This past weekend was to be a “belated” Christmas gift to the Cooper family. We’d held off on a few things this past Christmas. Not that we have big gift giving extravagant events, but we kept it “simple” this year. However, since we all love music, especially concert going, we thought we’d kick the winter blues by seeing Linkin Park, again. We’ve seen them in concert before and they put on one amazing show connecting with the fans and really putting it all out there.

So, back when the tour announcements were made back circa Nov/Dec of 07, Jodi was on her laptop hitting buy the moment the tickets went on sale. Rather than get just …any… seats, she decided to get the “Hot Seat” package which included exclusive front row seating, hospitality room and special LP gift, it was suppose to be special so we could enjoy ourselves AND be right there near the action.

Friday, Feb 29th, leap day and we’ll just pretend really never happened, we took off for Albuquerque New Mexico to attend the concert. Road trip!!! 7 hours later, we pulled into our hotel, had dinner and got some rest. The plan was to hang out most of Saturday before picking up the tickets at will call later. Our first order of business was shopping at Trader Joes! Closest one to Denver. We then took a side trip to Petroglyph National Monument to check out the trails and Indian drawings. Then down to Old Town for a light lunch made up of Mexican food and cervesa. Nice easy going morning.

The afternoon went down hill from there. Back at the room, Jodi just happened to stop by on the Linkin Park web site to check out some music videos and see about the venue we were heading to later. Low and behold, only to discover that LP had canceled. Not only was Albuquerque canceled, but they had to cancel El Paso as well. Chester Benefield, the lead singer was sick and couldn’t perform. Bummer.

Jodi and Dylan were extremely bummed out about this situation. Of course, now we had the prospect of heading home and not getting to see the show. We quickly packed our stuff, checked out of the hotel and started our road trip home. Needless to say, it was 7 hours of solid gloom in the car. I don’t think we even turned the radio on once. No music. Although, on the bright side, it was a really great drive. New Mexico desert is beautiful at sundown and the vista’s we took in were spectacular.

I guess the moral has two points of view. One, performers are just people and subject to illness like everyone else and we shouldn’t hold it against them. Second, when you travel for a schedule event, show or otherwise, it’s a risk pure and simple. There are no guarantees sometimes you have to take the highs with the lows. Sure, it stinks that they canceled, but that’s the risk you take and the way it goes.

Posted: March 5th, 2008 under Music, Personal, Travel.
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