I got in line to be admitted to the park at noon. My friends were all scattered in other lines; there were several places of admission. I was at the corner of Arlington and Beacon Streets at the bottom of a footbridge that takes pedestrians over the busy Storrow Drive. When we finally began to move, I saw the extraordinary security precautions the organizers and law enforcement were taking to keep everyone safe. We were searched with wands and I had the most thorough bag check I've ever been subjected to. In the wake of the Marathon day bombing, these are changes which were inevitable.
I quickly find my friends near the front of the park, quite close to the stage but not front row. We're next to the fence that separates the regular crowd from those who won VIP seats--they have chairs. We are standing. It's about 1:00 and we'll be standing here until the concert starts at 4:25. After that we'll be dancing. We pass the time catching up. I've not seen one of these ladies in nearly a year. Two others had come down from Boston to Yonkers a couple of weeks ago. Two of us were together at Virginia Beach too. We get around! There may have also been a moment when four grown women hollered at drummer Ian O'Neill while he was out on stage during soundcheck. It was some pretty loud yelling which attracted attention from everyone but the one whose attention was being sought.
Following Alex's performance, an interview that radio personality Erin O'Malley had done with Gavin backstage was aired on the jumbotron near the stage. She's apparently a huge fan and was the first to play his first single, Follow Through, 10 years ago. Gavin was charming as ever and Erin asked good questions that elicited hilarious answers about his recent performance in the air on a Southwest Airlines flight and singing in the shower from him.
We are beyond excited when Gavin announces that's he's premiering another song from the new album today for us. It's called Everything Will Change and was utterly spellbinding--at least for me. As I listened to the lyrics which seemed to me to be about growing up, making conscious decisions about your life and accepting that change is inevitable but how you handle it is what counts, I reached over and grabbed my friend's hand. I've been through my share of "stuff" and I know she's been through more. It seemed to me that he'd written that song for us. It was a privilege to hear the first public performance.
As we had no interest in hearing the retooled Back Street Boys who'd curiously brought out thousands of very young ladies (I thought it was curious since many of them appeared to not have been old enough for BSB the first time they were popular). I'd never heard of the headlining act, Of Monsters and Men (or as I mistakenly kept referring to them ... Of Mice and Men ... what can I say? It was the literary part of my brain taking over.) Later on, a friend whom we couldn't find in the huge crowd reported that the Back Street Boys didn't sing long and she thought the pieces Of Monsters and Men offered all sounded similar so she'd left as well. Clearly, we think, the station had the line-up backwards ...
Crowds on Storrow Drive |
Four friends relaxing at Tico (222 Berkeley Street) |
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Everything Will Change
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