String Cheese Incident: Red Rocks Amphitheater: July 21, 2017

You've heard people talk about Red Rocks.  I mean, at the very least, you've heard Bono intone - "HEY! This is Red Rocks!" - on Under a Blood Red Sky.  Super cool venue up in the mountains out on the west side of Denver.  As we drove up to it, the inner nerds in me were fighting over the thought that it looked just like old concert videos I'd seen, or that it looked like something from Radiator Springs (Cars movie), or that it looked like some crashed Imperial ship on Tatooine.  We had run up to Denver for a week vacation without kids, and the one thing on my list that I felt we must do was to go see a show at Red Rocks.  Any show really, I just wanted to experience the venue.  So, it ended up that String Cheese Incident, a local-ish Colorado jam band, was doing a three night set of shows while we were in town, so we were all set for the show.

Beforehand, the anticipation built for me, as multiple people we ran into around town - Lyft drivers, waitresses, random dudes at breweries - were all excited about both the venue and the band.  In fact, two of those random dudes at a brewery had flown into town from Texas just to see all three nights at Red Rocks, with VIP passes, and said that each had seen the band more than 20 times.  So, I'm thinking that this kind of devotion means that the band is going to be pretty sweet, even if I don't really know their music.

We took a Lyft out there (significantly more expensive than expected, because of traffic in getting from downtown Denver to way out in Morrison, so beware if you are in the same position), and the driver had to drop us off at the bottom of the mountain, right by the crowd tailgating before the show.  The view from there is beautiful.  It is literally these huge red rocks, they look like the giant fins of an old car, jutting out of the mountainside.  Very dramatic and cool, especially when you realize that the amphitheater is tucked in the middle of those fins.  

As we begin the trek, here is the first hint of the problem that we are going to have at this show.  As we are climbing the million stairs up to the gate, we realize that the girl up in front of us, being led by the hand by a dude she doesn't know, is so terrifically stoned/tripping/drunk/all the above that she can barely walk.  She had black mascara/tear streaks down both cheeks, and literally looked like she was about to over-correct and topple backwards down the stairs about 8 times per set of stairs.  She had apparently lost both her friends and her ticket, and this dude was trying to be nice and help her.  Once she got to the crowd in front of the gate, she plowed right through them and, when not allowed to enter without a ticket, started crying again as she was trying to figure out how to dial an ancient looking flip phone and leaning precariously against a railing.  Oy.  And my wife, the fantastic mother (and general worrier) that she is, was now good and fully uncomfortable about this show.

We got to our seats, which were awesome.  Row 34 is about half way up the bowl, and seats 81 and 82 are directly in the center of it all.  But, more and more random people with general admission tickets kept creeping into our space and hanging out.  See, the "seat" at Red Rocks entitles you to about 18 inches of width on an unlined wooden bench, and about 3 feet of length of concrete riser going up to the bench of the guy in front of you.  So there is plenty of room for the people around you to invite their buddies over to stand in or around their chunk of space, and it seemed like everyone there knew everyone else around them, so there was a lot of folks crowding in to share a smoke or three and hang out before wandering off again.  Although, once the show started, most of those folks respected our space pretty well.

Opening band the Jyemo Club were an odd brand of mashing together Latin rhythms with soft rock sounds, rap with singing, and English with Spanish.  I would not say they did much for me, but some of the people around us were fired up for the music and doing some sweet dancing.  Oh, and there were loads of people dressed up in all sorts of weird stuff.  One young lady was dressed as a jelly fish, which is apparently one of the symbols for the SCI. She got a lot of compliments.  Lots of capes, a guy in a sequined leprechaun jacket, loads of fanny packs and vests and Mexican blanket pancho thingys.  The wife and I stuck out like sore thumbs in our normal clothes.

After a short break, String Cheese took the stage to the literal roar of a full crowd.  Everyone around us was crazy excited for this show.  Each person I talked to was a huge fan, no one seemed to be just checking them out like we were.  And I'll admit that I enjoyed the tunes. The lyrics though... my wife turned to me about two songs in and asked "is this really cheesy, or is that just me?" And I started to really parse the lyrics to the song ("These Waves," the first video I posted up above), and had to agree.  Here is the chorus: "These waves, Between pleasure and pain, These waves, Come and rock me once again, These waves, Will I ever stop riding these waves?"  Woah, bro, deep man.  

Each song was crazy long, and that was actually the part I liked the most, the jamming portion of each tune.  The players in this band are freaking good.  Especially the old dude on the guitar, who could freaking burn that sucker up.  And the lead singer was money on the guitar as well.  So after some cheeseball lyrics about Shining ooooooooon!, they'd kick into jam session mode and that part was awesome.  They had some legitimately excellent bluegrass stuff going on at one point, and I was into it for sure.

However, this entire time, people around us are dancing and tripping and falling and appearing to be so damn high that they can't handle their own business.  A dude in front of us was literally unable to stand still to use his phone to text, and kept stumbling back and forth on his seat riser, just about to step off the edge, then stumbling back into the people around him, until the guy next to him literally helped him sit down.  He then proceeded to put his head on his arms and zone out in his seat for the rest of the show.  Others around just kept bumping each other and accidentally stepping down off the seat risers as they jammed out or twirled their capes.  I know I'm old, and I can readily admit I've gotten trashed at shows before, but when 75% of the crowd is so far gone that they are totally distracting to my enjoyment of the show, it is a problem.  And definitely so for my wife, who again wanted to make sure these people were safe.  So that part of the show was a big bummer.

After about an hour to hour and a half, the band took a break to try to raise some money for charity and then take a breather backstage, so we took that as a good cue to head out and beat the Lyft crowd.  I honestly enjoyed the music, but I probably won't go see that band again because of the crowd.