As I sit here writing this, I am playing Kings Of Leon and my heart fills with excitement and butterflies just listening to it. I always knew that I was a fan, but after Wednesday’s concert I realised that I am in fact a FAN… Like a real fanatic… I can’t get the concert out of my mind and seem to be weirdly interested in their daily lives… I feel like I know them… I am ashamed to admit it.
I suppose I should put it all into a bit more perspective. This was my first concert… Ever… In 25 years of life I had never been a concert goer. And now to go to my first one, for a band whose songs I adore was almost too much for me to bare. Then it being delayed from March or April or whatever till now just built more anticipation. Thinking about it, it was actually a night of many firsts…
First Time In A Hotel – We decided to really make the most of the evening, so Seth left work at 4, picked me up and we booked into our hotel. Yes, I said it… We booked into a hotel! How awesome is that! We were child free for the night so why not take the opportunity.
We did a bit of shopping, then enjoyed a fabulous dinner at the Fire and Ice Hotel (where we were staying). It was invaded midway by an office party, but the food was delish!
First Time On The Fan Walk – We didn’t do the Soccer thing at all, so this was the first time we’ve had a reason to do the fan walk. We walked all the way from the hotel in Bree street, down to Green Point Stadium… By this point Seth was feeling sick because he had oysters for the first time and thought he was allergic… Perfect timing… Doing the fan walk was quite entertaining, the amount of skantly clad girls clearly hoping the KOL would pick them out of the crowd and whisk them away was a bit disturbing though, but it was perfectly contradicted by the people that wore clothing that I am pretty sure could have passed for pajamas. What a diverse fan base they have.
First Time At The Stadium – Besides driving passed it – like once – this was the first time I was ever gracing the stadium with my presence (Mr Architect had been before when they were busy designing the Mbombela Stadium). Because it was so packed full of thousands of peeps, we decided we might as well get the drinks now and not have to trek back to get them later when we had settled in. We had to withstand the marsh-pit of stinky, sweaty, smokey people to get 2 drinks each, which (by the time we got to our seats) were almost empty from all the people bumping into me. (Can you tell that I like to have a rather wide personal bubble). Flip, I sound like an old woman. Soz.
Seth also had to use the loo and ended up using the ladies side and being tuned by the toilet guard. LOLsies.
So we mission all the way up to level 3… Yip, level 3. To get our seats we had to walk passed people on a tiny little ledge… I couldn’t help but feel like I was about to plummet to my death. I seriously had to stop myself from holding on to all the people I passed to cling to them, trying avoid going over backwards towards my untimely demise. It was then, as well as the next half an hour after that – where I sat in almost tears – that I realised that I am actually really afraid of heights. It truly looked like if you fell, you would roll right off the end and… Splat…. That would be the end of you. An interesting intro for KOL. I was so scared I even gave one of my drinks away cos I was worried that if I drank it, I would stumble off the ledge on the way out. OK, enough about being a chicken.
Our seats were… Um… A bit junk… The stage was so far away that we felt a bit disconnected – we couldn’t even see the little ant version of the handsome Followills that I was expecting. To me the stage was even a bit hard to see with all the crazy lights.
First Concert Ever – For the actual concert I was a bit disappointed in their lack of contact with the audience, I was looking forward to shouting “yeah” after every “Cape Town We Love You!!”. But there really wasn’t much of that. At all… I looked back at one point and a guy a couple of rows back was fast asleep. Completely and totally gone. Besides the fact that KOL were slightly boring, there seriously had to be something wrong with the guy to be able to be asleep in all the noise – maybe he was a parent of young children. Nevertheless, I was not going to let it get the better of me enjoying this new experience. Even Seth being slightly miserable didn’t really damper my spirits. Besides trying to squint and see the KOL singing, there were a few things that kept us entertained… The 3 drunk stooges behind us, who despite being disgustingly drunk, were able to sing the words and not fall down to their death. They did however, emphatically confirm that white people cannot dance… The other moment was a failed attempt at making a balloon condom (which seemed like the cool thing to do). The thing flew and landed on this poor girls head. She didn’t notice… For like 5 whole minutes… It was hilarious!
The pictures here were taken with my phone in the change over from the Afrikaans band that I can’t remember that opened for KOL (that’s why it’s so bright). This is the most that my phone could zoom and we still couldn’t see anything.
After the concert we headed back down the fan walk with Zoe, Corne and Warren and decided that since we were acting like we were young and care free we might as well go for a drink to top the night off. On a work night… Yeah, that’s how we roll. We walked all the way down Long Street but it all looked so dead, so we thought – Why not go to the Fire and Ice? So that’s what we did. Only afterwards we realised that the reason it was all so quiet on Long Street was that the crowds were all behind us, we were some of the first out the stadium and so all the real young people were still stumbling their way along the fan walk.
When we eventually got to our room I could hardly keep my eyes open, but Seth wanted to order from room service. Once he had ordered I asked him if he was seriously ordering a burger and chips at 1.30am… Then he was all like, “WHAT?! Is it 1.30?!?!”. No lies, he was asleep in the 2 minutes thereafter. By the time the poor waiter guy came he had to literally bang on the door to get our attention (and probably that of our neighbours). Seth woke up, devoured the burger and crashed.
Unfortunately morning came too soon. The alarm went off and then with a smash of my hand on my phone it was gone. And so were we. Back in sleepy land. When I realised that I had been asleep for longer than it felt like I should have been, I checked my phone and realised it was 8.30!! And here I was hoping that we could enjoy an awesome breakfast together to start off the day… But having all this awesomeness on a work night meant – back to reality…