Make it last all night

I spent Tuesday in Norfolk setting up new broadcast software in our station there. I went down there Monday afternoon so I could get started first thing in the morning, so before I left I checked the internet for anything interesting going on in Norfolk on a Monday night. Expecting none, I would have been happy to find a good place to have dinner and maybe watch the game, so I was very excited when I learned that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers would be playing that very night in Portsmouth! I thought, well, my evening’s planned, and headed down 64.

The Harbor Center website said that the show was still not sold out that afternoon, so I liked my chances of getting a cheap ticket in a buyer’s market. I became even more confident during dinner at Paddy O’Brian’s when I overheard some guy ask the bartender if she’d heard of anyone asking about tickets, because he just wanted to get rid of his extra at face value. I smiled to myself, now fully intending to pay a fraction of face value outside the pavilion. The bar was packed when I got there, but right around 8:00 it was as if someone had set off an alarm, the place cleared out so fast. Still playing it cool, I leisurely finished my dinner and waited for showtime to get even closer, all the while admiring my own sense of timing.

Sure enough, by the time I walked to the pavilion the place was pretty full but there were plenty of people still on their way in. Not many of them had extra tickets, and one lady said she had an extra while practically running to the gates, and when I asked here where it was, she yelled over her shoulder “Lawn” as she went through the turnstile. Must not have been too eager to get a few bucks for it. Eventually a guy heard me asking for tickets and came up to me with an extra. Just as he was starting to say something, this really hot girl who couldn’t have been more than 20 came up and asked me if I was looking for an extra ticket. At first I thought she was his shill and was going to get into a fake bidding war with me, but I still humored her and answered, yes I am. Then she started telling me a story about the time she went to a show without a ticket and needed one desperately, and found someone who gave her a ticket for free. All this happened with my potential seller standing right there, so I turned her into my shill, and set her up with questions like “So you really wanted to go to this show pretty badly, huh?” and “Wasn’t it great to find such a kind soul to give you his extra ticket?” After that performance, this poor guy knew it was all over. I didn’t want to just take his ticket for nothing – the chick was hot enough to get away with that but I’m surely not – but we did settle on $30 for a pavilion seat in the Gold Circle. My excellent timing continued as I found my seat just a couple of minutes before the girlfriends and groupies were escorted to the wings of the stage, a sure sign that the band will be out any minute.

Tom Petty has always been on my list of groups I want to see before I (or, more likely, they) die. He certainly didn’t disappoint, playing about a dozen hits with just a couple of new songs and covers mixed in. Most numbers turned into huge singalongs, and on Learning to Fly the audience got a solo during the closing chorus. He pulled out a couple of oldies, and hearing Melinda for the first time, I really enjoyed the keyboard/piano solos. Halfway through the show, Tom introduced the “sister of the band,” Stevie Nicks! I am not really a big fan of hers, but she and Tom Petty did some duets back in the early ‘80s and the crowd gave her a huge ovation. She sang lead on I Need to Know, and while she performed capably, it was immediately evident why in a certain South Park episode everyone confused a goat for her. After a couple of songs she was relegated to side stage to sing backup and was minimally distracting.

The Heartbreakers have had many big hits over the years and there were equally many highlights during the show. You Don’t Know How it Feels, Mary Jane’s Last Dance, You Wreck Me, the big jams on Don’t Come Around Here No More and Runnin’ Down a Dream, and the showstopping American Girl were all excellent. Tom was able to keep the crowd, which predictably skewed older but had plenty of younger fans too, into the whole show, including the new stuff. The Gold Circle seemed to be slightly upper crust, but I’m sure Mary Jane had quite a few dances out on the lawn. The band’s energy was consistent throughout, and while Tom Petty was exactly his laid back and fairly humble self most of the night, during the encore he did get everyone fired up and asked for “the biggest noise this place has ever heard!” He got it, because we knew tonight might never be again.