The CBC Radio 3 Blog community was home to a discussion of superfans recently. Normally, I would find the rabid superfan a little off-putting. They tend to be louder, pushier….a lot of things ending in -er, most of them unpleasant.
But at tonight’s rodeo/Reba concert I got to watch a superfan who actually made my own concert experience better.
About 5-6 rows ahead of me tonight, there was a girl, who looked about 11, and her Dad. The kid was sporting her “All The Women I Am” Reba shirt and a lot of barely contained excitement. You could tell in one look at the kid that she was stoked about this. Dad appeared to be patient and mildly amused. I think I noticed them because it reminded me so much of my first Reba concert when I was 11–Dad took me, and displayed the same amused patience. Throughout the rodeo, she was watching, paying attention–Dad was pointing things out and clearly explaining things–but radiated a kind of tense anticipation.
When Reba finally took to the stage, the entire Sprint Center stood for the first two songs, but after the rest of us had settled back in our seats, that kid was still on her feet, clapping and singing along. She stood the entire concert (her seat position and her height prevented this from annoying anyone behind her–and the volume meant that her singing along could in no way offend anyone around her). At one point I saw her glancing down at her palms, clearly contemplating whether the sting of all that clapping was worth it. I suppose it must have been, because she shrugged and kept going. She even sang along with the medley of older stuff. And when I say older, I’m not talking about “Fancy” or anything from the 90s. I’m talking “Can’t Even Get the Blues”…from 1982. Her Dad was probably still in school when that one came out.
I actually found myself wishing I was seated next to her. As it was, other than my empty seat, and the PDA couple directly in front of me (side note: there was also a Radio 3 Blog discussion of concert PDA), I was surrounded by un-impressively passive people my parents’ ages. They totally didn’t get into the concert, which was physically painful, because in the stripped down and truncated version of the performance (rodeo concerts tend to be less elaborate), there were maybe 4 slower songs (1 of which was “Because of You” in which Reba turned the mic on the audience for large chunks).
How much nicer would it have been to have been along side the kid, bopping along with her? To catch a little of that enthusiasm and feel like it’s totally okay to keep clapping and enjoying the hell out of the moment? Even at a distance, I feel like I got something out of seeing this girl watch the show, and I guess that’s enough.
I hope she enjoyed the concert as much as I did–though I strongly suspect she may have enjoyed it even more.
