Prelude to CMM: The Black Parade

Ok, so let's rewind to last week! There are a few things one should not do leading up to a half m. 1) Gut your kitchen and remodel it leading to a) severe sleep deprivation, b) extreme stress, and c) a total lack of training time. Another activity one should avoid 2) staying out late at rock concerts. But, since we're rebels we did all of the above. For Valentines Day I had gotten Brent tickets to the Muse/My Chemical Romance concert.

The concert didn't start until 7:30. It was at Municipal Aud with open seating (around Mile 12 for those of you who just ran the Country Music Half Marathon!) so we didn't leave until around 6:45. I had never been to Muni before, it mostly has arena stuff and strange youth rallys, but it has started having more concerts lately. As we drive by to secure some free parking spots we've scoped out recently we noticed the line - ALL the way around the building, for a whole city block. Ugh. We parked (free!) and walked up and then it hit me. There was absolutely no one around us our age. And I mean NO ONE. Normally concerts we go to have a big mix of all ages, the young kids, the 20-somethings, and then the old people who just want to rock. Not this time. Kids, Tweens, Teens and the random unlucky parent. It looked like Hot Topic had exploded all over downtown Nashville. And that's when Brent said "Didn't you know they have a HUGE teen following? It's like if we went to Green Day back when we were teens." Ummm....no. At this point it was about 7:10 and it was obvious we weren't going to make it in by 7:30. While the line slowly moved we made jokes about how much money we could make buying beer for kids, that it would probably pay for our new kitchen. One girl marched by loudly telling everyone they weren't allowing spike belts in the auditorium, which set off a fire storm of "But everyone is wearing spike belts!". Well, not everyone. I can guarantee I was the only CPA in attendance!!!

We finally made it to the entrance about 7:35 and they seriously didn't even search us - which is crazy because anyone can be a terrorist. Huge boxes of spiked accessories were abandoned outside the auditorium and confiscated in boxes in the entrances. I bet there's a lot of homeless people walking around looking a little alternative these days! Right as we walked into the balcony seating Muse come on, so we had just made it in time! We picked a great seat near some fairly calm teens and settled in. The whole open seating deal turned out to be great. The floor was open for all the bouncers, hard rockers, and crowd surfers and then the seats were great if you wanted to sit/stand/dance and just relax a little more. It was nice to know that if we ended up next to a total jerk we could easily move.

Muse was pretty good, they need to work on their stage presence a bit more but they sounded awesome. They probably played about 3 too many songs because I was really ready for MCR! After 30 minutes of stage rearranging they FINALLY came on! The lead singer was wrapped in a white jacket on a flashing gurney to open their set, and the awesome theatrics went on from there. From massive confetti blowing machines to tons of pyro they put on quite the show. And he sounded great. There's nothing worse than dropping a load to watch an artist lip sync their CD, and this was not the case. They had great band-audience connection and really did an awesome job. We rocked hard from the balcony with our new teenage friends who were CONSTANTLY text messaging. The concert ended and it was mass chaos of parents waiting outside to pick up their kids. We easily left from our free spot (and no, I am not going to tell you where you can legally park for free on that side of downtown) and headed home. Living downtown rocks, just a mile and a half and we were home.

I have to say, going to concerts with teens isn't all that bad. They were seriously much better behaved than most of the trashed adults we're usually stuck around at concerts. Thursday I downloaded a ton of MCR songs to my ipod for the race. As fortune would have it one of them was the appropriate last song to my 13.1 mile journey last Saturday.........