Nothing Beats a Live Performance

We ran a contest last week for our E-newsletter subscribers encouraging them to submit a story about their “My Most Memorable Live Performance." We were flooded with great entries, but could only choose one. Congratulations to our contest winner Joey T for submitting the winning entry! He won a pair of tickets to see Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt live in concert at the ASC. They will perform together here on October 10 and 11. Here's the winning story...

Flaming Lips
12/31/2007
Oklahoma City, OK

 My brother Matt and his best friend Andy were going to join me in the car ride to OK. There we were to meet my friend Greg, in OKC on business, and Bryce, who had moved to Arkansas. The five of us were going to bring in the New Year with the Flaming Lips.

Our ticket situation was a big problem for us. Well, for one of us. 4 of us had the general admission floor seats. Which were sold out. Bryce did not, he had a nosebleed seat. We were sitting bored in our hotel room Monday morning, so we decided to go be bored in the line at the arena. Not surprisingly at 10 AM, we were first in line. Bryce was in line without a ticket, hoping he could buy one from a scalper. A roadie looking fella walked by and Bryce pounced. He was just going to ask if any more floor tickets would be sold, but came away with one better. He hustled back and said the roadie would take care of us. We didn’t know what that meant, but assumed it would be awesome. (Dude.) I was skeptical, I thought the roadie was just trying to blow off Bryce. But about two hours later, the roadie comes back to our spot in line. (Now about 25 people long) We were being put on balloon duty.

The Flaming Lips, being the showmen they are, wanted to drop 2008 balloons that night. These were not normal balloons, but giant, 3 feet in diameter, rubber ones that were inflated by a bottle top taped to a leaf blower. They probably had 600 already inflated; we were in charge of getting to 2008. Bryce would be rewarded with an all access backstage pass when we were done.

Three of us worked on balloon duty, while two kept our spot in line. Blisters showed up on my fingers after several hundred balloon tying exercises. We were able to witness the entire sound check, previewing the madness that was ahead.

The roadie came up and said we had done enough and sent us back to line. Bryce had his VIP pass that would grant him access to anywhere in the building. Two of us ended up being invited on stage to dance in giant inflatable costumes. I have never been to a concert where the audience felt like such a part of the show. From our balloon inflating to my friends in costume on stage to the hundreds of laser pointers thrown into the crowd for a self made laser light show to the crowd sing along to Auld Lang Syne it was an intense participatory adventure. Bringing in 2008 with the Flaming Lips was my most memorable concert experience. We were roadies for the day and participated in making their show more memorable for the thousands of others in attendance.