First, Adam Duritz from Counting Crows came out and introduced Sara Bareilles, which I thought was insanely cool. I like famous people who exhibit a little humility, and he did just that. He was very appreciative of Sara for opening for them and I admire him even more for being so gracious. (Appreciation and respect go a long way with me.) Below is a picture of Adam when he came out to announce Sara. Doesn't he look happy? (Also, Chris took all of the pictures that I'm posting today. He did a super job! He's a wonderful photographer!)
Sara was excellent. I don't typically like female artists. I don't have anything against them, they just don't appeal to me. But Sara is really talented and her songwriting is amazing. I'm really glad we got to see her!
I've liked Maroon 5 for a long time, although I haven't listened to them much lately, except for that one song that they do with Rihanna, which is on the radio all of the time. I wasn't quite sure what to expect of them in concert, but I was pleasantly surprised. They were really, really good! Very talented and energetic. Adam Levine never stopped moving.
Finally, Counting Crows was up. They were also very good. They seemed peppier last night than they usually are, which was a pleasant surprise for me. They're normally so mopey, and I get kind of tired of that sometimes.
We left the show early in an attempt to beat traffic. If you've ever gone to a concert at Darien Lake, you know that traffic is a nightmare!!! There's one lane to take cars to the road, and there's a big sign that tells all traffic to turn left. Well, several cars turned right, but we turned left like we're supposed to do, and it took us all over God's country. I always feel like we're turning in the wrong direction, but it gets us where we need to go. The road loops you around and you pass in front of the amusement park. Wellll, this really sucked--we got stopped at an intersection (with a line of other traffic that followed directions), and they let about 50 cars who DIDN'T follow directions turn in front of us. So it took us half an hour just to get to the thruway, all because of the idiot Genesee County Sheriffs, who let all of the traffic turn in front of us. I was so ticked! And poor Chris...he had to go to work today, and he still had to get up at 5:30 this morning, even though we didn't get home until after midnight.
Ok, that's my rant, and now I'm done.
Actually, no I'm not. I have one more thing...
This is a good story with a bad ending. Counting Crows and Maroon 5 are involved in a group called Reverb. The group is aimed at decreasing emissions, reusing, recycling, etc... among musicians and their fans. It was started by Guster musician Adam Gardner and his wife Lauren Sullivan. (PS-I love Guster :) They have a tent at the concerts called "Eco-Village," which is a very very cool idea (IMHO), but I think they fell short a little bit. First of all, the Eco-Village consisted of one tent (well, maybe it was actually two of those little 10'x10' pop up tents side by side) with a table, and on that table they had an autographed guitar and a few solar bags (ok, so I will admit that the bags were cool and could see myself carrying one, but that shouldn't surprise anyone). They had a few leaflets (printed on glossy paper-come on people!), and that was about it. Now, I approached the table because I'm interested in that kind of stuff, but if I were someone who didn't give a flip about the environment, I probably wouldn't have even noticed the table. So I signed up to volunteer at other shows.
Then I was let down again after the show. Chris and I took bottles of Poland Spring water into the show with us because you're only allowed to take sealed bottles into the venue. Normally we don't go anywhere without our Nalgene bottles, but I'm sure we wouldn't have gotten into the show with them. When we left the show, we grabbed our one empty bottle, our full bottle, and another bottle that had rolled down by our feet. I planned on recycling the two empties at the Eco Village, but guess what...the tent and all of the recycling bins were GONE! Grrrr! I wasn't all that upset about having to carry our own water bottles back to the car with us, but I was also carrying some stranger's water bottle. And despite that, I would NOT throw the bottle in the garbage. So the stranger's bottle came home with us and is now in our recycling bin.
So a quick review of my thoughts--I like the idea of Reverb, and I think they're on the right track, but they really need to set a better example, and get volunteers who care about what they're doing. (However, on the other hand, I can understand that volunteers wouldn't want to stay too long after the show, because they wouldn't get out of the venue until the next morning with how horrible traffic is. But that's just at Darien Lake...I've never seen traffic so bad as at a concert there.)
I really need to just stop writing...if I keep trying to clarify my thoughts, I could go on forever...
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