these days

When Rudimental released dates and venues for their Toast to Our Differences World Tour, I was really disappointed to see that Brisbane was not on the list. Apart from major Australian cities like Melbourne and Sydney, they were also going to go to Darwin and Mount Gambier …but not Brisbane. I mean, no offence to Darwin and Mount Gambier, but they’re significantly smaller cities. It didn’t make sense.

I suppose they’re not in it for the money (?)

But at some point the tour dates got changed, and the locations changed too – they were coming to Brisbane after all! I had previously looked at the other dates in case I could just fly down to Sydney or somewhere, but the dates didn’t suit, so I forgot about it. (By “forgot” I mean I tried to stop thinking about it so much but, deep down, I was still disappointed.) So to see that they would be coming here was great news … except that their one show here was booked for a Wednesday night.

Wednesdays tend to be quite busy at work, and it was too late for me to get time off on Thursday, so I didn’t think that it would be a good idea to go. So, again, I pushed it to the back of my mind. To be fair, there has been a lot of other stuff going on this year, so it has been easier for this to slip my mind.

But then, less than a week before the concert date, I got an email from the ticket vendor saying that they were doing a special offer on the tickets, discounting them by about 33% from the original price. How could I resist??

But I did. For about three or four days.

I told a few friends about my dilemma. I thought through the logistics of getting to the venue after work, and getting home after the concert (State of Origin was on the same night, so I thought public transport would be really busy). I considered how cold it would be, and if it might rain. I wondered how much sleep I could forego and still survive Thursday…

In the end, it was only the rational, responsible part of me that was hesitating. I knew I wanted to go, and I knew I’d have a good time. So why not just go?

But even my rational mind knows not to turn down an opportunity when one presents itself.

So, just before I went to bed on Monday night, I opened the link from the email, and bought my ticket. It felt weirdly impulsive, but also felt like the only inevitable outcome of all my deliberation. In a sense, I don’t know how I ever thought I wouldn’t be going to see Rudimental.

And the concert was incredible!!

Some people have asked me if there was a big crowd (I was anticipating that there wouldn’t be many people because of the State of Origin clash, and it being mid-week, and the fact that they decided to discount the tickets probably meant they hadn’t sold as many as they were hoping…) But I don’t really know how big the crowd was because I was in the “mosh pit”, and I didn’t really look around because I was slowly making my way toward the stage. By the last few songs, I was one “row” from the front. Almost dead centre too!

There are only two things that would have improved this concert experience: (1) if they had played Walk Alone, which is one of my favourites of their newer songs; and (2) if they had sold merchandise. I saw Rudimental three years ago at Riverstage, and got merchandise at a stall right next to the food stalls. This time there was nothing. I walked around, and looked to see if anyone else had bought merchandise from somewhere, but there was nothing.

Oh well, not a big deal anyway. The actual concert was still amazing, and Rudimental played several songs I wasn’t really expecting them to, but which are amongst my favourites (Go Far, Free, Rumour Mill).

I went home feeling so buzzed, and I’m sure I only survived Thursday at work because the adrenaline was still circulating through my bloodstream. And coffee too, of course.

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