So yeah, we went to see Mr. Aparo again. Jon couldn’t stay for the show, only dinner (this is the Jon Never Gets To See Angie Aparo curse), but I get to see him again this weekend. And Lisa too! I’m sucking my friends back in!
That’s not what I’m writing about, though. I’m writing about the concert. It was a great concert; the venue (The Dame) was my favorite of the places I’ve seen him, and both of the opening bands were really good (bought both CDs! CDs are also good!), and I got to introduce Maria to the marvel that is Angie live.
Yet. It is increasingly difficult to enjoy Angie Aparo concerts, specifically and directly because of Angie Aparo fans.
Not all his fans. I’m talking about the people at Angie Addicts, a severely cultlike community that’s mostly based in or around Lexington (possibly in Nicholasville). The Addicts–or at least the ones who are the stars of this post–are a group of women and a few men, all at least beginning their declining years, who appear in whole or in part at every show Angie plays within five hundred miles of central Kentucky.
Angie jokes about how intrusive and frightening these people are, when he sees them. They laugh delightedly, because he’s paying attention to them. They, unlike Angie and the rest of the audience, don’t realize that the jokes are not jokes at all.
Last night was the worst infestation I’ve seen yet. They arrived in droves, set up shop at the front of the stage, and really did their best to ruin the concert for everyone else. They made noise during the quiet parts of the songs; they drank and drank and fell all over themselves; they danced exactly like the middle-aged sponges they are. They screamed coordinated requests (which he then chose not to play). They took pictures of themselves, several times, during songs, and cackled madly at this. They hugged and swayed and sang to each other at the end of every single song; they wore the same clothes they wear at every single show.
I’m not going to do something like post this rant over on their message boards, because that’s trolling and it doesn’t really accomplish anything. But I do kind of hope somebody notices a link in their referrer logs and checks out this entry, because then maybe they’ll start thinking about my point:
It is the prerogative of people under thirty to act like idiots at concerts.
It’s fine to get drunk and heave your body around at a Rolling Stones concert, yes, okay, there are more people in that space than lived in my hometown and nobody’s going to care. But when there are maybe a hundred people in the entire building, all of whom really want to pay attention to a good concert, it’s a pretty straightforward responsibility to act your fucking age.
There are degrees to this. I’m twenty-two, and I don’t even dance the way I did when I was seventeen (as people who went to GSP with me will attest). Granted, part of this is because of the danger of spinal damage, but mostly it’s because I’m learning to enjoy music differently. When you’re a teenager, you rock out at the front. Through your twenties you start learning to bob and nod and groove, and by the time you’re thirty you should be sitting at your table in the back, sipping your beer and actually appreciating the harmonies.
I’m not exactly an establishmentarian, but this gradient exists because it makes sense. It’s good and right and allows for people at the age you used to be to do the things you used to do.
If it had been high-schoolers up front rocking out to Angie last night, I wouldn’t have liked it, but I would have understood. I would have smiled. And they would have gotten yelled at, and it would have been okay. For one thing, they wouldn’t have complemented their dancing by buying the band shots from the bar, or wearing homemade shirts with song lyrics on them. They wouldn’t have gasped “God I love you!” during the hushed part of “Wonderland.” They would not, in short, have acted like outwardly arrogant sycophants.
I said it was a great concert, and I meant it; the show those three guys put on is fantastic to make up for whatever the crowd is doing, and Angie is charismatic and quick on his feet enough to turn anything into a joke. The point is that they shouldn’t have been forced to make up for anything. I’m neither sexist nor ageist, and I don’t have a problem with middle-aged women getting out and having a good time. When you start doing it at the expense of other people who like the same music you do, though, it’s time to consider something: maybe, just maybe, you should have left this behavior behind around the time I was born.
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