“When Music is the One Thing that Surrounds You . . .”
O.A.R. 7-24-04 Universal Lending Pavilion, Denver, CO



Warning: this post may offend some readers . . . well, some parts should offend everyone . . . parental discretion is advised.

Joe and I left our house at 3:00 PM and drove to Ryan’s house. It was raining pretty hard, and the fog cut down our visibility. By 3:15 the three of us were on I-25, and the traffic was horrible. I guess people were afraid of hydroplaning so they only went half the speed limit. We listened to O.A.R. for awhile, but since the three of us are die-hard fans, we’ve heard the CDs so many times that we put in some Pete Francis after awhile.

I picked the top five O.A.R. songs I hoped to hear at the show:
1. Delicate Few
2. Here’s to You
3. Untitled
4. Risen
5. That Was a Crazy Game of Poker

Despite the traffic, we arrived in Denver and made it downtown in good time. We could see the Universal Lending Pavilion from the road (it’s hard to miss, since it’s a giant white tent), but we had a little trouble getting to it. We pulled up to the Pepsi center right across the street and a parking attendant helped us. He mentioned that Eric Clapton was going to play at the Pepsi center in a few hours. We all thought that that was pretty cool. After we parked, we walked over to a nearby gas station and bought some hotdogs for dinner. We ate as we walked to the ULP main gates and joked about having explosive diarrhea during the show.

We were two hours early, and we were some of the first people in line. Our timing was perfect; I had wanted to arrive at the gates four hours early, but that would have been unnecessary. Since we didn’t have anything else to do, we sat on the ground and talked until the gates opened at 6:30. Most of the people in line were there to see Howie Day. I’m still not sure if Howie Day was one of the opening bands for O.A.R. or if they were double-headlining. At 6:30 the gates opened, and the three of us raced inside even though a couple of security guards yelled, “hey! Don’t run!” We made it to the rail and prepared to defend our spots against hordes of insane fans. It wasn’t easy with all the pushing. We were only a few feet from the stage, right in the middle, basically the best possible location. It was still an hour until the show, so once again we had to wait.

At one point I heard a lot of shouting behind us, and it looked like a fight was going to break out. A security guard in the pit jumped up to the rail and demanded to know what was going on. A few people shouted at once that a guy in the crowd was peeing on people. The guard asked the accused man if it was true, and he nodded. It was so strange, because he looked like an average guy. A few guards grabbed him and took him over to a waiting police officer. A few minutes later a guard returned and wanted to know who had been peed on. A rather large lady raised her hand, and the guard instructed her (despite her protests) to push her way to the rail and climb over. She kept whining about how she didn’t want to miss any of Howie’s performance. To say the least, it was not easy for this woman to make it over the four-foot tall rail. After a few pitiful attempts, the guard finally made her sit on top of it, and he pulled her over backwards. She was so frightened that her expression would have looked appropriate on the face of a first-time bungee jumper. When she returned later on, she had to climb back over the rail, and Joe helped her (he was almost crushed by the woman’s beefy hands on his shoulders).

Matt Nathanson and his band opened the show, and I am excited to report that they rocked. I really enjoyed the band’s sense of humor (I do not necessarily condone it, but I did laugh more than once): For a couple of his songs, he encouraged the audience to sing along to some famous 80’s “power ballads.” They were all extremely talented, especially Matt. He had a great voice and was a terrific guitar player. The highlight of their set was when Matt brought Marc Roberge (lead singer of O.A.R.) onstage for a song.


Matt Nathanson

During one of their last songs, Matt suddenly stopped singing and told his band to quit playing. I thought it was all part of his act, and from the expressions of the people around me, I wasn’t alone. Once the music died down, he pointed to the far end of the pit and said, “Gentleman with the shaved heads in the back, do you have some sort of problem?” Everyone turned to see a group of five skinheads waving their arms in the air angrily, obviously heckling Matt. Matt placed the microphone on its stand and said, “Alright, if you want a fight, let’s go.” He was really, really angry. Marc Roberge ran from the side of the stage and tried to restrain Matt. The skinheads pushed past security guards to the front of the stage. Matt was screaming at them, and they were screaming at him. I was only a few feet away from it all, but I still had no idea what it was all about. With the none-too-gentle urgings of security guards, the skinheads backed off and left, and Matt hopped back onto the stage. He apologized, tossed a few crude insults at the skinheads, and began playing again.

After Matt’s set, Howie Day came on. When he and his band walked onstage, I’m sure that at least fifty women in the audience fainted. He’s one of those artsy, smooth, tousle-haired guys that drive the ladies wild. He wore a Modest Mouse t-shirt (haha!) and sunglasses, much to my amusement. The band was a lot better than I expected, and I greatly enjoyed the performance.
Joe bought one of his CDs a few days later. The lights went out as the band exited the stage, and people began chanting “O.A.R! O.A.R! O.A.R!”


Howie Day


Howie Day & band

When the lights came on and O.A.R. walked onstage, we were immediately slammed into the rail as the crowd surged forward. It was more than a little awkward, since a group of girls was behind us and we were about as close as humans can possibly be (still, I’d rather be squeezed against a female than a male any day). The crowd was pushing so hard that I was afraid that a few of my ribs would be broken against the rail, so purely out of self-preservation, I pushed back. The girl directly behind me screamed and began pounding her fists on my back. I gave up and let the crowd have its way with me (or something like that).




Halfway through the show, two girls behind me and Ryan begged us to trade places with them so that they could be against the rail. At first I suppressed my natural chivalry and pretended not to understand what they were saying because I didn’t want to give up my hard-earned spot. Since we were right next to a couple of gigantic speakers, it was simple to feign partial-deafness. They attempted to persuade us by appealing to our masculinity: i.e. they promised to give us their phone numbers, said that they just wanted some guys to protect them from the crowd, suggested that we should enjoy pressing against them, and a few other ridiculous ruses. They were disgustingly transparent. I knew that they would keep annoying us until they got their way, and I just wanted to enjoy the concert, so I said as much to Ryan. The girls were pretty short, so we wouldn’t have trouble seeing over them, so we told the girls that we would trade places with them. We counted to three and then all four of us tried to squeeze our bodies around each other. It must have been highly entertaining to see from a distance. Ryan, ever the ladies’ man, put his arms around the girl he had traded places with. I just stood there and tried my hardest to keep our bodies separated by a respectable distance. The girls thanked us.


Benj Gershman (O.A.R.)

Deciding to trade places with those girls was the biggest mistake I made all night. Within ten minutes, I slowly began to drift farther from the rail. A nearby girl had seen me trade places earlier, and she began to make fun of me for giving up my place. That made me feel a lot better; Not only was I slipping away from Joe and Ryan and the choicest spot in the whole place, but a smart-mouthed girl was laughing at me! The girl I had traded places with realized that I was being forced back farther every second, and she turned around and extended her arm toward me. I grabbed her hand and she attempted to pull me back, but the press of the bodies around me was too tight to move anywhere but backwards. I gave up, resigned to the fact that I had made a foolish mistake and wouldn’t be able to get back to the rail.


Richard On (O.A.R.)

I soon found myself smashed against a girl who looked like she was about fifteen or sixteen. She lit a marijuana pipe, inhaled, and offered it to me. I declined (of course!), and she shrugged. The only problem was that she was at least a foot shorter than me, and the smoke drifted right into my face. I’m sure I would have been in a . . . euphoric . . . state soon if not for an unexpected savior. A severely drunk man who probably weighed close to 300 pounds slammed into me, sending a shockwave through all the people around us. He was headbanging and generally acting like a complete idiot. I tried to get out of his way, but there was no place for me to go. The lady next to him said to me, “can my boyfriend and I move in front of you?” I said yes (not like I had a choice), and she guided him around me. They were trying to reach the rail, and they were not encountering much opposition since the lady’s boyfriend was so huge. A guy with dreadlocks a few feet from me noticed what they were doing and didn’t like it at all. He reached out and punched Big Boy in the back. Big Boy turned and looked at me, as if I had been the one foolish enough to touch him. Dreadlocks pushed him again, and Big Boy swung around to face him. They began shouting at each other and pushing. Marc Roberge, singing onstage, noticed what was going on, and he stopped in the middle of a song and looked directly at Big Boy, Dreadlocks, and me. He said that we’re all here to have a good time and there’s no need to get rough. I agreed completely.


Marc Roberge (O.A.R.)

I finally began to relax and enjoy the concert . . . at least until I felt someone caressing my posterior region. I looked over my shoulder and saw a lady with a beer bottle in one hand. She winked at me. GAH! And to make things even worse, her boyfriend was right next to her! He looked like he could pick me up and throw me without any trouble at all. I decided to ignore her as best I could.

Every few minutes, someone would crowd surf above me. It was an interesting experience to hold someone above your head and pass them to another person. After the show, Joe told me that Big Boy had crowd surfed and had fallen right onto the concrete.

Chris Culos

The most uncomfortable event of the evening occurred near the end of the show: a girl was trying to move toward the stage, and when she passed me she decided to stay right in front of me, for some reason. That reason soon became apparent: she wanted to dance. And she didn’t want to do any curtsey-arm’s-length-apart-let’s-drink-a-Coca-Cola-and-hold-hands kind of dancing. After a couple of minutes a truly embarrassing situation occurred, the single most embarassing moment of my life (it’s far too painful to describe here . . . perhaps you’ll hear it from me another time).

Some highlights of the show: Matt Nathanson came onstage and sang a U2 cover with O.A.R. I’m not sure what the song was called, since I’m not a U2 fan, but I had heard it before. The coolest part of the whole concert was when O.A.R. did a Pearl Jam cover: Release. It was so amazing to see one of my favorite bands play a cover of another of my favorite bands. O.A.R.’s most popular song, That Was a Crazy Game of Poker, was a lot of fun to hear live. It seemed like the whole audience knew the song, so everyone sang along. Another incredible part of the evening was the final song: Anyway. Marc gave a long speech about friendship, then he introduced a long-time friend of the band: an African American, Robert Randolph. He had a pedal steel with him (and if you don’t know, a pedal steel is an instrument similar to a guitar, but it rests on a horizontal board and is played with fingerpicks). It was the most exhilarating moment of my music-life (or something like that).




When the show was over, I found Joe and Ryan without any trouble. The girl I had traded places with noticed me and apologized for letting me get pushed back. She didn't give me her number, though . . . what a surprise. We were so thirsty after seven straight hours without anything to drink . . . and we had to pee desperately, so I suggested that we get out of there as fast as possible.

The drive home was as crazy as the rest of the night had been. The three of us were bruised from being shoved into the railing, we were half-deaf from over four hours of standing next to the speakers, our legs refused to work properly, and our clothes reeked of beer, cigarettes, and perfume. Getting out of the parking lot proved difficult because of the scores of drunk and high people wandering around. After awhile we made it to the highway, but we all had to get something to drink, so Joe took the closest exit. Unfortunately for us, he exited by the Park Meadows Mall, and everything was closed (it was midnight, after all) and there wasn’t a gas station in sight. We decided to get back on the highway and try another exit, but we encountered a bit of a problem: the on-ramp was closed for construction, and we had to take a detour. We unwittingly missed the detour and spent half an hour lost in the Inverness business district. The whole area was dead, and Joe was so irritated that he made a few illegal U-turns and various other minor traffic indiscretions.

That was definitely the greatest concert I have ever attended. Frightening as it was at times, haha.

Setlist:

1. Windy City Man
2. Risen
3. So Moved On
4. City on Down (with Matt Nathanson)
5. King of the Thing
6. Wonderful Day
7. Heard the World
8. Delicate Few
9. Lay Down
10. Night Shift
11. Release (Pearl Jam cover)
12. Hey Girl
13. Dareh Meyod
14. That Was a Crazy Game of Poker
Encore
15. Anyway (with Robert Randolph)