Red Hot Chili Peppers – Gigography
Live in Indjija
I could only say that we’ve been extremely lucky to be among the first ones to enter – I couldn’t even imagine how it was like for the rest of them when they all started running toward the entrance. Later on, however, when I scanned the newspapers’ articles about the concert to my big surprise I found out that everyone has survived, moreover, no one has been injured on the entrance – the same however can’t be said for the extreme weather conditions as some people passed out and finished in the ambulance before the event even started – the main cause was dehydration. We entered the gate that was the closest to us and we’ve been the first ones there to get the famous ‘fan pit’ bracelet! There was no time for celebrating as a long way to the stage awaited us.
We moved forward – to the guy that’s been checking the tickets and making sure we don’t carry anything ‘lethal’ in our bags by looking at those and saying ‘do you have anything you’re not supposed to?’ I got the feeling that poor guy didn’t even know what was forbidden, which was not very strange as they kept changing the rules. I almost laughed and said ‘yeah, we’ve got a couple of bombs in there, but nothing too dangerous’ but, of course, I managed to restrain myself – after all, it was for the best! He leaned over to his friend, whispering something into his ear while we’ve been waiting for the approval to continue toward the stage.
-Is everything ok? – I dared to ask
-Seems like we have a problem here. Something is wrong with your tickets – he then made a brief pause and added – with both of your tickets.
-That’s impossible – I managed to say while thoughts racing inside my head, the whole world all of a sudden turned upside down – We PAID for those tickets!
He has just made a motion forwarding us to another guy and we obediently fallowed his hand. I just couldn’t believe this was really happening. And right there, we saw a friend of miss unaccredited, standing at the same place we were standing, probably waiting for the same thing we were waiting, another check of our legally paid tickets.
-Where did you get yours? – he asked, looking down
-I can’t believe this… I got them the very first day by calling that phone number EXIT had on their web site.
-Yeah? – he sounded defatted and almost not very surprised – Me too…
It all happened in a split of a second but it looked like a decade to me. We turned back to the guy that held our tickets and heard the other guy that’s been telling him to let us go and that something is probably wrong with the bar code reader. I knew we could just run away – no one would chase us – nor anyone could find us afterwards, but it just didn’t seem right. While I was still pondering about what we should do, the guy waved to us and hailed:
-Your tickets are all right, you can go now. Apparently, the reader was the problem…
-Oh, really! Just like that, huh? What a bunch of trash! – I grabbed our tickets from his hand while cursing and screaming how because of their incapability we just missed our chance to be in the front row and I heard him saying that famous ‘it’s not my fault’ excuse as we were moving away. Idiots! What has happened happened though, the damage was done, and there was no room for feelings like rage and anger.
We ran toward the stage where we could barely see the fan pit entrance from all the people that were already there. But somehow, we managed to push our way through (we stack with the crowd and most of the time it’s been that huge amount of people that’s been carrying us forward). That was when I realized that somehow, I grabbed three tickets instead of two from that guy, and soon enough I figured that I had miss unaccredited friend’s ticket with me. We tried to locate him, but it was impossible. I didn’t try very hard though (it was like looking for a needle in haystack) and I hoped we wouldn’t need tickets to enter here as they already checked these at the beginning. It turned out I was right, they just checked if we had the bracelet and let us in. But, I had three tickets; actually I still have all three, and I’ll keep them to remind me of this adventure and a strange coincidence that connected us with that guy.
As we tried to find a perfect spot I subconsciously thought about him, and I was wondering if he ever found miss unaccredited again or was he forced to be on his own during the whole concert and afterwards. That made me feel sad as I remembered how important it was for him to be with her and how hard was he pushing to get through. Anyway, we found a great spot, right in front of the stage, two rows behind the fence. It looked great from here, as the stage was a little bit high to what I had expected; the first row would have been bad (at least for me) as I would have had a hard time looking up during the whole event. I was totally satisfied, very happy and filled with positive feelings contrary to what I have felt a few minutes ago when it all looked as bad as it could be. While I was looking over the stage, impulsively comparing it to the one from Slane Castle concert I had on DVD, and which was, in my humble opinion, Red Hots’ best performance (I knew it almost by heart), my roommate was smart enough to go and buy some water – because after we settle it’s going to be once and for all. Well, for the next 7 hours that is.
After a very short time, the field got filled with people, but we remained at our spot – our great spot – and surprisingly we had enough space to jump around without kicking someone. The first band started performing and I checked my clock – exactly 4pm and I was happy to notice they didn’t decide to delay everything because the gates weren’t opened on time. The performance was good and although I’ve never heard this band playing before, I liked their music. Anyway, I wasn’t in the mood for jumping around, or I was just too tired, either way, I decided to look around and risk feeling ‘people seek’ as I could only imagine how it looks like to have 10 000 people at your back, especially if we take in consideration my homophobia and paranoid personality. But this was one of those rare situations where I was praising my height that wouldn’t allow me to see further than right in front of my nose. And that proved to be more than enough in this case: right next to us stood those ‘gangsta’ boys from earlier in the story.
I almost laughed pointing yet another strange coincidence to my roommate, to which she replied ‘the world is small’, and it wasn’t hard for me to drew a conclusion that if we take that statement as a true one than a group of 10 000 people is even smaller – no wonder we ran into them. The ground was muddy and dirty and even though they promised they would cover it with grass, the same kind they use at football stadiums – they didn’t. I looked down at my shoes at couldn’t help laughing – they were all brownish and kind of heavy from all the mud that stuck in between shoelaces, but they were brand new, I bought them yesterday, specially for this occasion and their original color was black. What a pity… But, it didn’t matter now anyway. There was trash everywhere around us as people had nowhere else to throw their garbage. You couldn’t make a step without stepping onto a bottle or something. Later on, I read that they have collected somewhere around 10 tons of garbage from the field – it was an interesting newspaper’s article about the concert presented in numbers, where they gave us all kinds of statistics from that special day. As I looked up, at the open sky, I saw a couple of clouds that started grouping together and growing into a bigger, darker one. It got colder and windier as well. Just a few minutes after seeing the first clouds that day, it started raining. It seemed like we all forgot about the concert during a first few minutes of that magical weather change and putting our hands in the air we loudly cheered the rain. Its drops felt great on my sunburned skin and I believe we all desperately needed this to cool us off. I recalled how weathermen said it would rain, and even though there was not a slightest sign of it during the day, I guess they really got it right this time! We both laughed putting our kerchiefs, which we used to protect our shoulders from the sun, tighter as it got quite cold all of a sudden. Getting wet and not being able to do anything about it felt nice but in a weird kind of way. It wasn’t raining for a long time; it’s been one of those short but hard, real summer time rains. By the time another band appeared on the stage it completely stopped and a weak sun rose – leaving the impression that nothing had happened but we knew it had; and feeling refreshed, like reborn, we were ready to go on with the show.
I don’t recall how I killed the next few hours. I know it’ been tough, as I couldn’t help watching at my clock every few minutes, wishing the time would fly instead of crawl, but nothing really helped. Every band’s been playing for about an hour and it was dynamic enough to keep my attention and to keep us all interested enough, but they all knew why we came here and what we’ve been waiting for. Just two more bands, I’ve been thinking to myself, we’re half way there. As the time went by a lot of people around us seemed too tired to continue so seeing some of them sitting on the muddy ground was not a rare nor was it a weird sight at all. We actually did the same a few times, and I can say it was such a relief to be feeling your legs again, even though the feeling was that of a pain, the realization that your legs are still there and functioning was, after all, priceless. Getting up, sitting down, scanning the stage, the sky and people around us, enjoying the music, and constantly keeping an eye on the clock, was how we spent the majority of our time till 9pm when Red Hot Chili Peppers were supposed to appear on the stage.
But, there was a little surprise for us before that. Unexpectedly, spontaneously and just like that, Chad Smith appeared, as to enjoy the music and smoke a cigarette, because the rest of the band was probably doing some yoga meditation stuff he was never really into. The mass screamed, yelling his name and he just simply turned to us in wonder and waved finding himself busy with the cigarette and that guy he was talking to. He looked shy, or rather surprised that people cheered so much because of him, like he didn’t get used to all that popularity already, and stayed as human as it gets. Sweet Chad, he always was that way, and that’s why people are admiring him all that much. Seeing Chad was really great and it proved to me that this awesome band was really here, all this was real and they’re soon going to be performing for us, right in front of me. That was still hard to believe and I couldn’t make myself be a part of it, it felt like I was just a distant observer, it felt like watching a DVD on my computer.
Even though I was trying to make myself enjoy it right there and at that moment thinking how this is not a dream but reality, everything seemed like from another dimension – this town, the environment, all these people, the stage, the field, the rain and the sun…something I have seen then and will never see again. None of it felt real for a reason, probably because I have never ever experienced something similar before either. I guess that’s just the way people’s brain works. If you experience something unusual, something that really differs from your daily routine, your mind will immediately reject it and will need a certain amount of time to accept it as something real.
I don’t remember when or how the day turned into a night, I just noticed it got darker and a quick glance at my clock gave me a precise time – ten minutes to nine. The last band before Red Hot Chili Peppers was about to finish with their performance. The crowd started pushing us, trying to get closer to the stage and have a better look at it. We could hardly keep our great spot; I think they even pushed us back a little bit. It was still all good, we could clearly see the stage, although it’s been harder to move, or even breathe. All the people around us were stirred up, and I could feel the expectation by looking at their eyes and their body language – the crowd went silent and it terrified me to see 10 000 people but hardly hear anything. Holding even our breaths, our eyes were aimed at the stage – everything has been set up and ready and they just made some final adjustments as we were running out of patience.
