Summer concerts - now and then

I had big plans this week - U2 was supposed to be performing at the Oakland Coliseum yesterday. But Bono's back injury while rehearsing in Germany, which led to back surgery and a need to recuperate, sort of ruined that for me. The latest news is that he is doing well rehabilitating with Lance Armstrong somewhere in Europe - at least according to People Magazine. The concert is supposed to be rescheduled, but it probably won't happen until some time in 2011.

I am hoping that this postponed concert experience works out better than the one I had in college, when a bunch of friends and I got tickets to a Bjork concert. We bought the tickets from the Wherehouse Music store, which used to be a ticket vendor. And then Bjork got a bladder infection the week of the Los Angeles concert. At the time I was pretty pissed that it got cancelled - but now that I've experienced a bladder infection and the extreme pain that comes with it I totally get it. The problem was the concert was cancelled and all the ticketholders were encouraged to get a refund and repurchase tickets if and when the concert got rescheduled.

My friends and I went back to the Wherehouse Music where we had bought the tickets - and it was a our bad luck that in the time between when we bought the tickets and needed to get a refund, Wherehouse Music had left the business of being a ticket vendor. They refused to give us a refund and the concert was never rebooked. So we were just out the money.

I am hopeful that the U2 concert will get rescheduled - even though I know it probably won't happen anytime this summer. But I do have another option for summer entertainment - and it will be a lot cheaper than tickets to U2.

The Spin Doctors are scheduled to perform at the Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk - for free. Now the Spin Doctors are not one of my favorite bands at any rate, but they do hold a special place in my heart as the first rock concert I ever went to with my friends. I was 15, and my cousin bought me three tickets to the concert at Great America - featuring Screaming Trees, Soul Asylum and the Spin Doctors. It was the perfect day for a group of noisy, goofy teenage girls - we all had season passes so we got in for free to the park and we spent the day riding all our favorite rides and flirting with the cute boys who worked on the log ride.

At the end of the day, we headed over to the amphitheater and were shocked at all the beer and pot smokers in the audience. Now I know it's just part of the concert-going experience - as with the U2 Rose Bowl concert when the person sitting behind us started puking as the concert ended due to a mix of too much beer, too much pot and too much sun.

At the Spin Doctors concert we sang along to all the songs we knew, which I will admit weren't that many. But we loved the Spin Doctors "Two Princes" and "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong," probably like every other kid our age. The music wasn't great and the performance was just okay. But it was at a time when my little trio of friends thought life would always be just the three of us having a good time - back before college, relationships, careers and life made it a lot more difficult to get together for things like a concert with our favorite band of the moment.