Since we knew things were going to get crowded, we decided to do a late lunch up in Columbia before heading over to the pavilion. The mall was nearby and they have a few good restaurants there, it was just a matter of finding the right one. I had never been to the Cheesecake Factory before (which is apparently a sin according to her and DB) so we went there for lunch. I got the Thai chicken pasta there, which was done up in a really tasty peanut sauce. I must learn how to make peanut sauce because I think it would end up being a really kick ass thing to make with some of my stir fry's. CA got the bang bang chicken and shrimp. Of course, both plates were so huge we couldn't finish it all (work lunch!!) unless we wanted absolutely no room for cheesecake. We both wanted to keep it simple since we didn't want something too heavy while rocking out later, so she went with a lemon raspberry cheesecake, and I went with key lime. I will definitely have to drop in at the place more often, even if it is just to buy a slice of cheesecake to take home.
We drove over to the pavilion and hung out in the parking lot for a while before heading into the concert area. Since I had never been there before, CA showed me around to the various places that were offered and also pointed out where the cleaner bathrooms were. We grabbed large drinks so that we could make sure to stay awake and headed down to the floor to catch the opening band, The Meat Puppets.
The Meat Puppets were good, though neither CA or I were familiar with them, so we didn't recognize any of their songs. Still, a good way to set the mood for later that night. They played for about half an hour before heading off-stage.
As the crew began to set up the stage for STP, I began to experiment a bit with my camera. One of the things that has made me crazy about my digital camera is that when trying to photograph things that can't use a flash, such as a concert or in front of glass, its full-auto mode sets the shutter speed way too slow and I end up with a lot of blurred pictures. It's really bad when I will go to something like a hockey game and out of the 50 pictures I take, 40 of them have to be rejected because they're blurry or considered too dark. I decided to try setting my camera to full manual and setting the shutter speed on my own. With a bit of experimentation I was able to come up with shutter speeds and F-stops that looked like they would work for when STP was up there.
So after another half an hour, STP finally came to the stage. The floor got crowded very quickly as more people pressed forward to get to the front of the stage to see folks. Since we were smart enough to get there early, we had an awesome view of the stage. As you will see from the pictures, we were good and close.
STP went through the catalog of their songs old and new, and it was a blast all around. Only one incident of someone hopping up onto the stage happened, and they were quickly removed. There was a guy next to us who must have been on something because he was really getting into the music, to the point where he tried early on to start a mosh pit but most of the people around him were not having it. BTW, what is with the women who were wearing dresses to the concert, especially being crowded onto the floor? Then there was the screamer in front of us, she had this high-pitched Xena warrior yell going on every time something would happen. If STP wasn't going to cost me my hearing, she definitely was.
So there were lots of good songs, a good performance, plenty of singing along, and going to manual pictures totally worked. I compared a few auto pictures to the ones I did manually, the manual ones were totally better. I had to do a lot less work in Photoshop to prepare them for uploading.
It was a concert that was totally worth attending. I see that the Killers are going to be there at the end of August, I should see if I can get tickets.
Since I am actually able to keep up this time, here are the pictures from the STP concert. Click below to see them all :-D
