A Night at the Baltimore Soundstage

On Tuesday, I went out with the guys to see a concert at the Baltimore Soundstage. Candlebox was the headlining band. They're a '90's band out of Seattle. They have a twinge of the grudge sound. But they're also uniquely different than the "typical" Seattle band of that era. If you're a rock fan, you should definitely have their self-titled debut album in your CD collection.

The concert itself was great but I'm not going to bore you with a detailed review. Instead, I want to point out some observances that I experienced throughout the evening....

First off, I bought tickets to the show online via Ticketfly and I took the option to have them held at will-call. For this "convenience", I was charged an additional $2. I was also charged a $5 service fee per ticket as well as a facility charge of $2. So, my $20 ticket, in reality, wound up costing about 50% more at $30. But that's not my big gripe. After all, Ticketmaster and company have been raping concert goers for years. After a while, you kinda get used to it. But my problem in this particular case is that there were no tickets at all. When we got to the Baltimore Soundstage, I told the "ticket" guy that I should have three tickets waiting for me. He asked to see my ID. He then asked who the other two tickets were for. I pointed to my two buds and the "ticket" guy waves us through as he says, "Alright, you guys are good. Enjoy the show." When I asked about the physical tickets, he says that they don't issue a "hard ticket" at will-call. Basically, they just confirm the number of tickets you bought and allow that many bodies into the venue. So, why do I have to pay "processing" and "handling" fees for a ticket that doesn't actually exist?

Not letting it ruin my night, I finally enter the concert hall with my friends. One of the opening bands is already playing. Before long, a guy with a bucket of red roses starts making his rounds. This always of pisses me off. I'm with a group of guys, so I know he won't be hawking us. But why do these guys do this crap. If a dude happens to be with his wife or girlfriend, the "rose guy" will pop up out of nowhere like a f*cking Jack-in-the-Box. This puts pressure on the poor guy to buy a rose. If he doesn't buy a stupid rose, he's made to feel like a cheap bastard. Normal guys don't put other guys in this type of awkward situation. This is a major breach of etiquette according to the Book of Man Rules. But just like the non-existent tickets, I refuse to allow the rose guy ruin my evening with the boys.

At some point, the over-priced beer was putting a strain on my kidneys, so I made that dreaded first-trip to the men's room. After disposing of about $20 worth of spent beer into the urinal, I make my way over to the sink to wash my hands. As I wave my hand under the motion-detector on the water faucet, a "bathroom attendant" practically trips over his own feet as he rushes to me with a bottle of liquid soap. Without even saying anything, he starts squirting soap onto my hands. This instantly pisses me off as I'm perfectly capable of getting my own soap. But, of course, this guy's motive is to pressure me into giving a donation to his tip basket which conveniently sets on the sink counter. After washing my hands, the guy is shoving a wad of paper towels in my direction. As much as it pissed me off, I wound up throwing a buck into his tip basket. Talk about high pressure sales!

I make my way back out into the concert hall. I'm getting a little anxious, feeling that I might be attacked by a swarm of aggressive squeegee kids at any moment. I push my way through the small crowd and reunite with my friends near the front of the stage. Another warm-up band is now playing. The singer starts into one of those silly crowd exchanges where he says, "How's everybody doing tonight?" And then the crowd weakly replies, "Yeeaahhhh!". And then the singer responds, "I can't f*cking hear you! I said, 'How's everybody doing tonight?!'" And then the crowd yells, "Yeeaahh!!", but this time a little louder. I hate when bands do this bullshit. What's the point??

The band went into a heavy riff as the singer screamed into the microphone with guttural aggression. It actually sounded demonic. I was waiting for the singer's head to start spinning around ala Linda Blair. If that wasn't enough to scare me shitless, the bass started booming so loud that I thought my heart might get knocked out of rhythm! I've heard that this can actually happen, so I slowly migrated to a safer place at the back of the venue.

Eventually, Candlebox came on and they were great. I really enjoyed their performance. Enough said....

Once the show ended and we get out to the parking garage, some drunk girl starts breaking my balls because I happened to be wearing a Red Eyes Dock Bar shirt. She keeps telling me that I'm a Steelers fan. I assure her that I'm not, but she continues to bitch at me because I'm wearing a "Steeelers' bar" shirt. For some stupid reason, I start to explain to her that bought the shirt a few years ago before it was a Steelers bar. In mid-sentence, I stop and ask, "Why the hell am I explaining all of this to you?" And then, to really mess with the annoying girl, I break into the jive dialogue from the movie Airplane:

"Hey, knock yourself a pro, Slick! Tha' gray matta backlot like ta perform us down! I take ta TCB'in, man! Hey ya know wha' they say, see a broad to get tha booty yak 'em. Leg 'em down and smack 'em, yack 'em. Cool, got to be, Shit...."

My tactic worked! The girl finally shut up as she desperately tried to comprehend what just came out of my mouth. At that point, I knew it was a good time to escape and call it a night.......

kw