Those of you who are regular readers of these weekly ramblings (and I sincerely hope there are at least a few of you out there) may vaguely recall that at some stage last year I did a spot of navel-gazing about whether or not I should go see The Eagles when they brought their History of The Eagles grand processional to Auckland.
As events turned out (as they so often do in my perpetual world of indecision) the decision was taken out of my hands when the Beloved and I were made an offer we could not refuse - i.e. the corporate box option. The corporate box option is like the hole-in-one of concert-going so it was definitely not something to be sneezed at. I did, however, consider sneezing at it in my "but do I really want to see The Eagles" dither. This dithering lasted about the duration of an actual sneeze before the words Corporate and Box won the argument.
I am not, by nature, a corporate person. It is not by natural habitat. In fact, at concerts I'm generally happy anywhere, as long as it isn't too far from the stage so I can't see properly; or if (as at a Veils concert) a succession of basketball players decide to stand in front of me; or if the drunk women sitting in front of me dance during the ballads and then abuse everyone who yells at them to sit down (Bruce Springsteen, 2nd concert); or if the weather completely sucks.
As it turned out, of course, the weather factor was huge when it came to my Eagles concert-going experience. Thanks to Cyclone Pam, the concert start time was brought forward to 6pm - which was weird, because for the first hour or so of the concert my brain was wondering why The Eagles had got an Eagles cover band to be their support act. Then there was the fact that due to the threat of the high winds that never eventuated, the concert stacks had been lowered so that anyone not directly in front of the stage could only see half the band. And then there was the rain, the persistent, sodding rain.
Of course, safe in my concrete box, I was (literally) untouched by the rain. And, for a while, I will confess, I was a smug git as I gazed out across the sea (almost literally) of plastic-swaddled punters. Then I realised they were looking back up at me and muttering/thinking the word that rhymes with "banker" and a touch of egalitarian guilt took the edge off my smugness. Then I imagined the weather turning so crap that, as one, the plastic people would rise up and, like a swarm of zombies from that movie with Brad Pitt in it, climb the stands to storm the bunkers of the privileged classes. So I stopped thinking about the rain and concentrated on the concert instead.
