A Very Delco Concert Experience
Perhaps your experience goes something like this:
Bunny’s note: What you are about to read is 100% accurate and based strictly on the true events and various highlights from your favorite staff members’ past. Its content has been constructed as a collective telling to illustrate a typical Delco resident’s concert experience.
Only the names of those involved have been kept anonymous for the sake of their protection. But not really.
I get dressed in record time and head downstairs, but not before catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. From the feet up—sneakers, cargo shorts, a rock n’ roll t-shirt, and a smile. I grab the keys—and the tickets—and I’m out.
A normal 5-seat car can fit 5 people comfortably. But not today. Today I need at the very least 7-8 people in that car. And there’s not much room in the trunk because it’s equipped with the day’s essentials: chips, pretzels, a 2 ft Wawa hoagie (with, literally, everything), a bag of apples, a case of water, a few Lunchables, some burgers, dogs, and sausages, cheese, buns, a few cases of Natty Ice, a case of T-bombs, drugs, lawn chairs, a football, a Bag-o set, more drugs, toilet paper, and a change of fresh undies. We’re good to go.
The traffic across the bridge is pretty decent and pulling into the lot of the Tweeter Center proves to be relatively painless. But wait—holy fuck!!! A sudden gust of wind has picked up at such an inopportune time that a local vender loses what seems to be 5, maybe 6, dollars, and 3 hood rat black guys chase after them like they’re running from the cops after a botched robbery. Hilarity ensues in my car as we mock the bastards. Yep—we’re in Camden, alright.
As I throw my parking break down and pop I trunk, I take a look around before even opening my first beer. Oh yea, I say to myself. This is where I belong. I barrel through my CD collection to find the right mix and turn it up to 11, as I take my chair out and bask in the afternoon sunshine, a frosty beverage in one hand and my penis in the other.
Profanity is fired out of each and every one of our mouths faster than it took the members of the Motion Picture Association of America to vomit while watching the premiere of The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence). Everyone jokes and has a great time, while cooking burgs and doggies, tossing around the pigskin, smoking some drugs in the car, taking leaks out in the public, and so on and so forth. A few of us venture out to find some balloons—and boy, do we ever. Our tailgate looks like a circus from the Holocaust by the time that we get done with all that shit. And, as the sun starts to retreat, so also do many of our buddies. A few fall asleep in their chairs. A few fall asleep in the car. Others go to chase some older looking babes (one even successfully pulls down a mother of…he didn’t get that far). Still, others continue to delve in their drunken abandon.
Drinking in the grueling sun for hours on end leaves any good concert-lover pretty famished. It is at this time that a few buddies decide to venture off for some nutrition. Nutrition in the form of brownies. Unbeknownst to them, these brownies don’t consist simply of Nestle chocolate, eggs, and milk. After housing 3-4 each, any chance at remembering their concert experience is basically shot.
Bunny’s note: One of the more difficult things during a Delco concert—if not THE most difficult—is actually remembering the concert.
Jump forward an hour or so as we begin to pack everything into the car and round up the troops to make our terrible walk to the venue. There’s barf everywhere. I barf. Everywhere.
A quick pat down at the entrance gate doesn’t distress us, since our buddy has hidden his pot in his undies, along with a freshly rolled J…a J rolled entirely out of a George Washington. That’s desperation. But, after all, what’s a concert without intentionally smoking a little dope in the actual concert? Well, I’ll tell you exactly what it is: One that you unintentionally smoke a little PCP in the actual concert.
Now, I’ve always been more curious than cautious, so far be it for me to totally dismiss the off-chance that I wouldn’t have passed down the opportunity for a little angel dust if the mood struck me. But, this is totally different. While reciting the lyrics to song after song and just generally making an ass out of ourselves, some random looking cat hands my 2 buddies and I a pre-rolled blunt with a Black-N’-Mild tip. That should have been the first red flag, but remember—we’re at a concert. Our senses of reasoning and good judgment are completely turned off. 4-5 hits later…Jesus God…wasn’t just weed.
Few things in this life are scarier than when you intentionally drug yourself unintentionally.
Bunny’s note: This absolutely happened once more 2 years later. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, well, then I’m just a total dickhead.
Snap back to reality. The concert’s over. The shitty walk back to the car is accompanied by a slew of slurred words and praise for the show that was and a reconnaissance mission to gather as many single cans of beer as we could to bring back to the car. It was a success. An overwhelming success, actually. The post-concert tailgate is always a fan favorite and certainly a staple in an concert experience. Especially when it’s met with the realization that one of your buddies’ head units was jacked from his parked car. To this day, I’ve never seen nor heard the amount of racism spewed at a very high level in the middle of Camden from this bastard’s mouth matched anywhere in the world. It was outstanding.
An hour later, the traffic towards the exits looks to have died down and it’s time to decide the most dangerous task of them all. Yep—the shitty decision of who had to grip the steering wheel on the way home. You know as well as I know that nobody in their right mind wants to be this guy. Ever. But, of course, some poor sap is chosen—consequently ridiculed—and has to pretend like he didn’t just spend the last 12 hours drinking until he couldn’t remember his favorite color.
The car ride is hilarious…well, for everyone but the driver. The son of a bitch is trying relentlessly to focus on the road ahead as the other assholes behind him play with the radio and put things over his eyes while on the bridge. This could have proven to have been pretty goddamn deadly if we were traveling the speed limit. But we aren’t. We pass a construction site with a speed indicator. 16 MPH. We were going 16 miles per hour. Remember guys—safety first.
But, against all odds, we get home. I had survived the treacherous ride. I smell like drugs and alcohol. I go to bed un-showered. I piss my pants.
It is 9 hours later and I wake up to a text message: “Hey man—how was the concert? What did they close with? How many encores?”
My mind races as I recall the events from the day before. I close my eyes and really try to think of the perfect answer. The perfect answer to smear it in this asshole’s face and make him jealous as shit for not going. But, I wasn’t sure how to put it. I couldn’t find the words. Perhaps I’m just entirely too hung over to respond with any kind of bravado or moxy. Perhaps it’s too early in the morning—it’s 12:30 in the afternoon. Perhaps I had just lost my sense of sting. What was it? Think, goddamn you, think!!!
And then it hits me—like a sack of bricks straight to the bag. The only thing that I know for sure, the only thing that I am completely and utterly positive about…is that I don’t have an answer for this prick. I totally don’t remember the show. Not even a little bit. A wasted day? Maybe. Probably. I hang my head in defeat.
Son of a bitch.
But, if you find yourself in a similar situation as mentioned above, don’t fret, because you’re not alone. You spent your concert experience exactly the way that 95% of Delaware County spends theirs, and hey, at least you never have to say “Wow—I’ll never see a show like that ever again!!!” or “Oh man—I’ll never forget that!!!”
-Bunny