Last night I was able to go up to Charlotte to see my favorite band O.A.R. play a show for Nascar’s all star week celebration or something like that.  I found out that my love of O.A.R. outweighs my dislike of Nascar.  The event was called Rev’d Up so of course O.A.R. had to ask the crowd if we were rev’d up after the first song.

We ended up parking in what appeared to be a slightly sketchy to moderately questionable parking lot. It became much more legitimate after we realized that the building next door was a modeling agency and 4 or 5 models happened to walk out as we were getting out of the car. Talk about a bad time to be holding a bag full of Taco Bell…

The show was in downtown Charlotte at 3rd & Mint street. As we made our way over to the stage, we were handed a toiletries bag with the Old Spice Racing team logo all over it.  We decided Charlotte must have told Nascar that if they were going to host a week long Nascar celebration, they would need to get someone to supply the people with deodorant and shower gel.  Also included was the weirdest free thing I’ve ever gotten: A rubber replica Jackie Moon aka Will Ferrell head.  The afro is to be used to wash your body.  Am I the only person that doesn’t want to wash myself with Will Ferrell’s hair?  Nascar fans were fascinated by the shower gel. I guess they had never seen or used it before. Their best guess was to take the top off and throw the open bottle through the air. The irony is that we were laughing about Nascar forcing hygiene products on their fans but James realized that he could use the bag to hold his toiletries instead the plastic WAL-MART BAG he was currently using.

There were a ton of people at this thing. I mean a ton.  They had video boards on both sides of the stage and before the concert started, they were playing Nascar interviews and commercials.  While we were walking around weaving our way through chain-smoking Nascar junkies, my friend P.J. thought it would be funny to yell, “HEY LOOK! ITS JEFF GORDON” every time a driver was being interviewed on the big screen. I wanted us to make it out of there alive so I convinced him to chill out.

The Speed Network was sponsoring the event and they had a brilliant idea to give everybody a plastic “glow disc” with their logo on them.  It took about 1 second for people to figure out that the discs were very throwable.  O.A.R.’s guitarist, Richard On, claimed on his Twitter (yes it is taking over the world) that when he got hit during his solo it knocked the wind out of him.  He realized after the show that the disc broke a necklace his mom gave him as a kid.  The lead singer got hit in the forehead during the last song of the night.

This was my 11th O.A.R. show and as usual the show was great.  There was definitely a bunch more crowd surfing than usual.  O.A.R. usually discourages it but they didn’t say anything last night, probably because the show was being aired on tv.  The fans at the show definitely had a fascination with crowd surfers falling flat on their faces.  Example A.

Until next time, I’m out like the Hawks.