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Entry 6 - Not Your Ordinary Concert VOTE
It was supposed to be just another concert. Another set list.
Another
rush. Another step toward eventual hearing loss. For
me, this feeling of
excitement was all but new. As I sat in my beach chair
outside Comerica
Park in Detroit, Michigan, I surveyed the situation around me.
The mood was
overall one of excitement, as it usually is when the Dave Matthews
Band
comes to town. I was excited too, don't get me wrong.
But once you've gone
to forty Dave Matthews Band concerts, the excitement switches from
"giddy,
jump-around" excitement to "sit back and take it all
in" excitement. I felt
like a senior in high school on the first day of school, amid a
mix of
slap-happy freshmen and sophomores. I leaned back and sipped
my bottle of
IBC cream soda, savoring every drop, just as I hoped to savor
every note of
the upcoming show.
A young man wearing expensive sunglasses stopped in my general
area and
addressed our group, "Hey, do any of you guys play the
sax?" Now it just so
happened that I did, and I told him so. He walked closer to
me and sat in a
vacant chair. "How long have you played?" I
started counting back the
years in my head, and told him, "Oh, about nineteen, give or
take." I had
started playing before high school, and still brought the axe out
once in a
while for a jam session here and there. The man gave a
smile, and asked,
"Do you ever play along with DMB albums?" I
laughed, and said, "If I didn't
do that, then I probably would've stopped playing long ago."
He then stood
up and said, "Please come with me." Not knowing
what to expect, I put down
my now empty bottle, stood up, stretched my legs, and followed
this mystery
man through the people gathered on the sunny June afternoon.
The man led me up to the façade of the park and past a guard into
a side
door. Once inside, he conversed with me as we walked down a
hallway. "So
how many times have you seen Dave perform live?"
"This is actually my
forty-first concert," I replied. He stopped and turned
to me, and with an
amazed look on his face, he said, "You'll be perfect."
My brain began
contemplating what he could have meant by that statement.
We continued through a maze of hallways, and finally stopped at a
door. He
opened it, and invited me in. I walked in, and there in
front of me was the
entire Dave Matthews Band! I couldn't believe my eyes!
Dave was sitting at
a table with Carter, Stefan, and Boyd, and Leroi was off to the
side on a
couch. The foursome at the table appeared to be going over a
set list. Dave
looked up at my escort and said, "Hey Fenton, who's
this?" The man now
identified as Fenton turned and said, "I didn't even catch
your name." I
looked back at him, trying to remember what my name was.
"Oh, ummm, it's
Sam. Sam Smith," I stuttered. Fenton turned
back to Dave and said, "Sam
here has played the sax for quite sometime, and this is his
forty-first
concert." Dave looked me in the eye and said, "Can
you play the flute?" I
replied that I could, although not very well. He turned back
to Carter and
said, "Scratch Say Goodbye." I couldn't believe my
ears. It seemed as
though they wanted me to play with them for the show!
Fenton invited me to sit down at the table and said, "Let me
tell you why
you're here. As you might have noticed, Leroi is feeling a
little under the
weather. He's got some kind of a flu bug or something.
He picked it up
during this weeklong break the band has had after the Nevada show.
Truth
is, he doesn't think he can go out on stage. I mean, the
whole band gets
sick from time to time, and usually they just suck it up and play.
Unfortunately, Leroi is so sick, he doesn't want to even stand
up." A groan
from the area of the couch confirmed this statement.
"We want you to take
the stage in his place," Fenton continued, "Do you think
you're up to it?"
I looked back at him with a glazed look in my eye, and said,
"Yeah, I mean
yes, yes of course, I'd love to." "Great,"
said Fenton as he stood up, "why
don't you hang here with the boys then and help them to make a set list?"
I
looked over at the four men and said with a shaky voice, "Hi
there."
Dave tossed the paper over my way and said, "What do you
think?" I scanned
the page, and read the titles to myself. Seek Up. PNP
into Rapunzel. One
Sweet World. Crush. Dancing Nancies. Lover Lay
Down. When the World
Ends. Typical Situation. Dreams of Our Fathers.
Little Thing. The list
went on, and I couldn't believe my eyes. They were playing
many of my
favorite songs, some of which hadn't been played for quite some
time. I
looked up at the group and said, "Why are there so many older
songs mixed
into this list?" Dave told me about how the group was
sick of only
promoting their new album, and during their time off they had
decided to
start mixing in some of the really jammed out old songs more.
For that
reason, they were opening up this show with the song Seek Up,
which also
happened to be one of my favorites.
Dave asked me if there was anything I would want to change on the
list. I
looked it over, and said, "Only a couple things. First,
could we play #41
tonight? That's one of my favorites, and it would be a
personal highlight
since this is my forty-first show." "I think we
can arrange for that," Dave
said as Carter and Stefan nodded. I continued, "Second,
would it be
possible to extend When the World Ends tonight in the end and not
end it
abruptly? And could it be a nice laid back, slow
groove?" Dave said, "I'm
all for it, as long as Carter's cool with it." Carter
smiled and said,
"We've been wanting to do that sort of thing with our newer
stuff. Since
we're busting out so much of the old stuff tonight, it wouldn't
hurt to do
some of the new ones in that same style. Let's do it."
I smiled and said,
"Awesome. I assume I'm gonna use Leroi's horns?"
Dave said, "Oh yeah, they
will all be out there for you, just come on out with us and
pretend you're
him. You can even wear a pair of his sunglasses."
My brain couldn't
believe my ears as my head swam with the possibilities of a night
like this.
The rest of the evening flew by. I hung out with the guys,
ate some food,
told them a bit about myself, laughed from some of their crazy
antics, and
just basically had the time of my life. It was then time to
take the stage.
We all sauntered out onto the stage, and the crowd of
35,000 people
cheered and screamed. Dave stepped up to the mic and said,
"Thank y'all for
coming tonight, I got some sad news for ya. Leroi Moore, our
saxophone
player, is stricken, with something. We've got a new friend
of ours, Mr.
Sam Smith here, to fill in for him, so we hope you enjoy
it." I then
experienced the quickest and sweetest two hours and forty-five
minutes of my
entire life. We jammed long and hard through a solid set
list that would
make any Dave Matthews fan wet himself, and closed with a fiery
Drive In,
Drive Out. By the time we left the stage for good, I was
sweaty and beside
myself with happiness. The whole band thanked me and wished
me well. As I
left the park that night, I thought of how I would have to find a
good
recording of this show as soon as possible. I found my
friends, and they
couldn't believe what had just happened to me. Neither could
I, for that
matter. My wildest dreams had come true; I had rocked out
with the Dave
Matthews Band.
VOTE
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