The Good, the Sad, the Ugly at the Mellencamp concert.

Happy Saturday!


First of all, I have to apologize for my absence. I've been woefully behind on writing the fourth and final book in my Nora Hill Mystery Series, "Freed on the Fox." This was a difficult book for me to write for many reasons.  I'm hoping you, as the reader, will enjoy it once I've released it, hopefully by April 1.

But my struggles writing is NOT the reason I'm blogging today.

Because the last thing we need in our lives is more stuff, and because we need more reasons to leave the house now that the kids are no longer doing things in school (or with us. We are no longer "cool" to go out with.  Oh well.) Hubby and I have gotten rather creative when it comes to gift giving times. We've been getting tickets to events likes movies and plays and concerts.

Which is how we found ourselves at the John Mellencamp concert at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee last week Friday.

Now, my issues with going to Rick Springfield concerts and getting bathed in rum and coke are well documented.  I've been to other live music shows (Nora Jones,
Colin Hay) where I've not been doused in rum and coke.  So I figured, as I bought said tickets for my hubby's Christmas present, that I had an even chance of, at worst, coming out of a John Mellencamp concert with sticky feet.

Oh, I came out with so much more than that!

Let me start by saying that while I have enjoyed Mellencamp's music over the years, and I respect him as an American poet, I am not what I'd call a huge fan.  So I was able to go to this concert with a completely objective eye, fully on the lookout for something blog worthy.

The concert did NOT disappoint.

First of all, if you're not familiar with the theater, there's a picture of it.  Our seats were in the balcony, three rows from the front of the balcony all the way over to the left.  (I have a need to sit on the end of rows.)  Getting to our seats, we were pretty happy because, as Hubby put it, "Literally only four people can be in our way."

Oh, he's so naïve.

The concert, as the website told us, started promptly at 8 with no opening act.  This crowd is, let's just say mature, so we were all pretty much in our seats by 8, ready to ROCK (somewhat. I mean, we are all too old to actually be standing for the duration...)  The minute the house lights dimmed, the first blog worthy thing happened:  The woman in front of me sat upright with perfect posture...covering my view of the stage with her GIANT NASHVILLE HAIR.  Of the four people sitting in front of us, the one person with perfect posture AND giant hair is in front of me.

That's just the warm up.

Hubby and I are sitting on the end of the row. As such, we accept the fact that some people are going to get up and leave their seat and crawl over us.  What we were not prepared for was the guy sitting right next to me, the guy with the BACK PROBLEM, having to get up FIVE TIMES during the concert, to go stand in the aisle.  The seats are old school, so there isn't a ton of space...we HAD to get up every time he needed to get out.  And, conversely, every time he needed to get back in.

This is where it starts to get groovy.

The first couple times he got up, no big deal. But, but the third time, an hour into the concert, I stood up and nearly slid off my feet, taking Bad Back Guy with me.  Yep, someone had dumped a rum and coke all over the floor and the floor was slippery.

That's fine. I know how this goes. The floor got sticky by the time Bad Back Guy needed to get back to his seat.

Is that it? Child, please.

So in our clump of seats, there were three rows.  The woman two rows behind and her friends (no doubt the drink dumpers...I'm just guessing here, but the circumstantial evidence was pretty strong) were a chatty bunch. And by chatty I mean THEY TALKED THROUGH EVERYTHING.

Opening video: talking.  Opening three songs, done without a break: talking.  Acoustic version of "Jack and Diane" with audience participation: talking.  Loudly.

I'm not positive, but at some point I believe the guy right behind me said something to Judith (That's her real name. If you seen Judith who sat in the balcony at the Mellencamp show, go kick her in the shins for me.) I didn't hear what he said, but Judith's response was, "I HAVE TO TALK LOUD...HE'S HARD OF HEARING."

Yes, but the rest of us aren't...so please shut up!

It's at about this time I focus in on the front row. Now, I've never really been a front row girl. Never been that lucky.  I got up on stage with Rick Springfield once, but I wasn't even in the front row for that...there were two rows of women and I was in the back row.  So I've always been fascinated by how women I in the front row behave, because it's...interesting.

The Mellencamp front row girls did NOT disappoint.

There were two that caught my eye. Both my age, sort of, both in my fluffy weight class (or above.) The first woman looked WAY TOO MUCH like a lady I know from church, so she really caught my eye. This lady was into the music in a big, giant way, but also really into Mellencamp himself. She spent a lot of time waving her arms in the air and reaching out to the stage and clapping. This is not funny...until you know she was wearing a sleeveless top and had the best flappy chicken wing skin on her upper arms EVER.  She'd dance to "The Authority Song" and her arm skin danced along...in a rhythm all its own.

As amusing as her flappy arms were, her friend was even more mesmerizing!

Hubby and I had a nickname for this lady...but I'm not going to repeat that here. I will tell you that while her friend danced with her whole body, and her arms, this girl danced with exactly one part of her anatomy:  Her female glands.  I cannot replicate her dance moves, I'm not nearly as blessed, but this woman was able to get her girl glands moving in time with the music while the rest of her body stayed pretty much in place.  And oh, she knew what she was about, too. Her dress was one of those stretchy numbers that clings to everything...and, instead of a plunging neckline, there was a keyhole cut out in front, revealing cleavage.  Now, while she was doing her full frontal dance moves, I couldn't help but wonder if any sort of shiftage would occur...you know, where we'd have a Janet Jackson situation. I'm not the only one who wondered that. I'm not making this up...at one point in the concert every single one of the male musicians moved across the stage to stand right in front of her at the same time.  It was a very one side of the theater show for a few minutes.

Hubby and I wondered, later, just how much back pain that lady would be in, seeing as how she kept her upper region in constant motion for most of the concert. I tried replicating the move...I managed one or two undulations...and had serious back pain right between the shoulder blades.

But not even undulating glands took the show for this blogger.

At some point, the guy behind me was sick to death of Judith and her talking and her crew and, well, everything. So, while John Mellencamp was sharing a touching story about his grandmother, the guy behind me was yelling at Judith to SHUT THE H--- UP.

The rant included phrases like, "I'm sick of you kicking my seat!"  and "You've been talking all concert. All I hear is you!"

And his rant ended with "I'm going to talk to security and get you kicked out."

Now, what's funny is that he was mad because Judith was kicking his seat.  However, as he got up in his righteous indignation, he kicked MY SEAT no less that four times.

I'm not sure what the result of dude's complaint was going to be (I mean, you're seriously tattling on someone behind you in a concert? Most likely you're going to miss a great song and that's it.) but when he came back he kicked my chair three more times and Judith continued her talking and her rum and coke spilling.  (My feet were pretty much glued to the floor by fourth time BAD BACK GUY needed to get out of his seat.)

I'm still not done.

Now we come to the point of the show where the question is asked, "How badly behaved are you that the star of the show has to stop the show and inform your husband that you're behaving badly?"

The answer would be, "The woman about six rows from the front who kept yelling something about having a baby."  My guess is she was offering to have Mr. Mellencamp's baby (he was, at that point, telling a story about the children he already has.) and she was so intrusive he stopped was he was doing, and informed her husband that she was overserved and that he, the husband, was now responsible for getting her home safely, but also for getting her to shut up!

Even by Wisconsin standards, that's bad. I've been to shows at Summerfest where concert goers have gotten into drunken fights with each other and with members of the band on stage, and the event hasn't stopped.  This was a first for me.

And finally...

The show over, we waited for Judith and the guy behind me and Nashville Hair, and BAD BACK GUY to leave before we left the theater.  (I was really hoping I had all the material I was going to get for the blog.  I was wrong.)

As we snaked our way through the theater to the stairs, we wound up next to a guy I'm just going to call SAD MAYBE DRUNK DUDE, or SMDD.  SMDD was chatty, noting this and that and that along the way down the stairs to the lobby.  He remarked on everything, no matter how non-descript.  Finally he landed on what I can only surmise was a shocking revelation.

"Those puffy coats.  They are EVERYWHERE!"

Hubby and I didn't bother covering our smirks. Please.  We're in a river of humans trying to get to the door, and we're next to the one guy who isn't talking about the show, but instead, noticing that the winter wear style of 2019 is the puffy coat.

And here's where I have to add the S to his nickname.  As in Sad.

As we're nearing the door, we come up on a line of pretty younger ladies (and by younger I mean probably 35-40 years old.) and SMDD edges closer to them and lands possibly the WORST pick up line I've ever heard:

"So, how do those puffy coats work?"


We didn't wait around long enough to find out if any of the ladies responded to this magnificence of terrible.  Laughing out loud, we left the theater.

There you go.  My most recent musical concert experience.  I may have to stick to comedy shows. I have yet to have anything dumped on me at a comedy show. And weirdly, people tend to behave themselves better.

Or maybe I'm wrong.  I've got a few events coming up in the next several weeks.  I'll test my theory.