A(n) F'n AWESOME Cultural Experience!

Quote of the day:

"I think I heard the F word today more times than I've heard it in 19 years!
-Vasu

Seriously. I did too. Except that since I am a year older, it's more like 20 years.

Today was another historical event in the life of Faye. Besides breaking the record for how many swear words I heard in a day (or a sentence), I went to my first ever rock concert. Ok, so more like a punk-rock concert but I really don't know the difference.

Whoah!

Vasu is like the biggest Yellowcard fan there is. As soon as he found out about them coming to Hawaii, it would come up in nearly every conversation. Then, as soon as they became available, he bought his roommate Ben and I tickets to go with him to the concert. Very cool, Vasu. I owe you big time.

It wasn't just any concert, it was the Bud Light Surfest 2004. The location - Kualoa Ranch. Beautiful setting. The ocean in the front, with Chinaman's Hat island in view, and majestic volcanic islands behind us.

Being a ranch, however, we were definitely not in short supply of manure. It was quite entertaining to me, to hear the MC yell "DO YOU WANT SOME MORE FREE SH*T???!!!" and the whole time I was staring at the pile of horse poop right next to where we sat down.

Where we thought 2 other bands would be playing there that day - The Vandals and New Found Glory - there turned out to be 7 bands total.

1) Pennylane - a local band that I thought was just alright. More noise than anything. But that's alright with me at a concert when you need energy. Just not so cool to listen too at home, ya know?
2) Over It - Loved their sound. Actually bought their CD from them for Vasu when they came around promoting it before the show.
3) National Product - Nothing too impressive about them that I remember
4) Rise Against - We left the crowd during their show to just take a drink of water before Yellowcard came out. Didn't care for them that much anyway. Too angry. I think it was when they were up there that we sat watching from the grass and decided to see if we could find a sentence they said in which the F-word wasn't used. I caught like 2. It was funny in a morbid way.
5) The Vandals - I don't know if I liked them or not, since I took a nap while they were playing, but I was really annoyed at how long they took. They were really trying to work the crowd when everyone was just waiting for Yellowcard to come out (they pushed too hard, I thought).
6) Yellowcard - AAAH! Definitely worth the hype. Acording to Ben who seemed to have a sucky time for most of the concert (he sat watching from far the whole time, never got in the crowd) "The electric violin was BAD". I had to check to make sure he meant "bad" in a good way. He did.

Yellowcard was awesome. Their music is pretty straight up. They did swear too, but by then we were pretty de-sensitized. However, they weren't just a whole bunch of loud music and screaming you couldn't hear past the music. I guess it helped that I'd been listening to their music for the past 3 weeks in preparation. Everyone sang along. It was great. When they first came out, though, the crowd went crazy. Vasu and I were really close to the front for the beginning and it nearly killed us all. Pushing and shoving, but not enough room to fall over. It was nuts!

7) New Found Glory. Most people were there for them, but I wasn't familiar enough with their music, and they didn't sound too different from all the other bands before, plus we were really tired and ready for home by then (the concert started after 11am, with breaks in between every single band but we got there at 8.45am. What idiots we were), and we didn't want to have to deal with the after-party traffic so we left while they were playing. It was nearly 5pm by then. What a long day.

Show/Hide the details: About the Music
It was definitely a, uh, culturally educational experience for me. An eye-opener, at least. I'd heard all about mosh pits before, but never actually been around one, much less in it. The closest I'd ever been to one was during Halloween weekend at the Canoe House gig, where Upstanding Youth was playing. I remember people ran into each other some, but it wasn't that crowded, we had our own space and we were pretty mild. More considerate, maybe? Or it could be that I was "pregnant" that day.

Anyways, here's what Urbandictionary.com says about Mosh Pits:

a thing that takes place at metal concerts in which people basically kick the living [crap] out of each other.

Getting beat up in a fun way; people that like punk rock music run around in a circle and crash into each other for fun.

A place in a metal concert where people push/run into each other in a large circle.

The mosh pit is a bunch of drunk, ignorant guys gettin their [trash] kicked to some music

My definition of moshing: Moshing is like what my nursery kids did after snack time, except done to loud music and just a little more aggressive and apparently "cool" and highly encouraged by the musicians.

Maybe running into a whole bunch of hot topless guys could have been fun, but it looked painful. I decided against it.

I'd heard about them mostly from Carrera through her LFO concert experience during the summer. What I didn't know was that instead of a designated area for "moshing", that they would just randomly, and sporadically occur. One minute, you're all moving to the beat, the next minute people are running into you and you run for dear life behind the tough guy who is pushing the moshers back into their circle and suffocate because everyone is squished just to make room for the moshers.

It was interesting for me to observe concert "protocol". While people were running into each other on purpose and pushing people out of the way with energy that could've been anger, things stayed friendly. There was some give and take involved. It seemed to be the only way people could be in the heat of things and still have room to freely express themselves to the music. What baffled me was how they would run into each other intentionally. Hmmm, maybe it's how they show affection in this country... I should try that sometime.

What I thought was very much paradoxical was when some band member said "Have fun beating the crap out of each other, but if somebody falls down, pick them up!!!"

Tomorrow, I'm going to run into Vasu, knock him over, and then put him back on his feet. Heh.

They stuck to that, though. It was very confusing to see the worst and the best of people all in one scenario. I'm glad that it was mostly in good spirit though. I'm sure some concerts turn into more of an outrage and become poetentially far more dangerous.

Another thing I didn't quite get: how is it cool to throw water bottles at each other?!

Most of them were empty, thank goodness. But at one point it became really hard to enjoy the music because we kept having to protect ourselves from incoming "missles". It seriously felt like I was a civillian in the war. There was a girl in front of us tossing the bottles she came across and as a result, a whole lot of them came flying back towards us! I was so annoyed, I stood on some of the water bottles on the ground so she wouldn't pick them up. They made me taller, so that was cool.

However, the highlight of my day, next to the awesome music was crowd surfing! I didn't think I'd have the guts to do it, until 2 shirtless local guys offered to give me a boost "C'mon, it's fun!" and in the heat of the moment, I threw my bag at Vasu and went for it. I was up there for a good little while, I was surprised. Many people had tried but were unsuccesful. I came down once, only to get boosted again by the same guys. Holy. Heck. It was quite exhilarating. The ride was awesome and the view was definitely good from up there. The final landing was all but smooth. I landed on my butt, but immediately more than a dozen pairs of hands reached down to pull me back up on my feet. Maybe it was the endorphins, though it was probably because I didn't fall from that high up, but it didn't hurt me. Still doesn't hurt. Thank goodness. Even if it did, though, it would have been worth it. Will go to a concert just to do that again! Try it sometime!
Show/Hide the details: About the Culture

I have no pictures of the event as yet because digital cameras were not allowed in the premises. Only disposables. And we were too stupid to think to hide them, like everyone else did. Vasu ended up buying a disposable camera, and I found one lying on the ground. If any of them turned out, I will post them here.

Because the entire thing was outdoors, I am now 5 shades darker. Drat. This doesn't work well for makeup.

All in all though, a long, hot, crazy day as it was, and scary at some parts, I had an THRILLING (trying not to use "awesome" again) time. I just wish more of you could have been there. You definitely missed out.

Yeah, I'd do it all again.