Toddler's First Concert

I was 18 years old when I attended my first concert. I was a freshman in college and UB40 was playing at one of the gyms on campus about a month into my first semester.  I took a bus with my new friends from the part of campus we lived on to see the concert.  Honestly, while I enjoyed some of the songs the group played, I did not enjoy the concert.  I didn't get what the big deal was about concerts.  Until I went to my first REAL concert the summer after I graduated from college and went to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.  Now that was a concert!  As a Jersey girl born and bred, of course I'm a Springsteen fan, but I'm not a psycho like my friend Denise who has probably seen him in concert about 200 times. I may be exaggerating the number, but probably not by much.  The summer after she had her daughter, she went to 10 of his 10 shows in NJ.  I babysat for her for 7 of them and went to 2 of them with her. I've probably been to 5 or 6 of his shows total, all in NJ. She's traveled to see him in concert to probably 5 or 6 states!

So when someone gets excited about a concert they "scored" tickets to, I don't usually get it.  I think people are crazy waiting on lines or working 3 different computers to purchase good seats to concerts on line.

But last November, when I found out The Fresh Beat Band was going on tour that included a stop in NJ, well, I finally "got" what my crazed friends did all these years. I had to get tickets to take Tommy to see his favorite group.  If you don't know about this, The Fresh Beat Band is a TV show on Nick Jr. It was the ONLY show Tommy would watch for the longest time; our DVR was so full of their shows it had no room for MY shows!

It was dumb luck that I found out about the tour and concert. There was an ad on the bottom of the front page of the Friday paper's entertainment section about various shows being on sale for tickets, and the Fresh Beat logo caught my eye. You'd think I would have liked their Facebook page since Tommy was such a big fan and I could have gotten this scoop, right? No, I guess I was counting on Nick Jr. to advertise it in between shows, which they don't. I had a few days notice thanks to the ad about the tickets going on sale, and ended up buying them the day they went on sale for $29 a piece, balcony seats, on the aisle. There were plenty of seats to choose from at all the levels, so imagine my surprise when someone posts in a Mommy Advice Group I'm in on Facebook later that same day about purchasing tickets for one of the NY area shows, and suddenly there are about 100 comments from moms either excited about having purchased tickets or being upset because the area shows were sold out. Um, what? Sold out?  In the first day?

I then started hearing that people were selling tickets on e-Bay and Craig's List for upwards of $2,000, and that people were buying them!  I found out my cousins had gotten tickets for the same show we were going to, again, with no problem getting tickets. When I told them about people selling them for that price, we jokingly discussed doing the same thing...the kids would never know!!!

Go figure, around the same time I bought the tickets, Tommy's interest in The Fresh Beat Band was waning. They changed the actress who played Marina, his favorite character, and he did not like it one bit. We had some of the older episodes still on the DVR, so we played those for him.  But he had been watching Dora and Diego for a while, then Wubzy and a whole bunch of other shows caught his eye, and FBB was almost an afterthought, so much so that we finally stopped recording the show altogether a few weeks before the concert. Now I had been talking up the concert to Tommy since I bought the tickets, not all the time, but if one of their songs came on I'd make sure to remind him about the concert we were going to go to for the FBB, and he'd get excited, though I don't really know if he knew what a concert even was.

March 28th finally arrived, and I took the day off...who do you think was more excited about this concert? I picked Tommy up from daycare around 3:30, we picked Daddy up at work, and headed up to New Brunswick for the concert, which started at 6pm. We were meeting my cousins and their kids for pizza near the theatre, though it turned out everyone else attending the concert was going to the same place!  Fortunately we got there early enough to hold onto a big enough table, but the line was out the door!

Mommy with her "Rock Star" before his first concert

Tommy with his cousins before the concert

Can you tell we are excited by our expressions?

Tommy showing off the light up stick that I sent John to buy. 

Trying to amuse ourselves when the concert was late starting by 20 minutes

"Mommy, I want to rock!" or did he say "Run!"??

$25 t-shirt because "it is his first concert" is how Daddy justifed the buy

The concert started about 20 minutes late and also had a 15 minute intermission, which I think affected Tommy's overall enjoyment because he crashed before the end.  He had a melt down just prior to the final song, which I did not realize was the final song, before a 2 song encore.  I took him to the lobby area to stretch his legs and the kid ran around like a maniac, was jumping up stairs, down stairs, laughing like crazy, and enjoying the concert on a TV in the lobby.  Seriously? I bought these tickets and you'd rather watch them on TV kiddo? Even funnier, my cousins suddenly appeared as their group of 5 kiddos had their own melt downs around the same time. I think the parents ended up enjoying the show more than the kids - I heard this from several other friends who went to the concert either that afternoon, night, or earlier this week at another venue that happens to be closer to our house that I did not see on the schedule until after I purchased the tickets for the 28th. But we did have a good time, even if Tommy was not as into it as I thought or hoped he might be.

I found out yesterday that they are coming BACK to the area in September for a few concerts...and shared it with the Moms on Facebook so they had a heads up.  But I don't think we'll be buying tickets this time around.  I'm not turning into a groupie and forcing Tommy to either!

I'll leave you with 2 videos showing both Tommy and Mommy's antics during the show - both right before the melt down and escape to the lobby!