Froglet's Prenatal Concerts 4 & 5

Or, why would a pregnant lady even want to go to a concert?

Somehow, Morgan and I had plans for four out of five evenings this week. All right, it was almost entirely my doing; the only plan he requested was Monday night's concert. Yes, that's right, I've been dragging myself around, exhausted, and our week was bracketed by Monday and Friday night concerts. Well, if we don't go now, when will we go?

Monday's show was "Formerly New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo" and they were, as expected, hilariously funny. For anyone not familiar with FotC, I highly recommend renting the first season of the HBO show. We expected this to be the easier of the two shows this week, since we had assigned seating (really good seats at that) and went to the earlier of the two shows they had that night. But due to some issues with the fire alarm system at the venue, the show was half an hour late starting and the will call line was ridiculous. I had to wade through crowds with my arms around my belly to keep people from walking into me. But it was all worth it - Bret and Jemaine were very pretty and very funny. And as we were attempting the leave the theater after the show, while the second show audience was attempting to arrive, Morgan got to turn around and snap at the idiot behind me, "Can you please stop pushing the pregnant lady!" For anyone who has ever questioned whether Morg can be menacing, yes he can. My hero.

Friday night's show was Jenny Lewis at the Fillmore. We saw her a year or so ago when she toured supporting Rabbit Fur Coat and loved her stage show. Morgan was a little on the fence about seeing her again, but we were both blown away by her performance last night, although it was as different as could be from the last tour. Whereas the Rabbit Fur Coat tour had shimmery little dresses, costume changes, and choreographed dancing, this show was much more stripped down, with more of a 70s acid rock vibe. Still amazing performances by Jenny and her band though, even if I missed the eerie harmonies of the Watson Twins. Also, no show poster. WTF?

Our big concern with this show was me being on my feet for that long (and we didn't even realize there were going to be two opening bands). I called the club the day before the show to see if it was possible to reserve disabled seats, which I noticed for the first time last month when we were there for the Ting Tings. According to the woman I spoke to, they do not reserve seats for pregnant women because "anyone could show up with a positive pregnancy test and claim to be disabled." I asked what my odds of getting a seat if I showed up with my 9 month belly; she checked to make sure that all the tables hadn't been reserved and told me my odds were good. And they were; we found the nice lady in charge of guarding the disabled seats and asked if it be possible to sit there since I am so very pregnant. She disappeared for a minute, then came back with badges for us to wear saying it was okay to sit there. And so we were introduced to disabled seating at rock shows. Morgan says he wants to always bring pregnant women to shows from now on. We did discover that probably the crappiest job at the club is the two poor women who have to herd people away from those seats; there is very limited seating at the Fillmore, and before the shows started, the two women basically patrolled back and forth, advising anyone (without a badge) who sat down that the seats were reserved. Our favorite response was the guy who wanted to argue with them: "Well, why would disabled people even want to come to a concert?" Why not?