DC Concert: Rock on!

Previous David Cook blog postings: David Cook, Eating Crow, Obsessive escape from reality, On this blog (I actually tagged these!)

And now, the latest...

Last night, I went to the Peoria Civic Center with Karen to celebrate my birthday. We began with a delightful Ruby Tuesday dinner. Then, with two ISU students in tow, we traveled to Peoria.

Upon arrival, Karen found out what a rip-off Ticketmaster truly is. Lesson learned: do not pay for a preferred parking pass, as it was $5 more than it would have been had we just paid there. Mmm hmmm.

When we entered the Civic Center, we immediately saw the "Concert Memorabilia" area. I got a David Cook concert shirt (thanks, Jessie and Karen!), and we kept seeing this stuff for a band called The Script. We even texted them to see if we could win a chance to meet them after the show. We had NO idea who they were. They had some cute concert shirts, however, and Karen was tempted to just buy an adorable hoodie, none the less.

As we entered the concert area, we noted that there really was no bad seat in the house. It was much smaller than I thought it would be, which was a huge advantage. We were in aisle U, but we were DEAD center... terrific view.

A band called Green River Ordinance was playing, which completely confused us. Was The Script the name of their album or something? They were pretty good, and they seemed to have a little groupie following there. After the show, the band was outside selling their CDs, which I, for one, thought was pretty cool... I bought 2 CDs just because I was impressed with their work ethic. :)

We got all pumped up thinking they were the opening act, and the crowd was getting ready for David... or so we thought. Out comes The Script. {Insert confused faces here} Well, holy crap. It was The Little Band from Ireland That Could! They rocked, and we all ended up being groupies. Another CD and Tour Booklet purchased. Karen is busy deciding how to incorporate a song or two into her Zumba repertoire. Can't wait!

Finally, a bit after 9 (we got there at 7:30), the main act hit the stage. I was euphoric... truly. David put on the show I imagined he would. He opened with Heroes, one of my favs. OK, so I like all of his songs... good point!

He was so real... very down to Earth. He found Peoria's reaction to him worth a few laughs... perhaps he didn't expect a bunch of Midwestern 20-50 somethings to get into his performance this much? Dunno. He also singled out an eight0year-old boy in the audience and climbed over seats and people to talk with him. That definitely was endearing, but who brings an eight year old to a concert on a Thursday night? Or to a concert that will leave his eardrums humming for days? At that point, Karen and I were both thinking, "If only we had brought Max and Maddie... who knows what might have occurred?" Nah, let's get real.

The bad came on for two encores, one being Bar-Ba-Sol (yeah, baby). Can't recall what the last song was, but I know I left with a GREAT feeling. We stopped at the Steak-n-Shake in Morton for a much needed way to cap off the night (I got fries and a Cherry Coke... yeah, my WW points went through the roof!).

In all, a very memorable night! More photos and video on Facebook!