I've been meaning to blog about this for a while. Mike and I went to see several Tragically Hip shows back in April, and longtime readers of my blog will know they are one of my favorite bands AND I had the pleasure of working with them for a while too. This time around, I got to attend the shows as a fan and a friend of the band, which relieved a lot of the pressure on me. Pressure to deliver lots of press coverage for them (mostly self-imposed because I wanted to do right by my pals). It was rather glorious to just go and immerse myself in the shows.

Since we knew the NYC shows would be crazy busy, we decided that, in addition to those, we'd attend the Atlantic City and Philadelphia shows, both of which are not that far from us. Management got us all-access laminates, so we were covered for as many shows as we wanted to attend. We had to pick up tickets or special additional passes at some shows, including the Atlantic City show. We got special pink passes and we assumed they were for use after the show.

Well, we enjoyed a fab show, front row of the balcony. They even played the song I'd requested via email earlier that afternoon ("Pigeon Camera"), which was a wonderful surprise. We gathered at the side door to the backstage area after the show and waited for the tour manager to come out to take us backstage to say hello. Two other friends of the band's were with us (both of whom we've known for years).

When the tour manager didn't appear after we waited for a while, we decided to venture back on our own. Of course security stopped us. Remember that Mike and I were both wearing all-access laminates, so we showed those to him. He asked to see pink passes. We got them out. We had the wrong pink passes. He called his supervisor on the walkie talkie, and she finally came out. She looked at our all access passes (which should have gotten us anywhere we wanted to go) and asked for pink passes. We showed them to her and she said we had the wrong ones (uh, yeah, we already knew that). She asked who we knew. And we're both thinking, "Um, the whole band. The tour manager. The guitar tech. The bus driver. Their security guy. Their wives and kids. Some of their parents and siblings. Their last two managers and their current manager..." It would have been more accurate to ask who we DIDN'T know, actually.

She was only doing her job. I know that. But she said she was afraid she couldn't let us back without the right pink passes. WHAT? I asked her to speak to the tour manager. I said I didn't understand why all-access didn't mean all access. Apparently the venue has their own way of doing things, though.

Finally, the tour manager came out. She couldn't believe we'd been made to wait there all that time! Apparently, the box office had given us the wrong passes when we'd checked in. Security immediately took us to the VIP room with the other after show folks. Funny how things changed once we got the green light. We got to talk to several of the band members and we were quite comfortably hanging out when their security guy came over to us and whisper-whisper, hush-hush told us he needed to take us to the bus. The fans who were back in the VIP room (contest winners, I would guess) were a bit on the rowdy side and not all of the band was coming out. But they still wanted to see us. So we were escorted to the bus.

So we literally went from being not allowed to go backstage to sitting on their tour bus (not an uncommon place for us to be -- we've spent many an hour hanging with them there in the past), watching hockey and enjoying a rousing game of iPod wars. The iPod wars were conducted by three band members taking turns picking a song off of their iPods to play on the bus stereo -- the idea was to impress/thrill the listeners with their cool/awesome song picks. So it was like listening to a great radio station -- with songs jumping from Hunters and Collectors to Springsteen to the Hold Steady to Ricky Nelson... it was so much fun. Needless to say, we got home VERY late that night.

So that brings me to today's burning blog question: tell me about your coolest concert experience ever... your favorite live show, something that happened at a show, hearing your favorite song live, whatever it might be. I have a bunch:

1) U2 on the Unforgettable Fire tour... I was still in high school and I was BLOWN away. This may be the best concert I've ever been to. Or close to it.
2) Neil Finn recording his Sessions at West 54th TV special (the one you can see me in the audience on the DVD). It was such an intimate show and I had chills almost the whole time.
3) Standing side-stage at Woodstock '99 for a number of bands I love... The Tragically Hip being one of them.
4) Ringing in the new century with The Tragically Hip at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto.
5) The time that Matthew Sweet opened for Crowded House. Two of my favorite bands/performers on the same bill. Yowza.
6) Duran Duran on the Seven and the Ragged Tiger tour. I was 16 years old, and I had 8th row seats. I was in my glory.

I have a number of other shows that were just transcendent concert experiences: Price, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, the Secret Machines, Gomez... just the right mix of awesome music, great audience, great performances... the perfect alignment of all of the above.