Help me deal with my concert etiquette issues. This actually happened a month ago but I'm just writing about it now because I know I will find empathetic ears around here! With the rise in TBK's popularity over the last two years, a lot of people have been complaining about the parallel rise in rowdy bros at all their shows... well recently, I was among them!
Last month I went to a Sheepdogs show at a small club in Montreal with some old friends from my old rugby team. Before the show, we were just kicking it at buddy's place, having a few drinks and catching up. It was a Tuesday night so I just had a handful of beers, but some of them were downing gin hard and railing blow like it was going out of style. The topic of "El Camino" comes up and my two rather large friends are like "I love the Black Keys so much now! The two of us went to their show in the summer and it was so awesome, we got sooo fucked up and he tried to fight a guy! So awesome." Literally that was their immediate review of the show. Great, so now I have an idea of what we're in for tonight...
We arrived at the show as the opener was finishing their set... it was a pretty full house already so we posted up by the back bar where the sound was great and we could see really well (we're all tall and it was a small place). I was really happy to stay there but as soon as the Sheepdogs took the stage, the two aforementioned bros are like "Let's get up front to the first row!!" My reply: "What are you a 15 year old girl or something? Let's just chill here where we have some space and can hear really well, it's close enough..." but my words were lost on them. I watched as they bushwhacked through the relatively tame crowd, knocking people left and right, until they secured a space against the rail for the remainder of the evening. Keep in mind these guys are each about 6'4" 240 lbs. Also, our whole group consisted of dudes mainly in our late twenties.
Anyways, my conclusion: These guys are still my friends and are on the whole good people. But they just haven't grown out of getting totally annihilated when they go out, which is a big shame for everyone else around them. I watched them all night, it's not like the were being totally reprehensible dicks, I saw them offer many apologies to each and every girl that they bumped out of their way, but fuck man, some people just have no awareness of how their presence affects the good time of others. Not to say that rock'n'roll shows aren't allowed to get a little bit rowdy, but they were on a totally different level than everyone else around them.
Anyways, it was an interesting but frustrating experience being "among" the bro element that we criticize so much here. I did my best to try to calm them down but ended up keeping my distance. Needless to say I won't be getting my tickets with them when TBK come through in March.
