An after-action report from the Everclear/Democratic party rally/concert thing.

I knew they were coming, and was going to go. Got to try and take my history midterm through them soundchecking... "Yup. Yup. Yup." went on for a while. Which of course made me want to get the hell out of class and on over to the MU where they were playing. Unfortunately I got out of there so fast that I got to stand around for an hour. Luckily about half my friends were there, so I got to BS for a while and generally hang out waiting while dodging various people with flyers and things telling me how to vote. It was primarily a Democrat thing, but a bunch of Bush people were there, along with a few Nader supporters.

After eons of waiting, a guy that I've never heard of before from some campus organization that I've never heard of before got up and did the introductions. In his REALLY crappy speech he mentioned that Ron Wyden (Oregon senator, the original speaker) wasn't going to be here today, so we got the Oregon SecState, Bill Bradbury instead. Then we got the campus president/VP to give their little speeches (they did way better), and then Bill got up. Wearing an OSU football jersey. And his speech wasn't all that bad, as speeches go. He's just not a great speech giver.

But that's ok, cause Everclear was next, and we all knew what we were there for anyway, right? Let me preface this with the admission that I am not really an Everclear fan, I just went for the music and to see what the speeches were going to be. But they rocked. It kicked off with something to the effect of: "Get those Goddamn Bush/Cheney signs down! Don't you know they suck? Do you know what they're going to DO to you?" etc etc. The Bush people didn't like it much, and continued to wave their little things around, whereupon the response was "Look guys, I'm older than you. I have a lot more staying power. I'm not playing a note until those things go down." things calmed down at that point, and they began playing.

And they rocked. I don't know any of the songs, but it was good. There was a lot of people crowd surfing, lots of jumping up and down, people singing along (which was really cool), and the highlight of the show: Two girls not far from me got up on somebody's shoulders and started flashing the band. He played it pretty well, although I forget what he said. Something about breasts and choices and something. It was funny, whatever it was.

Songs ended, and the little pep talk began. And lemme tell ya, politicians should take lessons from rock stars, because they can give a speech better than any politician. Obligatory stuff about choices, how the Democrats are cool, etc. He gave a pretty good pro-abortion talk. Things broke up after that, and now here I am.

It should be noticed that A, this is my first concert, and B, this is my first political rally. Both aspects were pretty good, although I can't help but wonder if Wyden would have been a better speaker than Bradbury. No complaints about Everclear though. I'm actually inspired to listen to their albums now, as a matter of fact. Plus the whole thing was free, and I got a good excuse to skip out of math. How good does it get?