Kurt's Thoughts

Every year, a friend of mine hooks me up with tickets to KROQ’s assorted concerts.  It’s admittedly a nice diversion from the hell that is work sometimes.  And every year there are a few pairs of tickets that I can give to a friend and this year was no exception.

But in a strange twist of irony, I couldn’t GIVE the extra pair away.  You see, this year, the event took place on Saturday & Sunday night with different bands on each day.  With Linkin Park & Bad Religion performing on "Night #1", everyone wanted that night.  And frankly with good reason, but I’ll leave that for another blog entry.

But the extra pair was for "Night #2" which featured:

• Muse
• Jimmy Eat World
• Modest Mouse
• Spoon
• The Shins
• Feist

Not terribly common names to many of the people I know unfortunately.  Personally, I’m a big Jimmy Eat World fan and I like Muse but the other bands I wasn’t that familiar with.  But the sick part was that the seats were amazing:  Orchestra 2, Row HH, Seat 7 & 8.  Folks:  These are dead center seats in the area right above the PIT.  Imagine having pit tickets, except with your own seats.

So I ended up going to Night #2 alone, since my other half had to work on some stuff tonight.  The other pair went back to KROQ and I trotted into the metal detectors of the amphitheater at 8:00PM.

AND THEN THE KILLERS CAME OUT.

Women were screaming as they raced to the entrance… apparently a bunch of people don’t actually go into the theatre until it’s late so they just hung out in front, smoking, or doing whatever and suddenly heard "Somebody Told Me" emanating from inside.  It was clear that something exciting had happened inside the amphitheater because there was pandemonium in the halls and the level of noise cranked up to 11. 

Yes, it was true:  the Killers were the surprise unannounced guest band of the night as a little thank you to the people that came to Night #2, and what a "thank you" it was.

Now the funny thing was that the Killers were indeed fantastic.  But they were essentially an opening band for Jimmy Eat World and Muse, both of which were great bands in it of themselves, but between you and me, I’ll take the Killers any day of the week – and apparently, so did a lot of people there.

But what ended up happening was that all the people that rushed in to see the Killers ended up also seeing great sets by both Jimmy Eat World and Muse – both of which were phenomenal.  In fact, very few bands have knocked my socks off in the same way as Muse did:  These dudes are incredible in concert.  I’m going to go pick up some of their albums as a result of that concert.

And I’ll talk about the Linkin Park night later.