the GRITS experience

I had an interesting night yesterday!
The GRITS were in town and my friend Lisa and I really wanted to see them. They were at Waterloo Rec Complex performing for a closed convention. Meaning that unless you paid to attend the entire weekend, you weren't getting in. Very stupid. Anyways, we knew this before hand so I tried to arrange to be volunteers so that we could get in. I talked to my friend Ben, who talked to his friend Bob. He said we could be volunteers and he'd get us in. Well, Bob never called to let us know when to be there. Our last effort to get in touch with him was Friday afternoon when he was to pick up speakers at my office but he ended up sending someone else to pick them up. Grrr! I then gave Sarah my cell number to give to Ben so that he could call me and let me know whats up. Surprise, well not really, Ben never got my number (at least to my knowledge). But Lisa and I weren't giving up. We decided to go anyways and just tell whomever was at the gate that we were to be volunteers for a guy named Bob and they could varify that with him. We hoped that they would know who Bob was b/c we didn't even know his last name or what he did. Well, the girl at the gate was totally power tripping. Oi! She just basically said that she didn't believe us and that we'd have to pay $75, which was the full price for the entire weekend. It was rediculous b/c GRITS was already playing and they were only playing a 6 song set. I didn't think they were playing until 10pm so we thought we were 1.75 hours early. Nope. We told them at this point that all we wanted to see was the GRITS and that we were willing to pay to see, what would have been 5 songs at this point, but no dice. Frustrating! So I went to the car to get my cell. I wanted to call around to find out who exactly Bob was. Well the people that I got ahold of didn't know and the ones I couldn't get ahold of knew (I found out later that Bob was the sound guy, that would have been great to know! AND he tried calling Ben numerous times friday night to find out where we were). So by this point Lisa and I were pretty desperate to get in. So we found two girls that were not going to see GRITS and we paid them $20 to borrow their bracelets for 30mins. Brutal! By the time we got in there 20mins had passed and there was only 10mins left of their performance, 2 songs later it was over. :( What we saw was awesome!!! They sounded incredible!! We right away got into the thick of it but the place was pretty empty. I would say that there was about 300-350 ppl there and about 100 of those didn't care about the concert. Man, I don't get why the closed convention, they so could have opened up the concerts... there was plenty of room and you'd be able to perhaps make a little money off the thing (I imagine getting numerous better known groups, speakers and renting an entire areana, ain't all that cheap!) Anyways, back to the GRITS. Lisa and I were totally excited that we were actually getting a chance to see them and we've got bragging rights that we got into a closed concert! We loved what we saw so we're going to plan to go on a trip sometime into the states and time it with a concert they're having there (ie. they barely ever come into Canada). After they were done we went over to the merch table (which was also in a "bracelet" area. dumb!) to buy some t-shirts. I recognised the lady behind the table, she's a friend of the people who live upstairs. She agreed to get a photo signed for each of us by the GRITS, who were coming to the table in an hour or so. I really hope she pulls through for us!! And then that as it. Our 30 minutes were up.