How many live concerts does a normal person go to each year? Because I feel super lucky that I've been to two already in the last two months. One of them was the awesome Indigo Girls concert (see first March post). But I have yet to tell you about April 7's Hey Ocean! concert. Which, seeing as I love the band even more than the Indigo Girls, was even more awesome. (To better understand my gushing, see post 1 and post 2 from January.)
Why else was it awesome?
- Because the concert was in the Twin Cities. Thus, since I was planning to drive up to Minnesota to reunite with old college friends around that time anyway, I could kill two birds with one stone: 1) hang out with friends and 2) see the concert right before I headed home. Awesome plan, right?
- Hey Ocean!'s April concert might have been my once-in-a-lifetime chance to see them live. I say this because Hey Ocean! mainly tours throughout Canada, so their performing in the U.S. is a big deal. Also, because they're a relatively recent band and their songs aren't well known in the U.S. yet, I don't know when they'll return. At any rate, they probably won't play in any state close enough for me to see them again.
- I dragged my old college friend, Band3, along to watch it too. Since he's a huge music lover (and also a long-time band member - school band, not celebrity band), it was a great night for both of us.
Granted, the venue (First Street Entry) wasn't exactly what we'd expected - more of a dusky nightclub/bar rather than a concert hall. It made us both a bit nervous (or in Band3's words, "marginally uncomfortable"), but since we were together it wasn't as intimidating as it would be alone.
It was also a learning experience for me. First of all, I learned that buying tickets in advance online for a nightclub concert is a ripoff, since they cost way less to buy at the door. If I had known beforehand that First Street Entry was a nightclub-type place with plenty of standing room, and not a place with legit seats in danger of being sold out (in my defense, TicketHub made it sound like it was), I wouldn't have made the mistake of spending $120 on two online tickets. Live and learn.
Secondly, I learned that when you buy tickets for a nightclub-type concert, you get more than you bargained for. E.g, the band you pay to see doesn't play immediately; there are about 3 - 4 "guest" bands that play before them. (Why this is necessary, I have no idea.) So you need to come with a heck of a lot of patience - both for the good (West of Aldine) and god-awful (*cough* We Are the City *cough*).
This was particularly dismaying for Band3 and me, since we both had to wake up early the next day and were only just discovering that the band I'd paid good money to see was going to play at 10:30 PM instead of 7:00. But we resigned ourselves to wait.
Still, when Hey Ocean! finally appeared, THEY. WERE. EPIC. The place quickly turned into a rave, the dance floor teeming with pumping, jumping fans. Band3 was reluctant at first to migrate to the dance floor (unlike me, he never went to raves when we were in college), but soon joined me when I descended to get a closer view of Ashleigh Ball. We joined in the chorus for "Fish" (see post 1 again), clapped along with "Change," and danced to our own awkward beat with "Make a New Dance Up."
I'm attaching a Youtube video of the one song that will always remind me of that live concert: "Make a New Dance Up." The video below is just a live performance of the song (kind of like what Band3 and I saw), but Hey Ocean! is currently making an interactive music video for it. The music video will consist of clips of random contributors dancing along to the song. (To find out more about the video, visit Hey Ocean!'s official website.) I'm so looking forward to it!!
- Ariel
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