This has been the year of concerts. First J took the girls to a Meghan Trainor concert. They loved it. Then I bought tickets to take Captain E to a 21 Pilots concert. Then I heard Faith Hill and Tim McGraw were coming to my town and I had to buy tickets for that. Then I heard U2 was going on tour again and I even though it was just a week before the Faith Hill concert I was like, "Hello Bucket List" so we bought tickets for that.
So here is what I have to say about all concerts in general...the bass is always too much. I realize that the music needs to project but the best parts of the concert are usually when they put down most of the instruments and that is really a crying shame because the instrumentals are awesome, they are the reason to go to see a live show but they just drowned out the singing to the point of pain often the way the sound is set up. Louder is not always better. Also football stadiums are a terrible place to see a concert. The acoustics are the worst. So I'm a little sad to say U2 was not my favorite ever. I'm glad I went. I got to check that box. I'm not going to lie as a "bleeding heart liberal" I love U2's politics. I also loved all the song choices. I started up a super nice conversation with the girl next to me, a Swedish transplant who has been going to U2 concerts for the last 20 years. We had a great time up in the nosebleeds which were the only tickets available when I bought them at the exact moment they went on sale. Go figure. The question is would I do it again, and the answer is no. While it was fun to relive the 90's and hit this with my honey it just was not good enough that I'd be willing to go through the hassle again to see them live, and boy was it an expensive hassle, more on that to come later. On the other hand the 21 Pilots concert was a total pleasant surprise.
So before I bought these tickets all I knew about 21 Pilots was that they had a couple of songs on the radio. I downloaded their CD before we went and we listened to it a couple of times but I really didn't know what to expect. The line was filled with a bunch of teens and twenty somethings and their moms. I mean tons and tons of moms. The opening acts were Judah and the Lion, I knew nothing about them but they had this one song that just grew on me, and Jon Bellion, who is amazing. Then they came out and they just blew my mind. There were magic tricks, costume changes, amazing graphics on the stage, there was a secondary stage that they appeared on right in front of us that was a huge screen and had the coolest stuff scrolling over it, for this concert I had pretty great seats. They had their opening acts come out and they performed Tubthumping, No Diggity, Where is the Love, and Jump Around and all the moms and dads went crazy. I kept looking around for Dr. J thinking he would Love This! At one point they were playing standing ontop of the GA audience. At another point one of the guys was rolling around the audience on a huge hamster ball. The music was great, the visuals were amazing it was just an overall awesome show! Super inventive and interactive. It wasn't my bucket list show, it wasn't even something I even knew that I would like but it really was probably the best concert I've ever been to and I was so excited to take my kid to it.
