Wait, what's that? You haven't been waiting all year for this? Well... WHY NOT?
Ohhh, I see. You remember that annoying guy who lived across Semple Street from you sophomore year and used to pull out his acoustic guitar and play "Crash" on his porch every September night to impress the drunk freshman girls, huh? Yeah, I remember him too. He was a real douche, wasn't he?
You know what the GOOD news is? Not every one of us who obssesses over the yearly DMB show is like that guy. Some of us have actually made it through entire Dave shows without puking on ourselves, and some of us have even gone on successful dates without ending the night trying to seduce someone to a soundtrack of "Say Goodbye." Really. We exist.
I say all of this with a smile, because this is kind of the line of reasoning I had to use when I took my husband to his first DMB show back in 2006. He was not my husband then, and we'd actually only been dating for a few weeks at that point. But it was DMB time, and both of us kind of already knew we were sort of pretty serious about each other, and in my mind, there was one further step to seal the deal: he had to come see Dave with me and my goofy group of fabulous friends from high school.
And he was reeeeeeally hesitant at first. He gave me the whole, 'oh, the only people who listen to DMB are frat boys and drunk underage Pitt girls' line that so many people give. And then I said, "Well, there are two shows, and Saturday is sold out, so you only have to make it through Friday's show, and I already got you a ticket, so that's that."
He spent about an hour Saturday night wandering the lot, searching for a person selling an extra (he found one, and we have a picture of his triumphant return to our space in the lot).
So you can be a convert. Let me sell you on this band - on this fantastic, inspiring, dance-spurring band. Forget everything you thought you knew about the band from the guy with the backwards hat downstairs from you in Towers. Give them a shot and keep your mind open.
I've been seeing this band for ten years now - my first show was at Three Rivers Stadium in 2000. It poured down rain most of the set, and the fireworks they set off during "Two Step" were mostly obscured by the overhang several rows above us (which naturally was no help against the rain), but I started to get an idea of just how amazing this band was.
By my second show in the summer of 2002, I was hooked. Since then, we've seen the band in Virginia, Ohio, Boston, and Los Angeles. We've done road trips and crashed on people's couches, and we've discovered fantastic random truck stops in the middle of the night. We have sat for more hours in parking lots post show, and burned more hot dogs on carside grills than we would ever have done otherwise, if not for this band. And it is always SO worth it.
We had the pleasure of seeing Dave Matthews last Friday night in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. We try to make it to the show there at the Blossom Music Center every year if we can. The venue is great, even though the parking lot is literally a cow pasture (the only identifying landmark is an abandoned oil well between two sections of pasture), and the walk from your car to the show is about a mile, give or take. This was my third show at Blossom, and not only was it the best of those, I think it truly ranks in the top three all-time Dave shows.
(That's another thing about us crazy Dave fans - we keep track of number of shows, quality of shows, times we've heard certain songs - or not heard those songs. Lot conversation is pretty interesting.)
First and foremost, every member of the band is an incredible musician. They aren't just guys getting together to play some easy chords on the weekends. This is their life, and you can see it in their faces. Never before have I seen band members so visibly love what they're doing. You know that big, goofy Hines Ward grin when he catches a touchdown pass? That's Carter Beauford's face during a drum solo, or Dave's face when he's dancing all crazy in front of a sell-out crowd.
Second of all, their chemistry is unbeatable. There are songs that they stretch out with solos and improvisation, and it all just feels so natural, like the song had always had these extended bits to it.
And then there's the feeling of community. When they started "Grace is Gone" at Blossom (a sad, drinking-away-your-lost-love song, as many of theirs are), the entire crowd sang along, and I just got chills being a part of that incredible monster. Or the moment in "Ants Marching," when the lyrics are, "People in every direction," and Dave turns the microphone to the audience as the crew illuminates the pavilion seats and spins the cameras to us.
The band has already announced that they're taking 2011 off for a much-needed break, and it seemed in Ohio that maybe in part because of this, they were pulling out all the stops. They played an old crowd favorite, "Recently," that I've only heard at three shows. And best of all, they played "So Right" for an encore, another rare treat that makes you absolutely unable to stop dancing. And did I mention how amazing the stuff off the newest album is live, like "Shake Me Like a Monkey?"
So give it a try. I think there are still tickets left, and the 96.1 KissFM Freak Show Morning Show are giving away tickets every day this week at 8am. Even if it sells out and you can't make it, the show is down at PNC Park, so you could sit out on the side of the Allegheny River and probably hear the music just as well.
As for our little group of die-hard DMB fans, we will be parked directly in front of the stage, hoping to either be close enough to touch Boyd's knee, or fortunate enough to catch one of Carter's sticks at the end of the night.
Oh, and I'm holding out hope that on this, my sixteenth show, they'll finally play "Lover Lay Down." Please. Pretty, pretty please. I have waited long enough :)
(The "So Right" encore at Blossom.)
