Rod Stewart’s 2008 K.C. Concert at Sprint Center

My wife got tickets to the Rod Stewart Concert at Downtown’s Sprint Center.  She insisted that I go there.   Of course, the concert was OK, the music good, and the drummer excellent.

The most interesting were the PEOPLE/“fans”. When she me dragged to the first RS concert 10 years ago, Sir Rod was younger, but so were his followers. This 2008 downtown KC concert was much different:

1.    As we walked into the Sprint Center, I saw hundreds of people with walkers, canes, wheelchairs, oxygen masks, seeing-eye dogs, etc. Initially, I thought we were attending a Faith Healing Revival. But, the big those Rod Stewart concert signs allayed that fear.

2.    His warm up band was a young male group from Australia: four guys and drummer. They sang love songs and ballads to males. Their base's sound was so deep; it pounded into my chest like a Claude Van Damme kick-boxer’s punch. The big schist was doing a long blow job on stage. One of the band members took out his long, multi-colored, hand carved stick from the Aussie bush. Then, he blew & sucked on the thing for 2 minutes, making strange guttural sounds.

3.    Rules of Life include 60-ish men: "beer in, beer out". Older men must pee more often than younger studs. It isn't their bladder shrinks; it is their prostate takes up more body space. Many of the men in the audience were swilling beer. As demanded by the Law, 10 minutes later they get nature’s call to go; this means stomping on feet as they sidled down a row toward a restroom.  One guy in our isle went five times during the 3 hour concert. Once he said to me, “This will be my last trip”. My reply was, “You do not have to leave your seat, just pee into your beer bottle”. Unfortunately, he ignored my sage advice, but walked over people’s feet time and again.

4.    Absent were many male ponytails swinging in this late edition crowd. Male attendees, for the most part, were balding to bald. Fortunately, house lights dimmed during Rod’s performance; otherwise we would have experienced back glare.

5.    Women out numbered men. Unfortunately, this was NOT a male advantage as in former concerts. These gals were not THOSE hot “chicks”; they were moms and grandmothers. For example, three women were seated a few rows in front of us. One was a 60-ish lady with gray hair, who was packing 200 lbs. She would stand jiggling in rhythm, waving her hands and screaming at Rod Stewart. A friend, next to her, was a bit smaller. She was waving and twirling a tiny bikini thong. These skimpy threads would have fit her pet mini-poodle, not her butt. Yet, someone managed to get one pair of red bikini’s on stage.
       My wife remarked had these women tossed their panties up to Rod, they could inked their full name, address, phone number, zip code and e-mail address across the bottom.  And had women launched panties toward the stage, it would look more like a parachute drop, not a cute bikini bottom.

6.    I did not see any fans dancing in the aisles. Folks pretty much stayed at assigned their seats, clinging to the backrest in front of them. There was sort of dancing/wiggling on-the-spot. This group of transients found it difficult to gyrate due to their ambulatory difficultness such as excessive weight, shortness of breath, loss of hearing and vision, and lateness of the 9 P.M. hour.

7.    The crowd was probably Republican. It was 99.8% Caucasian. Everyone was well feed (from hefty to fat), bought tickets with their own money, rather reserved, restrained  and quite polite, fully clothed  and nicely dressed, most knew the words to sign along in English, and many were “pissed off”.

by Dick Kettle