO), in addition to pairing up with O.A.R.’s phenomenal horn section for a supercool version of Paul Simon’s Call Me Al. Later on, Pat and the boys performed a stellar rendition of David Bowie/Queen song  “Under Pressure”. Hubs and I agreed that this concert was one of the best we’ve ever seen.

As I alluded to earlier, I have more to say about this event-specifically about the people we encountered.

We got to the venue more than an hour before the gates opened, to improve our chances of getting the best spot on the lawn. We waited in line next to a chatty brother/sister duo. After shooting the breeze for a bit, the sparsely mustacheoed 19 year old brother asked Hubs if his name was Adam. When Hubs replied “no”, this kid said he “had to ask” because he thought Hubs voice sounded like Adam West, the original (and his favorite) Batman. His blond and dimpled 13 year old kid sister told us excitedly about how she recently attended ComicCon and got to meet Dustin from “Stranger Things”. She also shared that she was wearing a “kitty cat” headband because the ears on it were red, and she didn’t have anything else that was red to compliment her otherwise blue and white attire to commemorate the birthday of our nation. Together, the 4 of us talked about our favorite Train songs (hers was “Hey Soul Sister”, mine was “Save me, San Francisco”). What was especially notable about this duo was the sweetness of their interactions with each other. They had not known each other personally for much more than a year from what I understood. This is because as a tot, he had been adopted by another family  in another state and had only come to know his birth family after his birth mom sent him a friend request on Facebook a couple of years ago. He shared that his adoptive parents told him he was adopted from the get go (as a mom, kudos to them). He told us that he told his mom he wasn’t sure how he should respond. But respond he did, because he now lives with his birth dad (a lanky tatooed guy who worked security for this concert). He’s now going to school for welding at a nearby college.  These two kiddos playfully teased each other throughout our little conversation. What a couple of great kids, I thought to myself. Both sets of parents should be so proud.

Once the gates opened, we made a bee line to the grassy seating area. We made the decision to not lug our favorite oversized handmade quilt with us, knowing we had to park the car in the ramp, walk at least a mile to have a late lunch and a couple of adult beverages, then another few blocks in the sweltering 90 something degree heat to the amphitheater. Carrying a heavy quilt held no appeal for either of us.

In retrospect, this may not have been the best decision. We did get ourselves a plumb spot on the grass, directly in front of the fence overlooking the pricier reserved seats and stage. Unfortunately, the grass was quite wet and as I had no interest in standing for what ended up being the better part of 3 hours before Train came on stage, we plopped our arses down anyway. We spent the time people watching, which is a favorite pastime of mine. We saw millenials with their school aged spawn, seeking familiar faces on the lawn. We saw a younger couple with what was most likely a beloved aunt in a wheelchair, positioning her so she had the best possible view of the show. We saw middle aged couples dressed in their best summer attire holding plastic cups of beer while searching for their seats. We saw amped up little kids with goofy headbands festooned with sparkly red, white, and blue ribbons.   We saw numerous middle aged men wearing hawaiian shirts (like Hubs, who has insisted for years that he started the white American male hawaiian shirt trend back in the early 90’s). We saw asian-americans, hispanic americans, mentally disabled americans, LGBTQ americans, older americans, younger americans, african americans. Essentially, we were amidst a sea of American humanity. Which was fitting considering this was the 4th of July, right?

We interacted two more times with the brother/sister duo. The first was prior to the warm up acts. They walked past on the walkway below us and stopped over. They were hungry and complained to us that they couldn’t find anything to eat except hot dogs, and they wanted nachos. We didn’t know precisely where the food vendors were, as we had had ourselves a pretty generous lunch about 2 hours prior, but we suggested they head on down to the area close to the nearest entrance where it seemed it would be more likely they’d find what they were looking for. The boy offered his hand and introduced himself as Nick. He remarked, “maybe we’ll see you again someday” which I thought was terribly unlikely but so very sweet. We saw them much later, as Train was singing their last song prior to the encore. They were presumably leaving to meet up with their dad for the ride home. They waved and smiled enthusiastically at us. The revelation I had in that moment was we have entered a new stage of life where we are not necessarily the fun party-hearty concert going supercouple anymore. Instead we are the couple who random kids look to for guidance and support. We might as well have the word “parent” stamped onto our foreheads. And that’s ok. 

In all honesty, I was going to gripe about the worst of humanity that we encountered during this concert as well. I’ve decided however, to not go down that road, because Mr. Drunkjerkface who chose to squeeze himself in front of me during the encore and proceed to glance over at me and shake the living hell out of the bungey corded fence thing so that I no longer wanted to stand there and jam out deserves my attention on this post as much as Donald Trump does for his asinine tweets. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Now for some pure unadulterated humiliation (you may need to rotate your viewing device for this-sorry!)…..I present to you a clip of a woman who shall not be named but in her defense she is 50 and technologically inept at recording part of a Train concert that is why you don’t see Train here. But at least you can hear them.