OK Go, Rooney, and not wanting to die

[One-Eye]

From my LJ:

Ladies and gentlemen, I have been rocked.

OK Go is fucking amazing live. Words cannot express how rocked I was. I urge all of you to get your hineys to a show of theirs as quickly as possible. You will not be disappointed.

And Rooney. They seem to have lost some of their amazing stage presence and vivacity since we saw them last time (when they opened for Sloan and the Strokes). But maybe it was just that the first time, we'd never heard of them, so it was new and exciting and amazing, and now we know most of their songs so some of the amazement had worn off. Still, they did an awesome set.

However.

Kathryn had talked to Mom earlier today, and in typical Mom-fashion, she had been instantly worried when she heard we were going to a concert tonight. "Who's playing?" she asked suspiciously, and when Kathryn told her, she said, "Now, if they use fire in any of their act, I want you to get out of there as fast as you can!"

Typical naive Mom. But we couldn't help but be affected by the club fire in Rhode Island. I know a lot of people that were hit closer to home by that than they were by 9/11, and I can completely understand why. Most of us don't live in NYC, and don't work in skyscrapers. But we all love to go to club shows, we've all been in that environment, we could see it happening to us. And it's horrifying to think about.

The show tonight was at The Showbox, which is a similar-sized venue to The Station in RI, and it's set up in the same basic fashion (as are most small clubs). There are plenty of fire exits, but few are clearly marked, the ceiling is low, and everything's made of wood. Standing there, scrunched up and surrounded by a throng of people, rocking out to the band, I couldn't help but picture what happened the other night. I couldn't help imagining what would happen if all those people were to be suddenly blinded, panicked, burning, and me in the thick of it. It's truly unimaginable, terrifying. None of those people had a chance.

When OK Go began to play "There's a Fire", Kathryn and I just looked at each other knowingly. Thankfully, tonight, there wasn't.