Topless Women, Boredom and AWOLNATION

Last night, I walked past a topless woman on my way to see AWOLNATION at Webster Hall. One thing has nothing to do with the other but now they will be in my memory as fused events.  She was wearing no shirt, no bra, no tube top, no pasties, no nothing.  Just walking down the street, wearing jeans, running errands with no shirt on whatsoever.

I turned the corner, after being thoroughly distracted by this woman's A-cups, and walked inside Webster Hall.  I was there a few minutes before 8 PM (doors opened at 7) and two hipster fellas were scanning tickets in front of the main stairwell.  One of them alerted me to the sign that AWOLNATION would not be performing until 10 PM.

"Fuck; that sucks," I told him.  He clearly did not care about my disappointment, nor was he shocked by my disappointment.  I would have two hours to kill.

I headed first to the bathroom and then straight to the bar (what else was I going to do?).  My initial plan was to drink and pee alternatingly until 10 PM.  It only took a half an hour for me to realize that was not going to be enough to entertain myself.

What else could I do in the interim? I felt like Raoul Duke walking amongst the other journalists at the Pink Flamingo hotel. 

“Humping the American dream.”

The first opening act was pretty good; a temporary distraction from my boredom.  The lead singer was trying to carry off Brandon Boyd's awkward hand gestures and dance moves and it was kind of working.  Good for him.

Bear Hands came on next and honestly, the band before them, who never even announced their name and had to put away their own equipment, was better.  The audience danced to Bear Hands like people driving cars off-road in slow motion.

Bored.

I went upstairs to see what the view was from up there.  There was a VIP section on the left side, a bar in the back, and open space to stand and mingle and enjoy the show.  I stood by myself, observing the crowd when I saw a girl taking her picture with a guy.  It looked fairly normal, friends take pictures with friends all the time.  However, the girl who was taking the picture handed her camera over to the girl being photographed and they switched places so that each could take a picture with this same guy.  No crowd was forming, no one else was watching this spectacle except me, but there was something odd about it.  The girls thanked the guy and he walked away from them, heading in my direction.  I saw his face, his hair, his clothes.

It was AWOLNATION.

We made eye contact as I gawked at him and rotated my body as he passed me and entered the VIP section, guarded by some secret service looking guy in a suit.  I Google-imaged AWOLNATION just to be sure and the photos online and the guy I had just ogled down looked the same.  I decided I was going to try to get an interview.  I chugged my drink (liquid courage was very necessary) and approached the guard.  

"Who do I speak to about getting an interview with the artist?"

"I don't know, you can make an appointment with the woman downstairs."

That made no sense--how do I make an appointment with someone who is only a few yards from my reach?

I walked downstairs as instructed and asked guard #2 the same question.

"Interview with who?" he asked.

"AWOLNATION."

"I don't know who that is."

Are you serious?  Why are you working here if you do not know who is even performing?  I continued my questioning to a small girl sitting in the corner with some sort of ID hanging around her neck that made her look important, but alas, she could not help me either.

I could sneak into VIP and maybe be carried out by the police . . .I could flirt with the massive security guard on the 1st floor who had been giving me the onceover all night.  But, I just couldn't risk it.  I headed back down and ignored the rest of Bear Hands performance and just stared at AWOLNATION and his posse from afar.  Did no one care that he was right there?

As I stared at him from below, all these great questions went through my head. And all these people just danced without a care, not realizing who was right there. I was stalking him with my eyes, trying to get in his business even though I couldn't.  Eventually he disappeared.

As was promised, AWOLNATION took the stage at 10 PM.  Throughout his performance, he reminded me of a marionette, jumpy and bouncy and excited just like a child’s toy. He and his 4 other band mates opened with "People."  They then played all the best songs: "Not Your Fault," "Jump On My Shoulders," "All I Need," "Burn it Down" and of course "Sail."  All the songs had something special about them: “Not Your Fault” had him crowd surfing, “Jump On My Shoulders” had numerous people literally climbing onto people’s shoulders and watching the performance from there, “All I Need” had the band requesting everyone in the audience to put their arms around the person to the left of them, even if we did not know them. 

He also performed “Kill Your Heroes,” and “Knights if Shame,” explaining in between that they did not consider themselves one genre of music and they assumed no one in the audience appeared to be that one dimensional either. 

How true . . .if only we could know what genre of music the topless woman liked?