Lana Del Rey - Courtney Love (5/16/15 @ Sleep Train Amphitheater, Chula Vista CA)
Yeah. This is a thing that happened.
My sister Stacy's birthday was this past Saturday. She had 3 tickets to see Lana Del Rey and was fully intent on going with 2 of her friends, but one of them bailed at the last minute and since I was sitting around doing absolutely nothing (Punk rock bowling in a few days!) asked me if I wanted to go. I have never been to a pop concert PLUS I figured it could be interesting to write about, so I said fuck it, lets do this.
First things first, I had to wait for my sister and her friend to get ready. 2 hours later, they said they were ready to roll, which actually meant another half an hour to get fully ready as they debated shit like "tights or no tights?" All the while I was getting nervous we may miss Courtney Love (I'm in no means a fan of Courtney Love, I was just super curious to see that fucking train wreck play. I'm assuming if anyone can rival the Matt Skiba shit show, it would be Courtney Love). Also, it should be mentioned my sister was properly birthday drunk at this point. They poured a few shots of some flavored vodka for all of us, which thankfully no one noticed me pouring mine back into the bottle. I may be a borderline alcoholic, but fuck flavored vodka shots. We finally made it on the road at some point, and of course half way down, we had to stop for a pee break.
When we made it to Chula Vista where the event was, the exit to get off the freeway was backed up and not moving for at least 4 miles. Me being slightly smarter then the average motorist, blew past the normal exit, turned around and came at it from the south. Still though, it took us easily 2 hours to get from the freeway to the venue (Which was a measly 2 and a half miles down the road). My sisters friend was in the backseat yelling random shit out the window at the other cars stuck in this hellscape, and convinced my sister to hop in the back and moon everyone for a solid 5 minutes straight. I used this opportunity to smoke cigarettes and blast The Dopamines as loud as I possibly could to drown out the nightmare happening in the back.
By the time we parked and got into the place, I could hear Courtney playing her last song, her band Hole's (only?) popular song Celebrity Skin. It sounded absolutely awful, and kind of bummed me out we missed it. It was standing in line for super overpriced beers that I first started to notice the people surrounding me. To the right of us was a group of men dressed in american flag tights and denim vests (I bought my sister a pair of American flag vans for her birthday which she was wearing) so naturally she popped in the middle of them and demanded a picture
Merica
Mostly everyone else at this place looked like Coachella rejects. White flowy hippie dresses, half shirts and high waisted pants, those weird hats gold miners wore, it was all here in the biggest crowd of fucking people I have ever seen. Seriously, I didn't even know that many people liked Lana Del Rey, let alone just in San Diego. And 90% of them seemed to be wearing flower crowns (So many people in fact, I thought they might have been handing them out at the entrance and I somehow missed getting mine). My absolute favorite person I saw though had to be the girl wearing a Native American head dress with an American flag draped around her shoulders. Bravo douche bag, bravo.
Lana Del Rey eventually played and it was whatever. She sounded good, she has a decent enough voice, but the slow pop music combined with everyone just kind of standing there like statues, I just don't get it. It would have been exactly the same to stay at home and listen to her CD with the bass turned all the way up. Initially, we were at the very very top and couldn't even see the stage, but slowly we started creeping closer and closer to the front, talking our way through security until eventually we were a step away from the floor area, which was heavily guarded by a dude who clearly took his job way too seriously. So we figured we did well enough and watched the last song from our new vantage point. Then it was over. Just like that. Everyone on stage just kind of packed it up and bounced and the lights came on and everyone was herded out the gates to the parking lot. It was kind of weird.
Moving on up
We made it back to the car and it was a fucking nightmare trying to leave. Not a single car was moving. So instead of trying to fight traffic, we all just kind of took a nap for an hour or so until we could jet the fuck out of there and get Jack in the Box. My only regret is we didn't make it to North Park to see DFMK afterwards, and show these girls what a real show is like. Well that, and I didn't buy the $30 Courtney Love tank top they had for sale.
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