Uproar Fest and Rain

Last weekend, Uproar Fest was in Dallas. We went for free. Well, got in for free. 

The stuff they sell inside, and the 4 hours roundtrip is anything but free. :-)

Chuck, the manpiece, has a habit of getting free things from the radio station. You know how they run those contests asking trivia questions about bands and whatnot. On his days off he usually listens to the radio. I can not count the number of free movie tickets and local hockey game tickets we've won. More common than that is 2 free passes into our favorite pub for what ever band may be playing there. (it's normally only 7 or 8 bucks to get in, but still. free is free!!). I'm at work one day and get a text from him asking me to go to Uproar, an all day music festival in Dallas. At what will probably be $40 a person, I tell him I only like a few of the bands playing and lets skip it. Then he tells me it's free. Whaaat?! You know what he did in order to get these ones? They played a few seconds of a song BACKWARDS and he named it.

 That guy has more music knowledge than is probably good for him!

So we went to Uproar. It rained. All. Day. Not that downpour, but that light drizzle. It would take about 2 hours to get completely soaked, but once you are, you're cold and there isn't any drying. We ended up stopping for lunch and skipping the worst of the rain and didn't get there until around 2pm. 

He looks a little happier than I do here. Note the orange poncho. We stopped and picked up two of them at the store outside the venue. By the time I took this photo, you can see it's getting dark. It was around 7pm maybe. It had pretty much stopped raining and I was so sick of being under plastic, I took mine off! 

 

Fozzy was probably the best on the smaller stages. If you recognize him, that's because his name is 

Chris Jericho. Y2J. He used to be a wrestler!! His band was pretty awesome. 

 

I love how you can see the rain coming down in this one!! Deuce. He was kicked out of Hollywood Undead. Looks like he's doing pretty good for himself still. :-)

We skipped P.O.D because I can't stand them. Redlight Kings I was excited about, but they were not impressive at all. So we wandered around after this. Grabbed some overpriced drinks and then headed into the main stage area. Since our tickets were free, they were in the grass area. Way in the back. We picked out a good spot on the grass right over the walkway where we could also people-watch.

 We couldn't even see the individual people on the stage we were so far back!! 

Sat there through Adelitas Way, Staind, and Godsmack. Then something pretty amazing happened.

A couple walked by and motioned us down to them. Chuck went down and they talked for a second, then I watched him leap off the little wall and ONTO the man, giving him a bear hug. 

They were leaving the show early, and gave us their second row seats for the last band. The ONLY thing that would be in between us and the stage is the pit area, and one row. That's it!!!

Oh. Hello. 

Shinedown.

So nice to see you SO CLOSE. Ahhhh!! Shinedown was the main reason I wanted to go. How did we get so lucky that we not only nabbed free tickets, but also got free front row spots!??! That above photo is NOT zoomed in at all. That's how far we were!!!! They were amazing. One of the best shows I've seen.

If you ever are leaving a show early, give your tickets to a few strangers. It can really make their day.

We got to spend the last hour at the venue dry, under a roof, close up, with seats.

A little kindness goes a long way. :-)