Smash Mouth in Concert

Sunday evening my son and I went to see Smash Mouth in concert nearby at the Belmont Country Club, the first in a summer-long series called Loudoun Music Fest. CCR Revisited was supposed to play two weeks ago but they were rained out. As you can see, this is an outdoor venue.

The opening act was a band called Mae, decent enough, rocking hard. Their set was a little long but pretty good. That's them in the first photo.

Smash Mouth came on after them and they rocked the house (OK, field) big time. One thing I thought while watching them is how it's pretty cool to see a band that was big (OK, sort of big) a few years ago. The reasons? 1) Tickets are much cheaper than seeing them in their hey day. 2) They've been doing this so long that if they didn't know how to do a concert right they wouldn't have lasted this long. 3) The crowds aren't overwhelming. As you can see, we sat pretty close to the stage!

You see the yellow-jacketed security guards? They were there to make sure none of us were audio or video recording the event (though many were, I'm sure). They also were guarding the fenced in VIP section in front of the stage. While the rest of us paid $15 - $20 for a ticket, those in the VIP section had paid about $40.

But something interesting happened after Smash Mouth got on stage and had played two or three songs. The lead singer, Steve Harwell, said that the concert would be a lot more fun if more people could be in front of the stage. The VIP section was pretty sparsely filled. He asked those who had paid a lot more for their seats and the security guards whether it would be OK with them if they let more people in. Put on the spot, what were they going to say? So in some of the photos you can see a lot of people hopping over the fence into the VIP section.

Steve was right. The concert was a lot more fun after that! I'm sure those who paid more for their seats weren't happy about it, but even they must have thought it was more fun to be standing and surrounded than just sitting there complacently.

Anyway, as the skies darkened and the full moon came out, the concert kept going. They played all of their famous songs and then some. You might know them as the band that sang I'm a Believer from the Shrek movie. You might also have seen them at the end of the very funny movie Rat Race.

Overall, it was a real fun concert!











I think the above photo I took is pretty cool. Click it to enlarge it!