I was once again accompanied by aide-de-camp 11 on our briefest concert journey yet, traveling the 90 minutes south to Birmingham to see Coldplay. Birmingham is the shortest drive we've undertaken in any of our previous adventures, and also the most impulsive attempt. I got Zen with the ticket drop and pulled eighth row seats on Saturday.
Why didn't I already have my tickets long ago? Because it took me until two days before the show to justify the ridiculous price . I still felt a sense of outrage about the crime committed against my Visa in the name of attending this show, but eighth row tickets quelled it just enough.
Without more time to plan our attack, we were vulnerable to the soul crushing indignities that befall the mortals. Sure enough, the shortest commute of our career in adventuring proved to be the worst yet because someone thought it would be a good idea to build an amphitheater that has, in effect, one entrance. As we sat in the parking lot that became I-65, I turned to him and said, "It's going to be a heavy nicotine night, my lord."
I looked at Marvin, my trusty GPS guide, and saw we had only 1.1 miles to travel to our exit. Orange and white construction barriers obstructed seemingly perfect paving to our right. 11 queried why on earth those barriers couldn't be removed for a couple hours in the morning and evening. I told him I was tempted to go do just that. "I think we've got time," he quipped. I suppose we'll know how much longer than the hour it took to move that 1.1 miles we'd have had to wait before my impatience would have overcome my laziness (any exaggeration here is minimal and accidental).
Having finally bested the interstate, we got off at our exit when the local cops dispatched Barney Fife to misdirect traffic, forcing us to go a mile out of our way to make a U-turn to get in line to actually get into the venue. Making matters is worse is that somewhere, some asshole thought it would be a good idea to try moving 11,000 cars through one gate with only 5,000 parking spaces (the numbers here are relative, used strictly for illustrative purposes) for the poor bastards when they got there. Where we ended parking was free, because I'm pretty sure we were in Mobile. Coldplay frontman Chris Martin would later make reference to the "parking shenanigans." The upshot of this is we got to our seat just in time to hear Pete Yorn's last song. Savage.
Article comments
1 - Glen Boyd
Wow, dude...that was longer than two of my most indulgent Rockologist columns. I'm going to see these guys in July though, so thanks for the preview. And for clearing that thing up about the free CDs at the end (I downloaded it, but you still had me a little worried). Hopefully, as I'm still single we'll get the added bonus of the "2009 model" thingies in Seattle too...
-Glen
2 - El Bicho
"It would have been ironic if we'd had to go to a Coldplay show to hear a Bruce Springsteen song"
That would have been awesome since I believed I called that a few days prior