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The Goddess Speaks
Jacquelyn Carberry
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Lining up for tickets brings back memories
SOME PEOPLE are willing to spend $30, $40 or $50 for a concert. But to get fans to shell out upward of $95 for tickets, a band has to be something special, a supergroup. To me, that supergroup is U2.
Sure, I could have gone online Saturday and hoped to score "good" tickets for the band's April 8 concert. But truly, the best way to guarantee results is to arrive at the box office bright and early, and line up with all the other diehards.
Besides, trading stories in line is part of the tradition for all those who love a band, whatever band that band might be.
Ask Kris Kanei, who was No. 3 in line: "You find out who people in line are and what they're about," said Kanei, who arrived with her family at 4:30 p.m. the day before.
My group of three arrived about 45 minutes before the gates officially opened at midnight, prepared to wait in the rain. But the Aloha Stadium management had allowed everyone inside, where they were sitting in orderly fashion in a dry, comfy, carpeted hall leading to the box office.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Guitarist The Edge, left, and lead singer Bono perform in Madison Square Garden in New York in November. U2 brings its Vertigo tour to Hawaii April 8.
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The first fans, Alvin Okubo and Dave Lucas, arrived at 4 p.m.; they were joined by a few more every hour. "U2 has been my favorite band for years," Lucas told me. "The lyrics and music are intense. They are the best songwriters of our time."
For that very reason, I've spent many days cranking out favorite songs from albums such as "War" or "The Unforgettable Fire."
BUT SOMETIMES it's more than the music. Sometimes it's about who you were at the time you began listening to a particular band, or where you were in your life when you first saw them.
"They were the music I grew up with," said Duncan Akana, who arrived, fresh-faced at 3:05 a.m., after a trip to 24-Hour Fitness.
U2 provided the music of my high school and college years. I first saw the band in October 1987 in Buffalo, N.Y., during the Joshua Tree tour. The ticket was a birthday present from my older brother, who had introduced me to the band.
No, he didn't ceremoniously hand over the albums. It was more like U2 stood out among all the alternative bands of the day in his music collection. The band just had that intangible quality, in music and in spirit. I would pick through my brother's large supply of music, interested in Blue Oyster Cult, New Order, Violent Femmes as well as U2 -- that is, until U2 became too avant-garde for me.
But you have to give U2 credit -- while their affair with techno-pop might have been too much for me and many other fans -- they at least pushed the boundaries. Not many of their contemporaries are even left.
WE WERE in the 25th row for that Buffalo show -- thanks to a friend of my brother's who camped out at 6 a.m. to buy tickets and was the sixth person in line, back when there wasn't a limit on the number of seats you could buy. The show sold out in less than three hours.
We drove to the concert as a group, listening, of course, to U2. While I couldn't see much, even standing on my seat, I quickly adapted. After all, I could hear the music, I was in the auditorium, I was in the 25th row. I remember details -- the stage lights, the people I was with, as much as the year or the place.
I wore that blue-and-gold concert T-shirt about once a week. I wonder what ever happened to that shirt.
While my love for U2 has waxed and waned since, very few bands have my complete admiration, as U2 does, for their music, lyrics and their collective civic spirit.
We did get tickets for the U2 show on April 8 -- I even got about four hours of sleep -- but not all our seats are together, or even nearby. By 9:20 a.m., when we finally made it to the ticket window, most seats were gone and it was everyone for himself, all our purchase plans tossed aside. But I did get a ticket for my brother.
To those at the front, it seemed like a lot of people were in line. But the morning parking attendant, Robert Lee -- the same one who had let us in the night before -- told us only 47 cars had been parked overnight in the lot, and maybe double that in the residential areas. No doubt, waiting in line has given way to cell phones and the Internet.
Lucas and Okubo, the first two in line, were the last two people I saw in the parking lot, and both were mobbed by TV crews.
"It was fun for a day," Lucas said of the attention.
And like a real fan, he will be there next time, wherever and whenever the next show might be. In fact, many of us will be in line again, too.
Jacquelyn Carberry is a Star-Bulletin writer.
The Goddess Speaks is a feature column by and about women. If you have something to say, write "The Goddess Speaks," 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210,
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