crowd surfing

I enjoy watching crowds. It doesn't always pay to talk about who goes to a show, who pays the tickets and who makes an ass of themselves. The hardcore fans of kd lang gave me a ton of shit last year when I essentially suggested they behaved like tubby lesbian fratboys and were disrespectful to the artist they'd come to see, not to mention the average ticket holder.

Audiences are sensitive to being watched, but for someone like me, seeing the crowd is part of the fun.

The crowd at the Municipal Auditorium was old, ancient and bordering on fossilized. Everybody seemed to smile. There was lots of waving to friends. I'd smile and wave too if I was enjoying my second or third decade in retirement or maybe I wouldn't. Maybe I wouldn't have any idea where the hell I was. Sudden movement might seem very traumatic and confusing.

Many of the people at this show certainly moved with strained deliberation. Some of them were fragile and fearful. You could see it in their faces. A misplaced step or a stumble might not kill them, but it would certainly invite slow, festering pain. Maybe at that age, feeling good is a treat. It might be good enough just not to ache.

From what they tell me, whenever the Community Music Association puts on a show, they dredge the local retirement homes, load everybody over the age of 70 into a bus and haul them down to the municipal auditorium on some kind of field trip. I sort of wonder about that. Do these visits have anything in common with the junior high field trips to the lake or the box factory? Do you have to bring a bagged lunch from home? Are their chaperons to keep the kids from making out in the back of the bus on the way back?

Every crowd has an odor. A musical or theatrical performance at the Clay Center will sometimes smell like cologne and soap. A hillbilly rock show at The Empty Glass will smell like old beer, sweat and cigarettes. It's not always the people. An ocean of beer has been poured over the floor at The Empty Glass and people smoked for decades in the place before the city clamped down on nicotine. The smell is not going away.

This show at the Municipal smelled like powdered flowers and dust, but the cloying floral cloud couldn't hide the scent of sour urine beneath it. It was like catching a concert at the wake of a distant relative.

Still, they were the most polite bunch I've ever seen at a show. They clapped when they were supposed to. They clapped when they probably weren't supposed to, but no one moved too quick for the usual standing ovation toward the end. A standing ovation in this town is cheap. Just about every gets one at the end of the show. A successful bowel movement at the Cultural Center will get you a standing ovation.

They were surprisingly restrained, which I took for honesty.