Garth Brooks is Coming! Quick… TURN AROUND!

“Just the other night, at a Sacramento music gig, I witnessed concert goer behavior, befitting of a pig…”

Last Wednesday night, on April Fool’s Day of course, I found myself seated on the floor in the third row of a Garth Brooks concert. This wasn’t my first rodeo with Garth… that actually happened at his final public concert before retiring back in 2001. That night I saw trucks painted headlight to trunk with “GARTH OR BUST!” coming from Oklahoma and Texas and every other state that was far far away from the city of Los Angeles, and learned just how rowdy your friends in low places really get. So I thought I was prepared for the madness I was going to endure for 3 hours… and I was for the most part!

I wore comfy boots. I was ready to scream out the lyrics to all those songs I started memorizing in middle school. And I had my iPhone in my wristlet, ready to capture just enough photos and videos to carry as memories from that night.

When Garth Brooks came over to stage right to sing to our section of the crowd, I tried my best to put my phone down and just stare him down. That didn’t work ALL the time… but I really consciously tried my best.

And I wasn’t the only person there with my phone ready to go. Phones were up in the air all night to capture everything!

But I wasn’t really doing the whole photo thing “right” I guess. Because the people in the two rows in front of me… you know… the ones who could actually reach out and touch his jeans? They did the exact opposite throughout the concert.

The second he got in their vicinity, they grabbed their phones and flipped their backs to Garth.

Why?

You guessed it.

SELFIES.

Now I tried my best to not be the crotchety old “that’s not how they did it back when I was a hip young concert-goer” lady….because I did take a couple myself that night…

So I let it roll off my back and just watched it all happen around me. A group of women in the center front row got Garth to laugh in the middle of the super ballad, “Shameless” due to their antics of taking photos posing with his feet. And during the third encore, a heavily intoxicated young lady pushed her way through our row and almost decked the group of women next to me in her attempt for a 360-degree selfie video of herself.

When I got home I shared the tales of the silly selfie folks with family and friends. And when I started flipping through my photos, I noticed that I had photographic evidence of it as well.

Notice the gentleman on the far right in the front row. Garth is singing to the back of his head.

But luckily Garth notices what is going on (this is definitely not HIS first selfie concert), and decides to sing to the phone instead. (Notice there’s another person on the right doing the same thing)

Can you count how many selfies are going on in this photo? I’ve got 3… but I’m sure I’m missing a couple…

What’s that? Oh… just the couple in front of me taking yet another selfie…

I guess that last one wasn’t good enough for those two, so they tried a higher angle.

Who knows when selfie-mania will be over and done (if ever!), but at least these folks weren’t holding up their iPads all night! I hope, for their sakes, that all those snaps came out crystal clear too… because it’s not every night that you have the chance to look into Garth Brook’s eyes as he sings straight to you.