peevish mama

Photo by B Fresh Photography

Dash and I took Supergirl and Saint James to see the Black Eyed Peas last night and hooooooo Fergie, patron saintess of bootilicious booty-antics, was it ever a spectacle! I realize that every shred of live music we go see ends up on this blog drenched in hyperbole with a cherry on top.* I was trying to describe the experience to Lady Shutterbug this afternoon and I prefaced my panting phone swoon with the excuse that I’m a junky for anything that gets my adrenaline pumping. I think I excused myself because I’m starting to feel a tad abashed about falling head over heels for every single damn concert I go to. I’m a total lightweight, a rube, an easy mark and I would be a terrible music reviewer – Aack! Luuuuuuved these mo fos! They played coconuts and whistled but ohmyGod they rocked me Amadeus! Wooohoo! Woooo! Ya, Rolling Stone, you can just forget about hiring Peevish Mama. I suck at music reviews because nothing gets me all jacked up like loud live music and any shred of objectivity and respectability go right out the window as soon as those first strains go in my ears and down through my guts to my toes and back up again and settle in my ass, which remains a fiery bucking blur for the duration and usually the better part of the next day too.** That’s not really true, but it’s sort of true. It’s a bit of a curse, really. That’s not really true either. It’s a gift. Well, that’s not true. Some might say it’s a weapon. Yes, that’s it, my ass is a double edged sword – and no one, not even I, knows for sure whether it is to be used for good or evil. The base in my chest (Nanook calls it the defib – as in the doctor pulls the stethescope from his ears and gravely intones: “M’am, I’m afraid you have hip hop heart”), the crush of bodies, the flying sweat, the screaming and the music, the sweet, sweet music, go straight to the pleasure center in my brain and for those hours, there is no where, NO WHERE on earth I would rather be.

So all of this is just crazy talk for: take everything I say with a grain (or five hundred) of salt. Except that I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that the show was over the top, off the hook and full-on proof that the Peas are SUPERSTAHS for a reason. Dash and I don’t really like to see bands in large venues anymore, but anything we missed in terms of immediacy and flying spittle, was more than compensated for with visual and auditory bling and general high style technical wizardry. There were lasers and robots and huge flashing screens and shiny costumes and synthesized voices and break dancing and such a sustained eruption of confetti that the entire Xcel Energy Center looked pixilated. At one point, Taboo was singing and flying over the crowd on a motorcycle and I questioned whether it had been wise to expose Saint James’ and Supergirl to this as their first concert experience; what could possibly measure up?

Apropos of the costumes, I would like someone to follow me around with Fergie’s wind machine. And a few of her futuristic bodysuits would be nice too. And if I could get those freaky android flygirls to dance around me all the time, well, I guess I would like that quite a bit. She’s hot. And I hear from my friends who were down on the floor in the mad pulsing fray, that she had a wee bruise on her buttock. How sweet! How human of her! See, she may look like a sexy sci-fi space diva but she gets bruises on her ass just like the rest of us.

The Black Eyed Peas may be larger than life and everywhere you look, but the truth remains that they can still sing. And dance. Their music is nothing if not rumpshakin’ musical crack. It’s catchy as shit. Wil.i.am busted out a little DJ set in the middle of the show which was truly one of the most enjoyable 20 minutes in my life, and as he rapped and scatted over Nirvana, the Chili Peppers, Estelle, Journey, The Eurythmics and more, I’m not gonna lie and say I wasn’t dying, DYING to be down in the mosh pit with Crackerjack, Nanook and the hubbies.

But a glance to my left at Saint James, his baseball hat on sideways, pumping his little fist in the air, drinking in every second and not missing a beat, more than made up for my stadium seats. He was ripe for the experience. He swayed his arms with the crowd, yelled, danced, clapped, held up my lit phone, and basically took in the concert with touching wide-eyed sincerity and genuine excitement. Dash said he had as much fun watching Saint James watch the concert, as actually watching the concert.*** And I couldn’t agree more. Your first concert is a big deal, something you never forget and I was hell bent on being privy to theirs. Happily, it was a great one . . . but, then again, aren’t they all? What was your first concert? Tell me about it in the comments section.****

*Case in point, a few months ago Dash and I went to see Zero 7 with Tartare when she was in for a visit and despite fond memories of Epic from my crazy Snoop Dog night with Crackerjack, the show was kind of drag – experimental, dissonant and a bit bizarre (with fleeting moments of total coolness). One of the female lead singers was totally cheesing me out too – she was trying way too hard to be the husky voiced sexy nature girl and I wasn’t buying her hair-in-the-face crooning. I spent the whole time muttering under my breath and quashing the impulse to flick a hair elastic at her stupid freckle face so she could put her mane up. In fact she irritated me so much that I ended up swooning, scaring the bejeezus out of Tartare when I actually slid onto the floor in the public restroom – previously unheard behavior for a germaphobe like myself. So, ya, I hated the band and then I fainted. Can you blame me for not blogging about that? But I had fully intended to, because I had a two lucid thoughts worth exploring when I was on the bathroom floor of Epic: 1. Maybe my meat-eating ways were poisoning me and causing me to pass out at concerts; and 2. It was unbecoming and unseemly for a mother of three to be on the floor of a nightclub bathroom, whatever the reason.  

**Sometimes I really can’t seem to stop dancing and I start to wonder whether I might have a tumor.

***We bought tix for the BEP for Saint James and Supegirl as their main Christmas gift and I cannot say enough about the shift away from the material gift toward the experiential gift. I wasn’t sure at first, but now I am. On Christmas Eve they opened up cans of black eyed peas that I had wrapped and put under the tree while Dash queued up I Gotta Feeling and they’ve had all these months to look forward to the big night. The anticipation, the delayed gratification and mostly, the memories are so much better than another lego set. 

**** Query whether it is perhaps time to reign it in when one’s blog post has footnotes.