#5 - Phoenix Concert

Last night was....the. best. night. ever.

Rachel and I bought two tickets to see the Phoenix concert at the Koka Booth Amphitheater. I had never been to any type of concert before so saying that I was excited would be a major understatement. I was ECSTATIC. We talked about it for weeks in advance and took up the afternoon getting ready and pumped.

We got there an hour early haha, and waited outside the doors where a line was forming. After finally getting in, Rachel and I picked a spot in the very front of the lawn, right behind the pit in front of the stage, to put down our blanket. We saw a couple of other people we knew there, too.

After what seemed like hours of waiting and anticipation, the opening band came out. We had never heard of them: the Love Language; and they were pretty good! They played a couple of songs, and then introduced PHOENIX! Which by the way, if you have never heard of them or listened to their music - I advise you listen to their album "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix". It's the best and most recent album of theirs. Oh my gosh...they were spectacular. I told Rachel afterward that it was the best concert I had ever been to! (...plus the ONLY one I've been to, but whatever.) They sounded exactly the same live than they did on their CD, which was such a relief. One thing I can't stand is when bands suck live and don't sound anything like they do on my iPod. They played a ton of great songs, and soon everyone around us was singing and dancing along, including Rachel and I. :)

Around 8:30 is when the hilarious stuff began to happen. First, a shirtless drunk guy started dancing in our section, and was all up dancing on one of the security guards. Then, we got some random guy to take a picture of us. But then he said, "Now let's take one of all three of us so you can remember me." He wrapped his arm around Rachel, took a picture, and then ran off with his girlfriend. There was a waist-high fence that separated the lawn section from the pit in front of the stage. Well, apparently someone wasn't happy just chillin in the lawn, because he climbed under the little fence and joined the mob in the pit. Soon after that, like every five minutes someone else would climb under the fence. Eventually, huge groups of people were just taking turns climbing under/jumping over the fence right behind the security guards' backs! Haha it was a pretty funny sight.

Here's an extremely crappy video I took. I promise the sound quality was actually superb. The lighting was crazy! :)


After Phoenix was done performing, they left the stage. But we weren't even close to being done! We started cheering and finally they came back out for an encore. They ended with their hit song, 1901 - one of my favorites - and at one point the lights went out. When they came back on a few seconds later, the lead singer was in the lawn section...just a few feet away from Rachel and I! A HUGE mob of screaming, sweaty, and drunk people rushed in from all directions so that the lead singer was kind of crowd surfing. I got lost in the swarm of people, and ended up just having my face smushed up against a sweaty shirtless guy...not too fun. However, Rachel? SHE GOT TO TOUCH THE LEAD SINGER'S BUTT! Plus, he smiled at her! :D

Ahhhh this was such a great night - I'm gonna remember it for a long time and hopefully this will spark the first concert of many more to come.