Oprah 2.0

Each year in early June Walmart has its' annual shareholders meeting.  This means you avoid the Bentonville Walmart if you don't want to get swarmed by large groups of international associates in matching t-shirts singing stupid chants.  It also means two nights of free concerts.  This is one of the few benefits of working for Walmart.  In previous years you just showed up to Bud Walton Arena and waited to go in, if they filled up then oh well.  We had to wait for two hours a few years ago to see REO Speedwagon and The Barenaked Ladies and several years ago the Eagles filled up before we even drove down to Fayetteville.  This year they changed things up a bit and had everyone get tickets over the Internet.  Still free, but now with assigned seating.  I think this was good, but for a couple things.

 1.  Last min they changed when they were releasing the tickets, so lots of people thought they tickets were going on sale Monday morning but they actually went Sunday night. 
2.  You could get up to four tickets.  I get the idea of taking the family, but it was super sad to see 4 empty seats in a row.  Next year do two and make people choose who they take. 

So this year less crowds and waiting, but the one thing waiting is good for is making sure that the die hard fans do get to go.  I felt a teensy bit guilty both nights that I wasn't a die hard Carrie Underwood or Aerosmith fan.  I did enjoy both concerts though. 

So we got four tickets to both concerts.  We even had a deal with Jeff's friend that they would both get tickets to Aerosmith and then use the better seats.  It turned out that Jeff's friend got the better seat (3rd row!) so we had 4 tickets to Aerosmith to give away. 

I took my cousin Joe's wife Teriney with me to Carrie Underwood.  They came up with their kids for Memorial Day and we had a fantastic visit.  The kids played so well together and we adults just talked and ate pie.  That also left me with two tickets to Carrie to give away. 

Let me tell you how much fun it was to be the ticket fairy this week.  I felt like Oprah, "And you get a ticket and you get a ticket!"  I was only saddened that I didn't have more to give away.

Both concerts were a BLAST!  I am not even a country fan, but man that woman is talented.  I loved every song and she sang the Hell out of them.  Some guy named Chris Young opened for her, and when his band came on stage I was like, "Why is everyone cheering for the roadies?"  Dudes looked like they rolled out of a Mcdonalds...or Walmart...  I was bored by his music, but lucky enough to be in good company.  I also had great seats for this concert.  Row Seven.

Cheap Trick opened for Aerosmith and those boys know how to dress.  Nothing says rock star like white leather pants.  The only song I knew was "I want you to want me."  Which was their best song, and pretty awesome.  Aerosmith came one and there was only one song I didn't know.  The rest were great and I appreciate that Steven Tyler put on a good show.  He didn't seem to just be going through the motions. 

We sat just above the tech guys and it was fun to see before hand what songs they were going to sing and what chit chat was gonna go down.  I found it funny that the lyrics were all supposed to be the clean ones but Steven choose to bust out the more controversial words.  Whatever.  It was fun.