Things I Learned at the Norah Jones Concert

Last night, Libby and I did something that we haven't done in well over a decade--we went to a concert. For the record, the last concert we went to was the second run of Lilith Fair in 1998 where we got to see a very inebriated (or possibly just crazy) Natalie Merchant run around the stage in a human cannonball outfit while other performers tried to sing an ensemble song to finish off the evening. It was a pretty memorable event, and I don't think it's a coincidence that her career had pretty much peaked at that point.

But before I get into the observations that I made at the concert last night, I feel like I need to clear the air just a little bit--to square things up with my conscience more than anything.

First, let it be known that I am not one of Nature's concert goers. I am not built for it, nor do I have the temperament. Really, this applies to ANY activity that depends on me sitting in one place for an extended period of time in a badly designed chair. Heck, even the relatively posh new padded reclining seats in movie theaters start to drive me crazy about thirty minutes into a movie. Plus there is a very strong case to be made--to my way of thinking--for avoiding any venue where many people will be crammed close together. I'm not a fan of "the masses," and sharing their imminent proximity is not something I relish. Not that I'm BETTER than the masses, as such, I just don't like the feeling that comes with knowing that all that separates me from being trampled to death by a stampeding hoard is the conscience of the lowest common denominator who wants to shout FIRE at the top of his lungs. Add to that my inherent inability to sit still for longer than twenty minutes, and it's not difficult to see why I haven't been to a concert in twelve years.

Second, last night, I felt especially like an interloper because I really haven't paid any attention to Norah Jones for about five years now. Libby and I were fans of her first album. We listened to it quite a bit for about a year. Then, her second album came out and I was quite excited to pick it up. We were planning our driving trip up to Canada to see Molly, and I figured this new album would give us something new to listen to for much of the trip up there. Within the first hour of our trip, I popped in the CD. We listened to it twice and were completely underwhelmed. It was nice to listen to--great music to have on in the background while you are, say, cleaning out a bathtub--but it utterly failed to grab our attention and singing voices in the same way that the first album had. Over the next few months, I tried to revisit the album several times, but no matte how many times I listened to it, none of the songs would stick in my head. And I never really looked back since.

That said, Norah Jones has an incredible voice and is very talented. I thoroughly enjoyed her performance last night, I just wish I'd recognized more than three of the songs that she sang (and I will argue strongly with anyone who disagrees that those three songs, all off her first album, were, in fact, STILL the best three songs she had to offer).

Oh, and our Norah isn't named after Norah Jones, not really. Admittedly, Norah Jones was the first Norah I really knew anything about--and when we first started listening to her music I remember Libby commenting on how much she liked that name (and Libby did get to pick this name since I pretty much picked Gabe's). So, maybe it was Norah Jones inspired, but it wasn't a Naming After.

Anyway.

Along the way to enjoying our evening, I made a few observations and learned a few things as I watched the crowd and the people in it.

• Look! Bullet points!
• Actually, I can't stand bullet points. They, along with words like "proactive," have ruined many of my days. They are a cheap alternative to thinking up ways to transition through paragraphs and ideas.
• They are handy, though. Look how I can just move from one topic to another without so much as a parenthetical phrase.
• Weeeee!
• I don't even need punctuation at the ends of my sentences! Maybe I could start shortening my words into text speak, too, to save even more time.

That's enough of that.

Observation the First--It doesn't matter how upscale the crowd is (this one was pretty uniformly dressed as if going to church, the average age being probably in the early 40s), there will always be a few douchebags there to ruin the experience for everyone. Cops had to come in and wrestle out two big ole fat obnoxious people (Libby said she THOUGHT they were women, but said she might be willing to conceded that one was, in fact, a man) who were causing problems in one of the back rows. Even over the music, we could hear these dinguses shouting suggestions that the cops should eff off. Why these people spend good money on tickets only to get stupid drunk (or just be their stupid selves, whichever was the case) and get kicked out is beyond me. But there you have it. These were the people I was trusting my non-stampeded body to, I'm pretty sure.

Deuce--Appropriately, On the Behavior of Men in Bathrooms. Century II, where the concert was held, does not have the most accommodating bathrooms. The men's room nearest to our balcony level only had three stalls and three urinals. During the break between the opening and main acts, I decided it was a good time to stretch my legs and stop stretching my bladder. By the time I made it to the bathroom, though, there was a line of about a dozen dude stretching out the door. Because of this arrangement of potential pee-ers, anyone who used the toilet had to proceed past everyone waiting in line to exit the room. To keep this from being a walk of shame, ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the men who were in there washed their hands. Typically, I view washing my hands in public restrooms as a lesson in futility. If I have to touch the faucet to turn it off, then what's the point of washing my hands in the first place? I'd be willing to be that there are considerably more germs on that faucet than there were on the parts of my body that I made contact with during the urinating process (actually, to keep hand washing in public restrooms from being necessary, I have a pretty good system developed wherein I "go" without touching anything but my clothes--except when I see the faucet is a motion activated jobby, then I don't worry about it and touch away since I know I can wash my hands without touching anything afterward). I'm pretty sure 50% would be closer to the number I usually see washing their hands, so it says something about the human mind and the importance of the perception of others.

3) Speaking of mob mentality (earlier moreso than with that last one--this one was going to be #2, but I figured the bathroom one pretty much had to go there), I witnessed a prime example of how mob mentality works and recognized an opportunity that lesser people probably would have taken. In between sets, there was a sizable break. Probably TOO sizable--about thirty minutes. After about twenty minutes, parts of the crowd were starting to get a little restless and anxious. One person, possibly sensing the opportunity, started to clap really loudly as if something important was starting to happen. Within three seconds, waves of reactionary applause started to spread throughout the crowd. This was the moment when a true Worker of Crowds could have stepped in, issued pitchforks and torches, and set the crowd loose on the creepy castle down the way. I recognized this moment, but didn't act on it because I am not a Worker of Crowds. I wouldn't know what to do with one. I'd probably ask someone to gather some sandwiches and big jugs of tea to pass around and ask them if they were having a pleasant evening. But that moment was there, and that's another reason why I don't trust big groups of people.

D) This is something Libby said that made me snicker, so I'll share it. A woman squeezed by us to get out of the row and I noticed that her entire butt was covered in rhinestones. "Nice use of shiny things," I pointed out to Libby. "If I had a butt like that, I'd put rhinestones on it, too," she replied (admittedly, the woman did had a pretty nice can--to use the formal term). "Maybe we shouldn't take this diet thing too seriously, then," I added. "I'd hate to have to buy a bedazzler." And that was it. Nothing earth shattering, but a conversation about bedazzled butts should always be worth sharing.

Bread) Olfactory Fatigue is not possible with certain smells. Some industrious soul set up a Bavarian Nut kiosk up in the foyer. These cinnamon toasted nuts have a nasty habit of stinking up everything--in fact, the whole concert hall was blanketed in a light smoke, the cooking process for these is so invasive. Mix this smell with those put off by the people around us, and you have the making of a noxious odor that the nose can never fully ignore. Throughout the night, the concert hall smelled like an extremely flatulent man chewing Fruit Stripe gum in a Waffle-Os factory. Occasionally my nose would get used to one part of the smell or other, but then the fart smell would ramp up and reset everything again. Really, it was very distracting.

Milk) And speaking of distractions. Cell phones and other digital things have made it impossible for audience members to completely submerge themselves in the music. They are a distasteful blight in these circumstances. In some ways, I want to compare them to the lighters of old, as people hold them up in support of the music as they once did their portable fire devices, because that is exactly what it looked like as I scanned the crowd. Little square lights, everywhere, blinking on and off, like geometrically improbable fireflies. Except I really didn't mind the lighter thing. The little wavy flames seemed somehow appropriate to the situation. Cell phones, however, are not appropriate for anything. Ever. Except making phone calls. In emergencies or when normal land lines are not available. Of course, I can hold this opinion because I have access to a computer and a land line all day. But as long as I do, I will hold people who can't turn their cell phones off in very low regard.

Vaseline--sorry, I'm working on my shopping list now) And, finally, Taking Pictures in Low Light Settings. It has been well over a decade since the popularization of digital photography. Flash photography, by that point, had been common place for several decades, but digital cameras worked somewhat better in low light settings than their film predecessors. Yet, despite having a decade to get used to using this new medium, and having several decades before that to get used to how well flashes work, people STILL think that the pictures they take at concerts are going to somehow be better if they use a flash. Look. Built in flashes on cameras are good for MAYBE twenty feet, if your camera is good. More than likely, you'll be lucky if it stretches to fifteen feet. If you aren't sitting in the first row at a concert, your flash WILL NOT MAKE YOUR PICTURE BETTER AND, INSTEAD, WILL ONLY BE ASSAULTING THE PERFORMER YOU HOLD IN HIGH ENOUGH REGARD TO PAY GOOD MONEY TO SEE WITH BRIGHT AND ANNOYING FLASHES. And you'll be making the experience much less enjoyable for the rest of the crowd, too, as strobe effects can cause epileptic seizures in some people, and nothing breaks up the rhythm of a good musical performance like having to stick a shoe in someone's mouth to keep him/her from biting off their own tongue. So turn off your flashes! Your pictures will turn out EXACTLY the same. I have five years of film developing experience that I'm willing to place on the line as my guarantee.

Oh, and, obviously we don't have any pictures to share. The stupid flash didn't reach the seventy yards to the stage like I assumed it would. Sorry about that.

Plus, the kids didn't die! This was the first time we'd ever asked anyone to babysit our kids who wasn't a grandparent. Libby was worried (I was joyous), but it all worked out. So, hurrays all around!