You know why so many people (dare I say, "we all"??) ended up regressing and acting not unlike bored, frustrated little children at some point in 2020?
Because we were getting tired of hearing, "No, you can't do that."
Kids can't go to school in person anymore? OK. Personally, no big deal for me. What a great time to be parents of a college-aged child who was living on his own (well, in a duplex with his friends, but fully responsible for his own actions)!
Can't go to work in person anymore? I believe I covered this a few days ago, but basically, BUMMER! In my case, at my job, we technically had the ability to work from home in the before days. The pieces were there, but they were covered in layers of dust, pushed under the bed, and never really talked about. Well, suddenly they were pulled out of storage, tuned up, accessorized, and thrown into the limelight. Ah, the joys of being an essential worker. :) And for my hubby, too -- he's also an essential worker. The world can't function without plumbing. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the work-from-home option, so his work life hasn't even changed.
Then it got a little more involved. Can't go out to eat anymore? That's OK, we go out to eat too often anyway! Since the house came with a kitchen and all, we should really spend more time using it. Or, if you're like us, just order take-out from your favorite local restaurants; they will need the business since they can't have customers dining in right now, and it's a win-win because we still don't have to cook. So the food won't be as hot as it would be if we were eating at the restaurant, and we'll have to clean up after ourselves. It's still kind of fun!
Can't have public gatherings anymore -- so, no going to church? That really didn't affect our congregation that much, because our Pastor doesn't let anything hold him down. That first Sunday, he was out on a small little trailer at the front of the parking lot with a Mr. Microphone (not really but same idea), while we sat in our cars facing him with our radios tuned to FM 97.9 or whatever it was. He doesn't stand on a small little trailer anymore -- he now has what we affectionately call the Lutheran Limo: a custom-built large stage with a railing on the back of a flatbed truck that's enclosed with plexiglass and has it's own heater. You can see it on FB Live every Sunday morning! It's also been seen at several local events (I know it went caroling at the local nursing homes for Christmas). My point being that we still have church every week, we just meet in the parking lot and stay in our vehicles. I bring the dog with. It's all good.
You get the point here. If you're reading this, you've lived through it, too. All the things we used to do, we were told we couldn't do anymore. First it was normal, daily things like going to school, going to work, going to church, going out to eat, going shopping. Then we were advised not to get together for family events -- I remember when we cancelled our Easter family gathering. I was honestly kind of glad because it was nice to have a break and just stay home for a change, and not have to party-clean the house.
But then, events started being cancelled. Which normally wouldn't affect me greatly either, because I'm pretty serious about my homebody status, but in the back of my mind -- OK, I can't lie, in the very front of my mind was 4 little pieces of cardstock that meant the world to me. This requires a little backstory.
Short story long, a-ha has been my favorite band since, like, forever. If "forever" = probably 1985 (but definitely by 1986 because that was the year I got their second album, Scoundrel Days, for Christmas). Most unfortunately for me, their one big hit in the U.S. was Take On Me, and as far as most Americans are concerned, a-ha fell off the face of the planet after that. 😞😞😞 By the time their third album, Stay on These Roads, was released in 1988, I had moved on to high school and hair bands. I remember seeing Stay on These Roads on vinyl at Title Wave around about that time, and I wanted to buy it, but I had money earmarked for something else instead and couldn't afford both. So I put SOTR back.
Here I am, all out of chronological order already. Somewhere in there (hold on, gotta fire up Google for this one)...on September 24, 1986, to be specific, I went to my very first concert: a-ha at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium in St. Paul, Minnesota, on their 1986-87 World Tour. Hold on, this is all relevant, mostly. So that was my first concert. My sister took me. I don't remember much, other than we were on the upper level, right on the railing, and there was a lot and I mean a LOT of screaming going on, and when they played The Blue Sky a clip of a blue sky with white clouds rolling by was showing on the backdrop (how could anyone forget that, right!?). Less than a year later, my sister's high school graduation commencement ceremony was in that same auditorium, and in my mind, I was taken back to that magical night.
Oh, who am I kidding?! It's St. Paul, I was probably back in the Roy Wilkins Auditorium much sooner than that for some reason or another, and can't tell you how many times I've been there since. (But for sure I wasn't there in 2020.) But a-ha never returned.
My soliloquial love for them never really went away, though. It's just that, I had no idea they were still making music because there was no internet back then and I had no way of knowing what was going on across the pond. But then, around 2001, I found them again. This time I had the internet, and apparently some time on my hands (remember dial-up?) and apparently a little disposable income as well, because I caught myself up by buying all the CD's I was missing at once.
And this I do remember was in 2001, because two of the CD's have stickers on them that say "IMPORTED FROM HOLLAND 09/11/2001". Which just occurred to me probably means November 9th, not September 11th. Either way, the date is easy for me to remember.
So that's the wordy way of saying I started liking them when they first came out, lost touch and interest for a while, and got back into them again as an adult. I'm going to finish this up soon because it's taken me like three days to write this so far, and I need to work on that. I hate having "draft" blog entries sitting out there, waiting to be finished.
By the time I got into them again and realized they were still alive and well and putting out music and doing concerts, just not in this country, I also became sad because I really wanted to see them in concert again. Fast-forward to 2010 (or it could have been 2009; again, I don't remember these things exactly) and imagine my excitement when I found out a-ha were going to be playing in the United States again!
Now, I'm going to try really hard not to go off on a tangent here, but that was a rough time of my life. I can sum it up in two words: nursing school. Never in my life was there a better time for something good to happen, but I was too exhausted and worn down to appreciate anything. Nor could I spare the time and expense to travel to either New York or Los Angeles to see them. No, it was good news but the entirely wrong time. But then...they announced a show in...CHICAGO!! It wasn't St. Paul, or even Minneapolis, but it was the Midwest and it was right after the semester ended, and gosh-darn it, I was going to be there!!!
Short story long...I was. We all were -- the hubby and the boy and I. I could write for three days about that whole thing, but the point is, I thought I'd never see them in concert again, and I did see them in concert again. Very close. We were like three rows of people away from the stage. I have a ton of awesome pictures and I could even see the veins in Morten Harket's hands 😍. May 13, 2010: the Ending on a High Note tour. If you're friends with me on FB, you can see the pics here.
Since it was supposed to be their last tour, I thought that was the last time I'd get to see them. But...fast-forward to 2019 (or maybe it was 2018...) when I found out they were going to be touring the world again. "One last time." The world also includes the United States, right? Sometimes? Well, this time, nothing was going to hold me back! The hubby and I had long ago already decided that if they did ever come back to the U.S., we'd absolutely travel to New York or L.A. or Bumfuckegypt. Being an adult has it's perks sometimes. ;) And now, again thanks to the internet, and lots of practice, I'm actually kind of good at getting decent concert tickets. So we waited...and waited...and waited...and the day the tickets for their L.A. concert(s) went on sale, I bought tickets to not one but BOTH shows! (And then they opened the third show and I'm still kind of kicking myself for not getting tickets to that one as well...)
So there you go. I had the tickets. In time we made the plane reservations, the hotel reservations, secured the PTO, all that fun stuff. Nothing. NOTHING. Was going to stop me from seeing a-ha again.
And then 2020 said..."hold my beer".
And that is the tale of my saddest non-event of 2020.
2020 was going to be Concert Year for us. We also ended up getting tickets to see my other 2 favorite bands -- Motley Crue (with Def Leppard, Joan Jett, and Poison; none of which are my favorite bands but eh, whatever) and the Barenaked Ladies (minus Steven Page but eh). But of course, those ended up getting cancelled, sorry "rescheduled" as well.
So now I have tickets for two a-ha concerts that say they were in September 2020 but have been rescheduled to May 2021 but rumor has it will be postponed again to 2022. So stay tuned, kids! Who knows what's going to happen next. I also have two tickets to the Crue (etc.) concert, which I think was rescheduled for June? 2021. And the BNL concert was also rescheduled, but then Ticketmaster refunded our money, so I'm not sure what's going on there.
That's a good line to end this with, as it came up so often it 2020: "I'm not sure what's going on there."
No comments:
Post a Comment