Top Five Inebriated Concertgoers And How To Deal With Them
Published on May 30th, 2009 in: Issues, Listicles, Music, Top Five Lists |By Adam McIntyre
5. The Freebirder
At first it could just be chalked up to “he’s just a drunk redneck who suddenly is jonesing for some Skynyrd” but then Mike Judge popularized the cliché and it became pop culture turned inside out. Man-children, fueled by The One Time They Yelled It At Oak Mountain Ampitheater And The Whole Audience Laughed, undeterred by the nasty incident at Lilith Fair and presently ignorant of the lineup, truly believe that they are part of the night’s entertainment. Oh, but now a hipster is yelling it. Perhaps it’s a step further; he’s being ironic. He would actually hate it if Kasabian played “Freebird,” but two PBRs in and suddenly he has replaced “show us your tits” (the drunk boy mantra of choice in many situations) with a good old “Freeeeebird!” Again, you laughed at him once. This is your fault. He doesn’t own any Skynyrd, but the boys in that legendary southern rock band would agree: you should throw ice (or anything) at him. Extra points for hitting his girlfriend if he has one.
Photo from Candids Gone Wrong
4. Ol’ Crazy Coot
He sizes you up for a good long while as he plans his wobbly trajectory toward the inevitable Unending Conversation Of Ill-Informed Non Sequiturs with you. He looks sort of like an old stray dog and is clearly . . . well, clearly to me, harmless . . . but every cell in your body will object to him all the same. Once locked into an awkward conversation about The Eagles, he’ll pull names out of the hat like Dan Henley and Eric Clamton. These are fictional characters to you, but he believes that they were in The Eagles, and that also they wrote the greatest love song of all time, “Green-Eyed Lady.” Correcting him at any stage would make him angry, so please, feel free to school him in an area that he knows nothing about. Tell him about the time The Eagles toured with Van Bachman and recorded backing vocals for the first rap song. Then segue into a detailed description of what you plan to do with shadow puppets and his favorite Eagles songs. Excuse yourself to get a drink and never return, confident that you have played the player.
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6 Responses to “Top Five Inebriated Concertgoers And How To Deal With Them”
May 31st, 2009 at 8:24 am
hahahaha, I loved this!
“Master of Puppets”
June 1st, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Sometimes I’ve been #1 (and I don’t even drink!), but that’s usually because either a) I _hate_ the band playing –usually an opener, otherwise I’d just split — and want to see how much more torture is on the docket… or b) I’m really into the band and wanna see what’s up next. However in both cases (unless A really REALLY sucks and can’t even tear my focus away), I will just glance at the setlist and go back to watchin’ the band.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Hahaha… cool piece, Adam! Somewhat related to #1 is the annoying person who won’t quit yelling for the big hit. For example, I was at a Steve Earle show once and not 10 minutes into the show, some nimrod started yelling “Copperhead Road!” and kept doing so after every song.
Finally Earle said, “Jesus Christ man – do you REALLY think I’m NOT going to play that song? Chill the fuck out!” We nearly peed ourselves laughing.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Lee, that is hilarious! I wish more musicians were as cool as Steve Earle.
LLM
June 4th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Recent offenders:
– My brother and I were about five rows back at a Franz Ferdinand show, and between bands, he squatted down ’cause he’s super tall and his legs hurt. This is when some red-headed chick decided to squeeze in the two atoms, as you put it, between us and the row in front of us to talk to her friend several people to my right. In doing so, she put her crotch RIGHT IN FRONT of my brother’s face. Like, it was RIGHT THERE. He didn’t seem to know what to do. I laughed in her face, though. Thankfully, she moved away before the show started. Except then, ya’ know, everyone else in the place decided to squeeze in by that point, and I had “that guy” screaming the lyrics and pumping his fists behind me. And then a fight broke out during “Michael.”
– My friends and I were seeing OK Go in Baltimore, when this INCREDIBLY drunk girl (seriously, I don’t know how she was standing) and her equally drunk boyfriend, decided to shove their way to the front, whereupon they began booty dancing hardcore. During the show, she began yelling, “F*CK PHILADELPHIA WELCOME TO TOWSON!” at every opportunity, which only made the band look at her like she was nuts and try to ignore her.
The best part, though, were the two twelve-year-olds and their mom standing next to me, because the mom clearly didn’t know what to do, and the one girl kept texting her friend saying, “They’re like practicing sex!” Which is HILARIOUS because only a twelve-year-old would say that.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Katy:
There was one of those kinds of incredibly drunk girls at a Sebastien Grainger show in Toronto this spring. She was twitching and blinking and weaving and I thought she was either going to puke or fall over. And she was still guzzling a beer! When we made eye contact with the other people around us and gave them the silent “what the fuck?” look, we all started laughing. Thankfully the girl left before the show started.
As for the Philadelphia screamer, I have seen such things before. In my case it was at a White Stripes show and the female in question was yelling, “MEG WHITE I WANT TO FUCK YOU!” It was horrifying.
The last bit about “practicing sex” makes me think of that episode of Freaks and Geeks when Millie says that Kim “fornicates it.” HAHA!
Thanks for sharing!
LLM
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