Tom Petty Concert

I think this may qualify for the "Saturday Sky" series:

This is a crowd and sky shot of the Clark County Ampitheater on the north side of Vancouver before the Tom Petty Concert. And here is the family listening to Trey Anastasio of Phish (who was the opening act) and eating cotton candy:

Obligatory knitting shot. The knitting started on the ride to the ampitheater, and continued through the opening act and the first part of Tom Petty. While I was sitting and knitting and watching the crowd before the sun set, I was starting to feel a little cranky with the twenty-somethings, who were louder, drunker, and smoked more than the rest of us. After all, they were born after a lot of those songs were recorded, what could they know about Tom Petty? Shouldn't they have stayed home and waited for something from their generation they actually cared about? Then it started to get dark and they were changing out the stage getting ready for the main act and the boy behind me started going ape-shit, in a genuinely excited (if drunken) way. "It's gonna happen, Man, TOM PETTY is gonna come out here and sing. He's gonna come out here and sing all those songs we've been hearing our WHOLE LIVES." I decided to cut the twenty-somethings some slack after that.

See! Tom Petty! We had lawn seats and were sitting pretty far back,but he sounded like Tom Petty, and those giant screens sure make concerts more interesting for the distance-challenged concert-goer (we have decided James has Tom-Petty-hair---James claims Tom Petty has James-hair, but we told him no, Tom Petty did it first.) So Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers play some old stuff and some new stuff and they sound great and tight, this is their 30th Anniversary tour and they are in good form---they aren't geezer-rockers yet by a longshot. Most people are standing, and I'm sitting on the grass and knitting and trying to get glimpses of the big screen between drunken, dancing people when Tom Petty announces he would be bringing out someone who has been an honorary Heartbreaker since 1978, and out floats STEVIE NICKS. How COOL is that?!

The blond blur on the right is Tom Petty, and the blonde blur on the left is STEVIE NICKS. Don't think I wasn't excited to see Tom Petty, but I bought a ticket to see Tom Petty, I was expecting to see Tom Petty. Stevie Nicks was a complete surprise and I threw down the knitting (mid-row!) and stood for the rest of the concert. Wow.

On taking two middle school age kids to a concert. . . It helps that John has been working for years to warp the kids in his own image and some of it has stuck. This is their third rock concert. We had to leave early from Cheap Trick when they were quite small (bummer. . .it was a small venue, we had great seats, and the band was awesome) because James and Audrey planted their hands over their ears and shouted "Can we go home yet?!" the whole time. We saw Heart a couple of years ago and they amused themselves by playing some sort of tag game in the empty seats in the rafters of the old ampitheater at the Clark County Fairgrounds. James was actually appreciative of the Tom Petty concert and Audrey liked it okay, but was cold and sleepy and the smell of smoke made her gag. There is no better place to talk to kids about drugs and alcohol than in the general admission seats of a major rock concert. We had a good time.

My husband thinks I need to explain about the blurry nighttime photos. Harumph. The pictures are blurry, not because I was full of $8 beers, but because the digital camera has a v-e-r-y, v-e-r-y, s--l--o--w shutter speed in low light settings, and I do not have the ability to hold as still as an Olympic sharp-shooter. If I did I would break the no-guns-in-the-house rule and BE an Olympic sharp-shooter, because that would be cool.