The best imaginable way... until my friend who saw the concert in Chicago told me about what Adam Levine did for a birthday girl in the audience during her concert that is. According to my friend, the birthday girl was sitting in the first rows of the audience with her friends and they screamed that it was her birthday to Adam - and he heard them! He pulled the girl onto the stage with him, shushed the entire audience so he could hear her name, and then proceeded to PUT HIS ARMS AROUND HER AND SERENADE HER ON STAGE.
Oh. My. God.
I would have died of happiness if I were that girl!
While Adam Levine didn't serenade me on stage as a birthday gift, my experience at the Maroon 5 concert was still AWESOME, to say the least.
When I first found out who my roommates for the year were going to be over the summer, I was already talking to one of them about buying tickets and going to the concert in November. Our similar tastes in music was one of the first things that bonded us together.
We wanted to buy our tickets right then and there as we were looking at seats and prices on Ticketmaster together, but we hesitated because we hadn't talked to our other roommate about the concert yet and didn't want her to feel left out.
While we were putting up the huge Maroon 5 poster I bought in our room during Welcome Week, our HA came in to tell us about some upcoming activity and noticed our poster. She exclaimed that she LOVED Maroon 5 too and that she was going to their concert in November, and a few whirlwind minutes later, we secured a ride with her to the concert and rushed online to purchase the tickets the moment our HA left the room.
The available tickets left in September weren't nearly as good as the ones we saw on Ticketmaster earlier in the summer, but the mere idea of getting to see MAROON 5 LIVE ON STAGE was enough to make us three very, very happy people.
After we bought our tickets, we grinned like maniacs for the next few days at any mention of "Maroon 5" or "concert," but once classes started and the fast pace of the quarter system got to us, the concert kind of slipped into the backs of our minds.
Before we knew it, it was the night of the concert!
I had two midterms and a big political science paper due on the week of the concert, so by Friday night, I was feeling pretty burnt out. While I was still looking forward to the concert, I just didn't have the energy to be as giddy or excited as I probably would have been under normal circumstances before the concert.
My roommates and I met up with our HA and her friend before the concert to have dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen near UCSD. I guess growing up in San Francisco, where it would be pretty hard to find one block without some kind of "restaurant" on it, distorted my idea of "going out to eat" because in my mind, chain restaurants would not have been involved.
After our meal, we headed toward Cox Arena, relying solely on my HA's hand-held GPS device for guidance. There was some initial confusion (the freeways around San Diego are crazy complicated!), but we eventually arrived at the arena and even managed to beat the big rush since we were a little on the early side.
Right after we agreed on an after-concert meeting place with our HA, the first thing my roommates and I did was to join the mobs of people crowding around the merchandise stand. Even though we knew concert merchandise was going to be insanely overpriced, we had to get ourselves a shirt and perhaps some other small souvenirs while we were there. I mean, how could we resist? It was MAROON 5!!
Being in the actual arena with the huge crowds really pumped us up, and I was squealing every few minutes from sheer excitement. I fell in love with this light blue shirt I saw on display, and after a jumbled-up-by-excitement mental debate, I handed over my last dollars to the person behind the stand in exchange for the shirt:
The shirt cost me $40 (I know, I know, $40 for a T-SHIRT - "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING???") at the concert, but I just checked online and it is selling for $24.95 on Maroon 5's official site! I feel ripped off because that was a HUGE increase in price, but I guess the extra ten or so dollars that the total would have come to after shipping costs to buy the shirt online was worth it to be able to wear my favorite new t-shirt on my birthday and to rave on and on about how AMAZING the concert was to anybody who commented on my shirt.
In addition to the shirt, I also bought a reasonably priced poster ($5), and a small souvenir for a friend of mine who I knew LOVED Maroon 5 too. I now have exactly three one dollar bills in my wallet and am down to a small double-digit sum in my checking account. Not good.
"FREE" is my favorite word right now.
After we decked ourselves out in official Maroon 5 merchandise, my roommates and I found our seats inside the arena and took a million pictures of ourselves while we waited for the show to begin.
When the lights dimmed for the first opening act (Phantom Planet), the arena was still pretty empty, so the energy and excitement just wasn't there during their performance.
If you've never heard of Phantom Planet before (which was the case for me, before the concert), think of "The OC" and their theme song - they are the ones singing it!
Their music was pretty good, and while I didn't fall head over heels in love with them like my roommates did. I was quite smitten by the group's very cute lead singer. He told us they would be signing copies of their exclusive EP after the second opening act's (The Hives) performance, so my roommates and I rushed out of the arena when their performance was finished to buy their EP in hopes of meeting the lead singer later. Since The Hive's EP was only $5, we decided to get a copy of their CD too. The saddest part was that I didn't even have eight dollars in cash on me - I had to use my dad's credit card!
The Hive's performance didn't impress me too much either; it was cool that they were a band from Sweden and I loved how interactive the lead singer was with the audience, but their music just wasn't my cup of tea, if you know what I mean. Too angry.
Unfortunately, we didn't find out exactly WHERE Phantom Planet was signing CDs after the second opening act, so we never did get the chance to meet the cute lead singer. That (along with the opening acts, in my opinion, though my roommates both FELL IN LOVE with Phantom Planet and The Hives after seeing them live) was the one small disappointment of the night, but the moment Maroon 5 and the UNBELIEVABLE ADAM LEVINE exploded onto the stage, their music was pumping through my body and all even slightly negative thoughts were driven out of my mind.
In between all the screaming and singing along of the lyrics, it was like I was in some kind of trance; if you asked me for the details of the concert (such as what songs they performed on stage), I probably wouldn't be able to give them to you because I was so into what was happening at the moment that nothing beyond, "OMG THIS IS SO AWESOME", registered in my brain.
The arena literally EXPLODED with screams and noise from the audience when Maroon 5 came on stage. The energy was amazing.
While I've probably listened to Maroon 5's albums hundreds of times now (until I saw Jersey Boys over the summer, if you took a look at my iPod at any given time, there would most likely have been a Maroon 5 track playing) and Adam's voice and lyrics have become "the soundtrack of my life" of sorts, hearing them live was a completely surreal experience that I can barely begin to describe. If you thought their music was good on the album, hearing Adam sing LIVE would blow your mind, like it did mine. I knew he was a good singer, but I had NO IDEA that he wasn't just "good", he was GREAT. Their songs took on completely new meaning performed live, and I don't think I will ever listen to their albums in the same passive way ever again.
When you look at pictures or posters of Maroon 5, the members may seem like the typical cocky rock-star types, and Adam Levine, being the lead singer, would seem to naturally be the cockiest and most arrogant of them all. THAT IS NOT TRUE AT ALL. Adam and the rest of the "Maroon 4"'s presence on stage did not emanate any hint of arrogance or cockiness whatsoever - in fact, Adam seemed like a very sensitive and sweet guy who just so happened to have an AMAZING voice and all those colored lights shining on him as he soulfully belted out the lyrics to his songs on the "M" shaped stage.
I think we all fell a little more in love with Adam Levine after that unbelievable night.
The best part of the concert was that Maroon 5 seemed like they were having an absolute blast performing for us on stage, and that positive energy multiplied itself times a million and engulfed the packed arena, just like the smoke/fog machines did.
Albums are nice, but music is meant to be listened to live, and the Maroon 5 concert was solid gold proof of that.
(P.S. In case you were wondering, the password is the date of the concert, in MMDDYYYY format. Figure it out.)
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