Marchie's World

A few months back, while I was in internet-free Missouri for three weeks, unbeknownst (I've said that word many times, but looking at it written out looks REALLY wrong) to me, Barenaked Ladies announced and put tickets up for sale for a concert in Primm, NV, a small settlement south of Las Vegas on the CA border.  When I arrived home and found out I had missed the sale date, I was really ticked off that I would, yet AGAIN, have seats far back or in the nosebleeds (which is where my seats at every one of their concerts I've been to, OUTSIDE their cruises, have been), so I just sucked it up and bought the best seats available.  They were off the floor in the section closest to the stage (Steve/Kevin side), two rows up, so still not too bad, but not right up front (one tends to get spoiled after being on a cruise with their favorite band).

Fast forward to Friday night, Archie and I head down to Primm, which took just about an hour from our house in NW Las Vegas.  We went to the will-call window for our tickets and ran into some familiar faces from the cruises, two nice German guys Mike and Sasha.  We got to our seats and were pleasantly surprised to find that Mike and Sasha were our neighbors for the concert.  We made niceties with them and proceeded to check out the crowds, for people watching and to look for our other BNL friends.

Our view of the stage-->

After the opening band, Thin Lizzy's song "The boys are back in town" announced Barenaked Ladies' taking the stage, who immediately went into their first song "Who needs sleep" with no opening remarks.  They played a number of songs (including one or two off their new unreleased album), a bit of banter here and there, all the while, I was catching bits of video (incognito, as the video nazis were in full effect).  The crowd was starting to slowly get into the music, but I suspected that a good number of the concertgoers were not necessarily big fans of BNL, but just happened to get tickets for the event.  Somewhere around the 3rd or 4th song, we (along with our German friends) decided to stand up and dance even though the folks in front of us (in the front row of our section), were not, nor were many people around us.  We had the attitude as is typical for a fan of BNL, if you're not up and dancing, there must be something wrong with you!

Just about midway through the concert, the band's lead singer, Ed Robertson, came down off the stage saying something about correcting an injustice with the microphone in his hand so I turned the video on to record whatever he was going to do. This next part will be like a transcript of what happened on the following video.   He stopped and said hello to the arena's security folks at the end of the stage, continued down the walkway (in front of our section) and said hi in passing and gave a high-five or two on his way, then as he got closer to us, all four of us started calling his name and waving at him.  So here's where it started to get really interesting... Ed stops in front of us, turns up the stairs to our row (again, the 2nd row of the section) and says to Archie (in the end seat), "Follow me" and grabs his hand to lead him away!  Before I had time to even consider whether I should go with him or just stand there and be super jealous, Ed says "All four of you.  Just the four of you, follow me."  Meanwhile I am COMPLETELY freaking out.  He leads the four of us (JUST the four of us) back towards the stage.  He stopped at the security guard (the big guy with all the muscles this time) and says "This guy will punch you in the throat if he doesn't think you're with me," and parades us past him down the walkway between the front row of seats and the stage.  This entire time, the whole place was cheering and clapping for us/him.   He stopped and said "Hey look!  There's four empty seats RIGHT HERE!"  We freakin LOST it.  Screaming. Jumping up and down. Foul language. The band played a little ditty for us/Ed.  Kevin Hearn their 'multi-instrumentalist' (he mainly does keyboards, accordion and misc guitars) says "What a nice man." and Tyler Stewart their drummer sings the line from their new song "4 Seconds" but changed it to "4 Empty Seats".  Jim Creeggan the bass player delivered one of my favorite lines then, "We can rock better now that those seats are filled."   Ed looks down from his spot on stage and apologizes to the crowd for putting such a tall guy right in the front row (Mike from Germany has got to be about 6'5" or so) and Tyler made the comment to the people behind Mike, "Ma'am enjoy the crack of his ass", to which Kevin replies (my other favorite line of this whole experience), "Well there's four empty seats up there if you can't see." with a rimshot (Kevin usually is the one who comes out of nowhere with the zingers).  Then they went into their next song "It's all been done".

Here's the video of everything.  Once you see it you'll kind of know why I felt the need to write out what all is happening there:

Watching the video is interesting, because it seemed much longer in real life.  Similar to when you get married (if you've ever been a bride), you have to very consciously walk very very sloooooooowly or else when you watch it on video later, it looks like you're RUNNING up to the altar.

The very next song they played had an aptly fitting line in it to this situation:

At this point we thought we were free to enjoy the rest of our concert-going experience.  We were dancing, singing, clapping along, smiling (right in front of Jim).  Then just as they were starting to play one of their new (unreleased) songs, a woman came up to Archie (at the edge of our small group) and said she couldn't see when we were standing up.  This left us almost completely speachless... all I could think was "uh... really?".  So Archie decided to stand in front of our very tall German friend instead!

We proceeded to REALLY enjoy the rest of the concert.  It truly was the best BNL experience we've ever had, OUTSIDE one of their cruises.  It makes me love these guys even more.

Thank you Tyler:

Thank you Jim:

Thank you Kevin:

And the final and biggest thank you to Ed:

Guys,. we're along for whatever ride you have in store for us.  We've been here for the past 10+ years that Archie and I have been together.  We're fans for life.

One final note, it was fantastic reconnecting with our cruise buddies in person:  Michael From San Dimas, Sandra, Rena (& her fiance Felipe), Cynthia and of course Mike and Sascha.  Hope to see you all again sometime soon (maybe we should all take that camping trip we were talking about?).