Dinner and a Concert (or, Our breath was apparently not bad enough to repel Aunt Ida)

Last night I went to see the Dixie Chicks with my college roommate, Rita.  Before the show, we went for dinner at a Greek restaurant.  I told Rita that Greek was very garlicky, if you got the wrong (or right, I suppose) thing.  We both ordered gryos, which aren't so bad as they are, except for the exceptionally delicious tzatsiki that you simply must use if you order gyros.  Now, I understood that my breath would be toxic, and that even worse, any burp would be beyond disgusting.  I warned Rita, I really did.  We stopped at Walgreens for some gum (and mints, in my case), and as Rita was bending down to grab the pack of gum she wanted, she burped.  And then a sound like a cross between a grunt, an exhalation of pain, and a moan of disgust came out of her mouth.  Yep, it's that gross, I said.  And laughed hysterically.  (Last time I went for Greek, I went with my sis, and we ordered Skordalia, which is basically garlicky pureed potatoes.  I think we nearly killed the people next to us at the play we went to afterwards.)

Anyway, after the gum stop, and Rita's realization that the burps were going to be far more disgusting and smelly than she had thought, we headed over to the concert.  I've never seen a "country" concert (though are the Dixie Chicks country or really just pop?  I vote pop, though I think the audience might disagree), so I was a little nervous.  It turns out I had nothing to be nervous about.  The crowd was pretty mixed--cowgirl types and older couples and young-ish women like Rita and I.  And occassionally, a country bumpkin or two.  In fact, there was a country bumpkin next to me, that I swear to God had never been to a concert before.  Her clapping was VIOLENT.  I feared for my face, as the way she was clapping brought the back of her hand FAR too close to it.  And it can't have felt good, right?  It must have hurt, clapping so violently.  Rita and I nicknamed her Aunt Ida, because, well, she seemed like she was fresh off the farm. 

And then!  During the most boring song of the show--the drippy love lullaby thing on the new album--Rita and I were exchanging some thoughts about the show, and Aunt Ida angrily tapped my on the arm and said, "SHHHHHHH."  I mean, good god.  It wasn't like we were gossiping.  We were sharing thoughts about the show.  And the song was seriously boring.  I said, "Oh-kaaay." and shut up, but then I hated Aunt Ida and spent the entire rest of the show thinking of some sort of revenge.  It occurred to me that breathing on her might be the best revenge ever, but I couldn't see how to make that work without looking like a nutjob.  Regardless, I never did get any revenge.  I just spent the rest of the time fuming and making fun of Aunt Ida with Rita. 

As for the actual show, the Dixie Chicks were very good.  Natalie Maines' voice is better than you would think it would be.  And they are very adept musicians, even if they did have forty million people playing instruments behind them (all men, interestingly, except for the two other string musicians).  I have a hard time resisting songs with strings included in them, so I'm pretty much a sucker for the Dixie Chicks in general, but I have to admit that hearing their version of "Top of the World" live gave me chills.  It's one of my favorite songs they do (it's a Patty Griffin song), and I was so glad I got to hear it.  We also heard "Landslide", which in general I find unobjectionable on the album, but was sort of lackluster live.  It's not that it was bad, but it felt sort of like the girls were just going through the motions on it.  The two highest energy songs that we saw (okay, I have to say, I left before the encore.  I mean, I left during "Wide Open Spaces" because a) I'd heard "Top of the World" and b) I was tired and c) Rita seemed ready to go.) were "Not Ready to Make Nice" and that annoying "Earl" song.  The crowd seemed to really love both those numbers, and the songs sounded pretty damn good.  "Make Nice" is a good sort of anthem for the Dixie Chicks, I guess.

I have to admit, that sitting there, I couldn't help thinking about the kerfluffle that has kept the Chicks in the news for the past few years.  I felt pretty damn good supporting them, because frankly, they are only so reviled because they're women, and they dared to say something that might have been a little too liberal for the conservative country crowd.  I really do think that at least some of the scorn heaped upon them is simply due to the fact that they are women, who are only supposed to look pretty on stage and sing pretty and keep their pretty little mouths shut otherwise.  Which is disgusting and sad, and if there's any sort of good to this whole thing, it's that the Chicks can still fill arenas--the UC was pretty frigging full--and fill them with people who obviously adore them, like overzealous Aunt Ida next to me.

Anyway.  I'm not sorry I went, and I'd probably go see them again, if the opportunity presented itself.

Comments

[comebacknikki]

Ahhh, good ole concert nazis. I had someone like that next to me at an Ani concert - she freaked b/c I said that I wasn't as impressed w/Ani live as I thought I would be (to M). She freaked and started shushing me b/c "Ani might hear." Freak.