Jennifer Plesko

Last night, hubby and I attended the Regina Spektor concert here in DFW. Hubby booked this concert on a whim and then kind of forgot about it, so neither one of us knew too many of the details – what time it started, if there was a warm up act, where the theater was – you know, stuff like that.

After a creative route to the theater involving a tour of West Dallas’s finest ghetto, we arrived an hour early to find the parking lot practically empty. At least we got a good parking spot. We went inside and bought dinner at the concession stand, which consisted of a soda, a chicken fajita wrap, a cheeseburger, and a beer for the price of a kidney and a Thoroughbred stallion.

While we ate, we took the opportunity to people watch. If you’re familiar with Regina Spektor, you can imagine that she has a lot of interesting fans. Being on the more buttoned-up spectrum of the crowd, I’m guessing we stood out just as much to them as they did to us. There was a lot of slouchy clothes, patchouli, cloves, knitted berets, and even a few of these bad boys…

I haven’t seen one of those since it was on my eighth grade boyfriend while he listened to Nirvana on his Walkman.

Eventually we found our way to our seats. We had pretty good seats, even though I was sitting behind a freakishly tall girl whose head rose about 6 inches above all her friends. Guess I’ll be leaning on the armrest the whole time.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that concerts tend to bring out the obnoxious in everyone. Maybe it’s the mob mentality or the fact that they don’t think they’re ever going to see of those people again, but people really dial up the douchyness.

First, it was the amount of phones that were out the entire time. And because the screens are bright enough to give you a tan, it was like a sea of flashlights as people played Bubble Breaker, texted, and who knows what else.

Then there were the cameras. Ugh. The cameras. Flashes were going off at all times, one right after another, simulating a strobe light. It was like a rave in there. One of the high school girls in front of me was constantly taking pictures of the stage and each picture would come out as a perfect flashy shot of the backs of people’s heads in front of her, yet she still kept trying. A lesson, my friends: if you want to take a picture of a far away, lit subject in a dark room, don’t use the flash.

Observe…(Ok, so it’s not perfect, but you can at least make out shapes and colors)

Also, there were the overzealous fans. You know the kind – the ones who seem to want to call more attention to themselves than the artist onstage. I was surrounded. There were the girls behind me leaning over my head singing so loud they overpowered Regina (even when she was singing in Russian!). There was the random hippie girl on the front row who stood and danced in circles, flailing her arms the whole time. There were even people who were yelling out during her songs to the point she stopped at one point and called them out. Awesome.

About the time the concert was halfway over, the people who were in the seats next to us finally arrived. I’m really glad that they arrived late and left early. It was a couple on a date, and the guy sat next to me. We will call him Space Invader. So Space Invader sits down and immediately sprawls out both legs and takes up both armrests totally and completely. So much for leaning around the tall chick. As the show went on, he seemed to expand more and more. His knees were in front of my knees. His elbows were on tops of my arms. He even started leaning towards me. I guess he thought he was on a date with me too. He should’ve bought me dinner before trying to getting that close. If I can smell your shampoo, it’s time to back up.

Despite all of the annoyances, it really was a good concert. Regina Spektor did a great job, and she’s one of the few acts I’ve seen who sounds even better live than she does recorded.