Tonight my husband and I went to the Metheny/Melhdau concert, which is a jazz quartet, led by guitarist Pat Metheny and pianist Brad Melhdau. 

Pat Metheny is one of my husband's favorite musicians.  He's also really into Chick Corea and Dave Weckl.  You see, he earned a perfomance degree in Jazz Studies at North Texas (in percussion), which has a highly regarded jazz studies program.  He was slated to become a professional musician, but decided that he didn't want the life of a musician.  The travelling, being on tour for months on end with one gig or another didn't appeal to him.  But he still appreciates jazz music.

I bought these tickets for our wedding anniversary a few months ago, only to find out he had already bought tickets and was planning on going with a friend of his.  Instead he gave his tickets to his friend, who brought along a date, and we used the tickets I purchased.  Unfortunately, my tickets were row J, while Mike's tickets were row BB!  We got a laugh out of that...his friend was in the second row!  What great seats right?  Guess again.

The thing with these types of concerts is you never know who is going to show up.  You have the season ticket holders, who show up because they bought tickets to the whole season; you've got the jazz nerds (my husband) who really like jazz and actually own this guy's albums (Mike's got 'em all) and then you've got your freaky-freaks.

Lord of the Freaks was sitting right in front of Mike's friend in row AA (the front row).  At first we couldn't see him, but we switched seats to the side orchestra seats, (which were elevated) in the middle of the concert.  The place was only half-full, so there were a lot of empty seats.  BTW - this is a concert with no singing, just music; each 'song' is 15 minutes long; and people stay seated.

From our new vantage point I could see Mike's friend and his date, and then noticed the guy in front of them was convulsing to the music.  He was literally leaning sideways in his chair, with his legs sticking out over the side rail since he was in the chair next to the aisle.  He was moving from side to side, making weird faces - the whole nine yards.  I pointed him out to Mike who was just as horrified as I was - it was like a car wreck - we couldn't look away.

After the concert we met up with Mike's friend and his date.  They said the guy was rubbing his body with his hands during the concert; leaning his head back with his eyes closed making faces; eating candy bars and then licking all his fingers one by one; placing his candy bars (yep, he had several) on the stage like it was his own personal coffee table; yelling at the musicians ("you guys rock" "more, more"); and apparently he had what they thought was his friend sitting next to him, who got up and left after the first 30 minutes and never came back!

Not only that, but they said the guy in back of them wouldn't shut-up when the concert started and then he pulled out his cell phone and began playing games on it until his wife told him to 'cut it out'.  Guess they didn't have the best seats after all.