Don't Mess with Ray

Last night was the Ray Lamontagne concert and it was great. My favorite parts were when it was just him and his guitar on stage. If you don't own a copy of his first album "Trouble" you MUST go and get it. It is one of those perfect albums. It is so hauntingly beautiful, that you may want to keep a box of kleenex handy. It makes you wonder what kind of life he has lived to be able to write in such a painfully honest way. Bottom line: brilliant!!
So for months, the tickets to this show has hung on our fridge and I've been counting down the days. It was at the Opera House in Seattle, not a huge venue, and it was sold out. Now Seattle is kind of a funny place. We tend to be very laid back and "live and let live", however, this does not apply to concerts attended by mostly middle aged white folk. I would say that 99.9% were middle class Seattlelites who had just come from trendy Thai restaurants and were looking to a mellow evening of indie folk rock or as they say in Seattle "Adult Alternative". There was no mosh pit, there was no cloud of smoke hanging in the air and the choruses of "I'm so wasted" were pretty much non-existent, except for the group in front of us.
Ray is know for being extremely shy on stage and rarely talks to the crowd. You might get a "thank you" if you are lucky. So the guy in front of us thought it would be a good ideas to start yelling "SPEAK!" at the top of his lungs. This happened a few times until some guy in the back of the balcony yelled for him to shut up and let Ray do his job. He was silenced for about 5 minutes.
Now the group in front of us consisted of two couples and it was clear who was the designated driver. The other three seemed to be confused as to where they were. They were acting like they were front row at at Motley Crue show, yes it was not pretty. When the people in front and in back and next to them asked them to quiet down, they felt the need to unleash f-bombs galore. Lovely.
I really felt bad for the women in front of them. One of them was almost in tears. I just don't understand how people can be so self absorbed and disrespectful of others. I had waited all night for Ray to play the song "Burn", my fav d'jour. It was just him and his guitar and all I could hear were these yahoos in front of us cat calling. The song was still amazing, but I must say the high-fiving did tend to take away from the beauty of the song.
Other than that, the show was great and I highly recommend if you ever get a chance to see him, you should.