The Stones Concert

My Top Ten Reasons to See the Rolling Stones Concert in Regina this weekend:

10. This is the first time that someone as big as the Stones has brought their show to Regina, which only has a population of about 200,000. Mick Jagger said that Regina rhymes with fun. Those of us that live here don't think too much about our city rhyming with the v-word but to others it's a huge giggle every time.

9. Everybody is going. Two concerts were booked and sold out. There were over 40,000 people at each.

8. Someone else (friends) did all the conniving to get the tickets which were pretty much sold out within minutes of being available.

7. I like the aforementioned friends.

6. My husband wanted to go. He loved the concert.

5. The weather on Friday evening was absolutely beautiful for this time of year and there was a big old full moon hanging in the sky over the stadium.

4. The stage was six stories high and sections of it came apart and moved into the audience. Very cool.

3. Lots of spectacular lights and pyrotechnics.

2. The entertainment value of watching the other people: young, old, and everyone in between.

1. Mick and the boys can still sing and move as well as they did when they were young. Quite incredible! Keith Richards has been ageless for years and will always remind me of pirate Jack Sparrow.


My Top Ten Reasons for Rather Being at Home Than Going to See the Stones Concert:

10. I've never been a serious rock fan. In fact, I think that I was born without the rock concert gene completely.

9. I hate big crowds and it would be hard to find a bigger crowd anywhere. Because Regina has never hosted anything of this magnitude before there were some kinks to work out. One of those kinks was getting into a bottleneck between the security gate and the entrance to the stadium. We were packed solid in a huge crowd for at least twenty minutes with no one moving. I don't know what caused this to happen but it's a good thing nobody had a heart attack or a stroke or they would have died for sure. No emergency assistance could have gotten anywhere near them. I can see how people die in rock concert stampedes and riots in other places. People were getting very impatient and cranky but we're Prairie folks so we put up with it because we're basically nice.

8. That much standing on concrete makes my joints hurt and I'd been dealing with a severe headache all week.

7. I couldn't take my knitting. Okay, I'm just kidding about this one. Security was very tight and I wouldn't have had room to knit anyway because there was hardly enough standing space per ticket, never mind sitting space. Oh, and it was pretty dark except for the light show and pyrotechnics.

6. It was Friday night and I'm always pooped by Friday night.

5. The tickets were very expensive.

4. I'm a prude. Rock concerts are not good places for prudes.

3. Huge lineups for catching the shuttle buses to and from the stadium.

2. Although Regina has a no smoking bylaw no one, including the Stones, paid any attention to it. I hate having to breathe second-hand smoke. And it wasn't just cigarette smoke either, if you get my drift.

1. The group of young people that were sitting next to us. They were probably about 19 - 20 years old. They were drunk (one of them vomited on the people in front of her and was asked to leave by security - her friends were most indignant about it because they said that she had a baby and this was the first time she'd had a chance to have fun since the baby), high (although one young man did offer us a toke politely - he also got very excited when Keith Richards came on stage and told everyone in the stands that Keith was his hero, big surprise), and one of them was very pregnant. I kept visualizing the scene in the future of this young mom meeting with school personnel and saying aloud that she had no idea why her child was experiencing difficulty in school. I have a hard time watching people reproduce and not accepting responsibility for the health of their children. Call me old-fashioned.