The instant I heard Beach House’s latest album, “Teen Dream”, I fell in love – particularly with the opening song “Zebra,” featuring diaphanous, ethereal vocals with a sweet tinge of melancholy. Naturally I was super excited to find that Beach House is coming to Lawrence to play, and set about getting my tickets months in advance (yes, I’m one of those people).
First attempt: went down to the Jackpot with Krissy to get tickets to this show, and also for the upcoming Midlake concert.
“Oh, Midlake canceled, and we’re completely sold out of Beach House tickets,” said the bartender, delivering a double whammy of bad news. Krissy and I had been really excited about the Midlake show…and how in the world did an April show sell out by early February? “Oh, we’ll definitely have more Beach House printed and ready by next week, so just come back then.” Phew.
We decided to have a beer anyway and process this poor news before moving on, when a middle aged lesbian / bar lizard started talking our ears off – ranting about the latest city controversy regarding some designer drug in the process of becoming criminalized. She was, of course, most emphatically opposed to this and did not hesitate to let us know about it. She also had very interesting theories on how law enforcement is conducted in our fair city. There was a pretty controversial raid on a store that carried the drug (K2), and I mentioned the common speculation that this particular store had been raided because the owner had testified before the legislature on behalf of K2. I thought that this explanation would sound reasonable enough to paranoid people, but no…the old bar lizard decided the store had been raided, “because the government keeps track of receipts and what’s sellin’ out.” Apparently the electronic cash registers send some signal beam to some shadowy control center, where bureaucrats can monitor individual store sales and notice sharp upticks in the sale of quasi-legal items. Somehow her explanation also involved Little House on the Prairie?
Bar Lizard was highly entertaining to listen to, but – as with my father – my ears can only tolerate so much lecturing, no matter what the subject, so Krissy and I excused ourselves and shuffled off once the old bar lizard paused to take another swig of Hamm’s.
Attempt two: a friend of mine mentioned that Beach House had changed venues to the Granada to accommodate more people. A few days after the venue change had been officially announced, I rode up to the ticket window and asked the guy there about the tickets. “We don’t have those printed yet,” said he. “Come back next Monday.”
Attempt three: I rode back next Monday, to find the window deserted and the lights off inside. Grr…
Attempt four: Same as attempt three, though the lights were on inside. Nobody at the ticket window, though, and I had to meet some friends at the other end of Mass St so I just rode onwards.
Ever elusive Beach House tickets! I’d just resigned myself to haunting the ticket window every subsequent Monday, and maybe just trying to get tickets at the door – hoping that the tickets didn’t all sell out to other people.
Then yesterday, before heading down to meet my alcoholic friends at Harbor Lights (they basically showed up there right after the employees, but I thought drinking before noon was a bit much), I glanced at lawrence.com to check on the time of the Downtown St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Immediately underneath the time, I saw a posting about a Twitter contest to win tickets to four upcoming shows: Tegan & Sara, The Flaming Lips, Jonsi (lead singer for Sigur Ros) and – of course – Beach House. Apart from Beach House, all pretty expensive shows, and it would be a ridiculous boon to win tickets to all four of these shows. The contest was basically “look for a guy with a funny mustache in a green shirt.” Which, on St. Patty’s Day in Lawrence, is like half the population of the downtown area!
I met up with Krissy on her lunch break, when she came over to greet us (and maybe sneak a quick beer), when over her shoulder I noticed a guy standing at the bar, with a respectably full mustache and a green shirt. Suddenly, though the potential prize was admittedly sweet, I had a moment of doubt. How do I walk up to him and say, “hey, are you the guy from the Internet contest?” Even if he was, there was just no non-dorky way of saying this.
Luckily Krissy was there, because I just informed her of the dilemma and without hesitation, she walked right up to the mustachioed man and said, “Do you have tickets?” Mustachioed man reluctantly said, “you’ve got me” – poor guy had been hoping that the contest would last a bit longer.
Disappointing for him but exciting for us: WE WON! I never win contests! Twitter actually made itself useful! Maybe it was Fate that prevented me from successfully purchasing those Beach House tickets. What a lucky day yesterday was, for a girl without a drop of Irish blood in her veins.
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hehehe mustache man maybe disappointed the contest didn’t last as long, but if I recall you bought him a beer and I offered to buy him beers all night if he appeared at Replay later on, so I think he was okay in the end.
I am so glad we won those tickets and made it to all the shows. So many good times:)
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