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This fine, and finally,
warm evening found me surrounded by friends and
acquaintances who were virgins to the outdoor
phenomenon that is Red Rocks Amphitheater. I personally
couldn’t figure out why such a sizeable
quantity of people who had been in this area for
upwards of a year or two had still not been to
a show at this venue, but circumstance would prove
that this group of kids couldn’t have picked
a better first show. Perhaps
one of the most amazing feats of the evening,
for me, was managing to meet up with three different
groups of people in the same effin parking lot.
When does that ever happen at Red Rocks? After
parking my car, I whipped out my cell to locate
party #1, and lo and behold they were literally
two cars straight ahead of us. Libations were
had, Cheetos were consumed, and once a few full
rounds of hacky sack were finished, we made
our way into the stadium.
Screams of excitement and
jubilation bounced off the steep walls as Manu
Chao took the stage, ripping open the
evening with their first track of the evening.
The arena was packed, full
of more shirtless white kids than I have seen
in a long time. There was not one still body
in the crowd, except perhaps for my friend Justin
who was on crutches, but even he managed to
move around a bit despite his temporary handicap,
proving that the audience was hell-bent on shakin’
what it took their mommas nine months to make.
And Chao certainly delivered, playing high-energy
tracks and speeding up the normally laid-back
“Bomba-La’s” to an intense
frenzy of guitar and keyboards.
Manu Chao was born to Spanish
and Basque parents who moved to France when
Chao was a child to escape the dictatorship
of Franco. As a result, he grew up in suburban
Paris, surrounded by artists and philosophers,
which consequently caused an insatiable thirst
for diversity in his life, and eventually, his
music. Singing in a variety of languages, this
manifestation of multiplicity was quite evident.
I may not have understood any of the words,
but the language of shaking your ass is definitely
universal, and it seems that everyone else in
the crowd understood it, too.
In short, this was one of
the highest octane shows of the summer, and
I am almost positive that the crowd had ten
times more fun than the band did. That’s
not to say that Chao and his band didn’t
enjoy themselves, but had there been any more
excitement, we probably would have seen stretchers
wheeling out people having exhilaration seizures!
-Anne Vickman
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