Who: Hank Williams III • Beck
Beck. I've rather liked Beck since I first heard Loser 800 years ago, and I love him more each time he releases a new CD. So, when my friend Mike and I heard that he was coming to town, we decided to get tickets. Of course, my sister, Joanie, and her friend Katie couldn't make up their minds whether they wanted to go or not, so I didn't end up ordering tickets until two weeks before the concert. The thought of Row Y wasn't all that appealing, but hey, we were going to see Beck. Mike made fun of Katie for hours at school, since she isn't that much of a Beck fan. By the time the concert rolled around, both Joanie and Katie hated Mike with a passion. I've always found that ridiculing your friends is the best way to get ready to spend an entire night with them. So, the day of the concert, Mike went around telling everyone where we were going that night, like the excited little kid that he was. No one really seemed to care that much, though, of course. They all sang a little bit of Where It's At in an attempt to look knowledgeable, but it didn't work, naturally. On the way there, Mike informed me that Hank Williams III was opening for Beck, which seemed really amusing for some reason. On our way inside Vets', the little door guard asked to search my purse, which always freaks me out. He looked inside of it and told me that I wasn't allowed to take a camera inside. I informed him that it was a cell phone and allowed the pet lice I keep in my wallet to attack him. We got to Row Y, and there was a guy sitting in the very last seat. We asked him to get by, so he got up out of his chair, moved into the aisle, and held his hands up in disgust as we passed him, as if he didn't want us to touch him. I think he was gay, but that really has nothing to do with anything. When we got settled, Joanie and Katie decided that they needed to go explore, so Mike and I sat and watched all of the scary people who had come to see Beck. You expect the cowboys. You expect the college boys. You expect the girl wearing glittery wings. You expect the kids there just to impress their friends. You don't, however, expect all of the old people, and you certainly don't expect the lesbians. They were everywhere. A groups of girls came in that kind of caught our interest. Two of them were clean-cut, regular chicks, but then we saw the girl with blue-green hair & her neo-Nazi friend wearing a backward yellow visor-y thing. That's all I need to say about that. Then, of course, there were the girls with the flaming red & pink hair. They had made their own shirts with Beck lyrics on the back, but the whole obvious lesbian thing kind of ruined them for me. A couple of guys sat in between them, though, which kind of confused me. A guy with a cowboy hat came in, and at first I thought he was just another cowboy-wannabe, but he had these insane sideburns. They looked like he would have to take a lawnmower to them if he ever wanted to shave them off. Mike and I decided that they were definitely fake. Joanie and Katie came back, so I was asking them about going to the Lit concert sometime in March. I told them that I was surprised that I liked Lit, but I seem to be liking modern rock a lot right now. I said something about Marvelous 3, and Mike told me that he hated them. I asked if he had ever even heard the album, and he didn't answer, so I thought that it was an indication that he hadn't. I said something more about how he should hear it before he says stuff like that, so he had to put me in my place by telling me that he had, in fact, listened to Heath's Hey! Album in its entirety, and he still hated the band. I felt good about myself then, obviously. Mike had to go to the bathroom, so he got up and left. When he came back, he told me about some guy in the bathroom who had asked him for pot. He saw the guy in the audience and pointed him out to me. We laughed. Then, somehow, we got on the topic of the Dave Matthews Band, and Mike said that he was impressed that this girl from school who I always thought was a complete fake actually listens to CD101. I told him that I didn't believe him, and he got all mad at me, saying that I always doubt everything he says, and it makes him angry. So, things were obviously going very well. Luckily (well, I really don't know how lucky it was), shortly after that, Hank Williams III came out onstage. It was then that we realized how many people had come to see him. During most opening bands' sets, there's a little bit of clapping, maybe some cheering if the band's lucky. Well, people were going crazy out in the audience over Hank. It made no sense to me. Hank grabbed his acoustic guitar, and then all of the sudden, he started in on some sort of hard rock/country song. It was just weird. He's sitting up there in his cowboy hat, singing with his crazy country accent, while people in the audience are whooping and hollering along with his hard rock. His upright bass player was wearing leather pants, for God's sake! Mike and I just had to laugh. His songs all seemed to sound exactly alike, and I felt like he was just playing the same song over and over. I somehow didn't hate him when it was all said and done, though. It might have been the fact that the lyrics to one song were, "Gonna drink my beers and raise my steers." This was in the middle of a heavy metal-wannabe song, mind you. Gotta love that. So, when Hank was done, we sat around and waited. Lots of people got up and left, apparently only there to see Hank. If that doesn't freak you out, nothing will. Mike noticed a guy in the middle of the room who he thought he recognized. He finally decided that it was Beck's crazy guitar player, and I agreed, but there was no way to be sure. Finally, Beck came out onstage, and things began to look up. He was wearing a blue-ish-green stretchy shirt with brown-looking sparkly pants, since I know you were all dying to know what clothes he had on. He launched into Mixed Bizness right off, which was seriously the perfect way to open up the show. His dancers were absolutely wretched, though. They could sing and all, but I would think that you'd get a little more into the songs if you were onstage with Beck. When Beck got to the part of the song where he says, "And make all the lesbians scream", I think every chick in the place besides Joanie, Katie, and me screamed, which further confirmed my theory that all Beck fans are lesbians. (Yeah, so it makes no sense. I'm the one telling the story. Sit back and be quiet.) The chicks with the flaming hair in front of us were in full lesbian mode by that time, in case you were wondering. They had pushed the guys they were with out of the way, and they were all . . . okay, I don't want to talk about it. There was a whole lot of butt-shaking going on up onstage, and the keyboard player with the tights and cape on made me wish that I would have worn my superhero get-up. (Yeah, shut up. So I don't actually have any superhero duds. Did I just say duds?) He then started in on a couple of songs off of Midnite Vultures, one of them being Peaches and Cream. I had never heard the song, but I was completely mesmerized by it. Beck sounded so much like Prince. Now, I'm not a big Prince fan. I actually think he's pretty ridiculous. But somehow, after hearing Peaches, I felt like I had some kind of odd bond with Prince that made me want to like him. Beck played The New Pollution, Tropicalia, Jack-Ass, Cold Brains, and all of the other songs that I was waiting to hear. His whole rock star persona just made everything complete. I was really hoping for some of Beck's whole grabbing the tambourine, turning away from the audience, throwing hand holding the tambourine into air, and shaking around a lot routine, and I got what I wanted. It's amazing how something like that can make a totally unattractive man incredibly attractive. If I saw ordinary Beck Hansen on the street, I would probably ignore him. But when Beck is onstage dancing around, singing in that voice of his, I can't imagine anyone not wanting him. He did his tambourine thing after a couple of songs while the lights went out on the stage. He had this cool backdrop that must have had 8 million lights behind it, and when the lights onstage went out, all you could see were the lights behind the backdrop moving around. Light leaked thru the backdrop so that it ended up looking like static on a TV screen. I know that I didn't explain that well at all. Trust me; it rocked. Beck rocked. Beck is entertainment. As he closed out the show, we all cheered for hours, even though he was clearly coming back out for an encore. When someone did come back out, I thought it was Beck at first, but it proved to be some random guy. He walked over to a little DJ-ing table, & I saw that he was wearing one of the Where It's At shirts with the turntable on it. Then, I realized that the shirt actually had a pair of women's boobs on it. (Women's boobs? As opposed to men's boobs or something?) It sort of bothered me at first. Then, I started thinking how badly I wished that I had one like it. The guy was really great, and he made me want to dance, but I was with about the least dance-y people I know, so I just stood and watched. (Wait. Mike is an extremely dance-y person, just so you know, but I don't think he was in the mood that night. Joanie and I tried to do a little dancing in the middle of the concert, but Katie wouldn't allow us to look like lesbians, so Joanie was calm for the rest of the night, too.) After the DJ was done, Beck and his band came back out and did a couple of songs that I didn't know, which kind of disappointed me but also made me want to go get the CDs that I don't have. As he ended his encore with Deadweight, people started coming out onstage wearing hockey gear. It was the weirdest thing. One minute, they're wearing psychedelic pants, the next they've got on hockey masks. Then, of course, there were the guys roaming around in Halloween-ish costumes. They would come to the front of the stage, stand for a while, and then just leave. So odd. Beck walked off stage at some point during this, but I wasn't really paying a whole lot of attention to him, so I can't tell when it happened. Soon, the band started filtering off into the wings. As the last one was wandering around drunkenly, something started being lowered from the ceiling. It was a bed. There was a bed coming down from the ceiling very slowly. It was covered in a red satin sheet. I had great hopes for what was in store. I imagined that it was hollow inside and that Beck would jump out of it to do another song. I could see the band running back out onto it to have a mass orgy. I could have never guessed what would actually happen, though.
Nothing.
That's what happened. Absolutely nothing. As soon as the bed hit the stage, the house lights came on, and the bed was raised back up to the ceiling. The strange thing was, no one even seemed surprised. The people around us just gathered their things and headed for the exit. I looked at Mike. He was reacting the same way I was, but everyone else . . . It was like they had been to a hundred concerts where a bed dropped from the ceiling for no apparent reason. Joanie, Katie, Mike, and I just picked up our coats after a while, and without a word, we left the room. Once outside with the mob, I felt like asking them all how they could just accept the fact that that had just happened, but they were all just walking toward the outside in a daze. I accidentally rubbed up against some guy, and since we were both wearing leather, we made a little squeaking sound. I don't just squeak with anyone, so I figured that I could ask him. I looked over at him, but he was just staring straight ahead as if he was the only one in the hallway. So weird. Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe the whole bed situation was still getting to me. I kept losing my group, so Mike kept turning around to look for me. That made me feel a little better among all of the scary cowboys. We finally escaped the building, but the night wasn't over yet. By the time we got to Mike's car, a huge line of vehicles waiting to leave had formed. While we sat wasting gas, a guy chased another guy around a random trailer sitting on the edge of the lot. Mike assumed that they were having sex behind it. They emerged a minute later, and one of the guys walked into a nearby Port-a-Potty. Think what you will about that. A car pulled in front of us, and Mike's headlights shined into the side of the car. A guy in the back seat looked at us. He was wearing two watches. Mike pulled down his visor so that the two-watched man couldn't see him. We sat there for years, just watching the two-watched man and singing along to Toad the Wet Sprocket. As we got moving, a boy in an orange vest pointed to the car in front of us with his glow stick. We were eternally grateful for his help, of course. Who would have thought that we were supposed to follow the line of cars waiting to leave? Thank the Lord for the hired help, I always say. (Boy in the Orange Vest, if you're reading this, I'm not being sarcastic in any way. Whatever they're paying you, you deserve a raise for your outstanding work. Trust me.) Finally, after years of sitting, we pulled out of the parking lot. At a traffic light just outside, we were stopped beside a car with its top down. It was cold. The people inside were dancing around to keep warm. I said that I wished I was in the car, because they looked like they were having fun. Then, I realized that it was cold. I called them idiots. I told Mike that I want to go see Switchfoot later on in the year. He said, "I don't think you do." It was a good night.
Where: Veterans' Memorial • Columbus, Ohio
When: February 1st, 2000