Note: For people outside the range of the radio station 98 PXY, first off, you're lucky (tho I'm sure you have some local varient that's equally as..well..painful). Second off, well, it's a pop station. (Well, pop and what-passes-as-r&b, and rap, and whatever mindless tasteless garbage they deign worthy to broadcast to the masses.) They have an annual concert, the Summerjam, where they bring a buncha bands here to play, one after the other, at a day-long concert. Decent idea, but ah, well... read on.



While, alright, I admit, there were some good points to the thing (i.e. Evan and Jaron, and hearing the song that closed the Ewan McGregor movie "Trainspotting" over the stadium speakers), there were a lot more downsides.  Granted, I went primarily 'cos it was a free concert - I wouldn't have paid to go - and I never liked PXY much anyway.  But I went thinkin' it'd be mostly teenagers, some younger kids, all the boy-band fans, nothing too frightening.  Talk about a wake-up call... the following are my notes from the thing, written largely while sitting up in the grandstands, away from the majority of the insanity, added to a bit afterwards (and also rendered infinitely more legible by my having typed them):

    Scariness...potential prostitutes, frightening looking people, impenetrable claustrophobic crowds...than a fight breaks out, smell of beer in the air...people rush over to watch, a little girl, about ten or so, starts to run over, stopped by mom, "But mom, I wanted to watch!"!  Dodging people, avoiding beer stands, buy large popcorn $4, split the cost between us, walkin' back see cops takin' people out, the people swearin', people dodging them, scared, spilt beer on the floor...
    ...slut girls halter tops and thongs showing bump grind in the packed crowd, look in disgust on big drunk guys makin' a pass or looking...(though they're completely inviting the stare, begging for it...!)
    ...singers, three black girls, whine like spoiled 6-year olds, dress - or rather, don't - like street whores, sex-simulating to 6-year olds while talking like 6-year olds, canned computer backing track while extra dancers come on stage to distract from the lack of musical ability by feeding eyes.
    ...cigarette smoke mingles with spilt beer, headache...
    ...rap (Run DMC) startin' to sound good...
    ...armies of security march in formation before it's even started... I hate security
    ...a band (Run DMC, who I'd just started to kinda like) takin' advantage of their own fans, only autographing the $25 t-shirts they were selling, nothing else..... I love U2.

    I don't mean to sound bitter and cynical and world-weary at the ripe old age of 17, but come on.  There were little kids there!  It's a pop concert, a cheap production by a local radio station, in a city where we thought nothing ever happened, touted as a "big event" here, an'... it was a little scary.  It was worse than the U2 concert I'd gone to not even a week before, and while yeah, there were some obnoxious people there too, and while yeah, U2's obviously gonna draw a different sort of crowd than O-Town and 3LW... You'd figure U2'd draw an older crowd, and maybe more mature but they'd also be older an' there'd be more drinking etc., but there was more drinking and smoking at the Summerjam, and I wasn't even down in the main crowd much!  But it's like, we're standing in line outside, waiting to get in, and we see sophomores from our school standing there smoking.  I don't think I saw anyone smoking while we were in line for U2...  The bands themselves... I won't even try to compare to U2 'cos it'd be impossible, but I didn't expect them to come close.  While I didn't see much of Wyclef Jean, and didn't see any of O-Town, the two biggest acts, the rest...  Evan and Jaron were nice, just the two of them, each with a guitar, did a nice little acoustic set, and it was nice.  But a lot of the others... you've got the rigorous dance routine, back-up dancers, skimpy outfits, all this eye candy, and a computer backing tape.  No music.  Yeah, they might've been singing, but even that coulda been fake, couldn't really tell.  Yeah, I know, this's peoples' livelihood I'm tearin' on, this's what they do, there's fans of this stuff... but music can be so much more!!!!!  Music has the potential to...I don't know, anything, change your mind, you emotions, your life.  And the power's being abused.  Or wasted, rather.  So I'm probably echoing Bono now, but he's right, I'm not just blindly following my fav band, I've decided this on my own, too, though I'm glad my band agrees with me.  Summerjam coulda been a great thing, fans connecting with their bands, seeing them live and loving them all the more, it coulda been just, a celebration, of life, of music, just a fun time.  But it wasn't.  It let fans of music down.  (And while I personally don't think some of the performers deserve the title of musicians anyway, still, they coulda at least... I don't know, been a little less commercial? Tried a bit harder, put something into it, for music's sake?)

11.30.01 - P.S.: A friend just reminded me that there *was* another good part of the concert - Soul Decision, they were pretty good, too. (Just thought I'd do them justice.. *g*)