So to be honest I hadn’t heard a lot about modest mouse before and I know my soldier LOVED them and wouldn’t get to see any of the great concerts this summer after he ships.  Amazingly I get tickets at the last min. He is thrilled and I feel like a super hero.  I love live music. I like to sit or stand with my eyes closed and just soak up the music.  Really letting it in and do it’s intended emotion invoking.  I like to watch the musicians’ hands while they play because I know that they carry a talent that leaves me in awe.  Live music is raw and pure, live music will make or break a good band.  If you can rock live you can rock anything.  Modest Mouse is no exception and with the cold weather and the clouds threatening rain they man’d up and played a great concert. I was just as cold as they were so I really appreciate that they stuck it out as long as they could.

This is where the praise for this concert comes to an end.  Missoula is known for it’s weirdness, it’s pot smoking hippies and strange college gangster boy wannabes.  This is why I usually don’t go to concerts. Instead of enjoying the music 90% of the people around me were so wasted they could barely stand, dancing like they were in a hip-hop club and did I mention that I got stomped on and all I got from the guy who did it was a burn from his cigarette and elbowed in the tit so this 6’3″ 200lb  asshole could get a better view by standing on top of little ol’ me?  My significant other was about to get in his face for being such a huge douche when he suddenly bent over and threw up.  Now it wouldn’t have been THAT bad but he stood up and began dancing in it.  So were his friends the couples in my next section.  His friend helped this idiot away to the back of the crowed by bribing him with another joint…

Two couples right next to each other  no less nearly had sex they were so wasted and high.  The ones nearest the longest went through AT LEAST 13 beers for the guys, 7 for the girls.  They shared swigs of a mystery liquor in flasks others had smuggled in.  These beers were of the darker varieties for these people unfortunately.  On top of all that alcohol I watched them smoke three joints and share two bowls with their friends.  Again, keep in mind I can only tell you what I saw while I was paying attention.

So in the mass Exodus after the show all these stoned and drunk asshole got in to their vehicles and haphazardly made it to the road and I was thankful I didn’t get a full on sex show of two drunken college students drooling and clumsily trying to arouse the other while making an effort to have numb drunk sex in a crowd of people.  I finally make it to the road out of the parking area, which by no means was easy with all the cutting and honking and off-roading my tiny car had to put up with.  The line stalled yet again and one of the couples from in from of me was walking to their subaru parked south bound while I was north bound.  I was thankful because as they stumbled and fell in to the car they were going to have to head in the opposite direction from me.  Unfortunately the man decided to make a U-turn from his parking spot and slammed on his brakes not two inches from my front headlight.  He looked as startled as I did until the woman began laughing hysterically.  He joined in, probably because he figured it was awesome he got that close.  They started motioning for me to let them in the line in front of me, and yes folks I was a bitch and closed the three foot space to a one foot space so they couldn’t force their way in.  Not only did they yell and scream, they pulled forward and backed up to be RIGHT next to my car with her window even with mine and motioning for me to roll down my window.  I turned on the radio and I could hear  her yelling at me for being a rude “cunt.”

Now I don’t mind people who do drugs for recreation. I love to go out and drink and I will have one or two too many sometimes.  However, on such a grand scale I doubt this was an accidental too many for the people around me.  There were many choruses up “I’m soooo wasted! I need another drink!”  One or two tokes at a concert I’m fine with, but several joints and bowls on top of alcohol in public where people brought CHILDREN.  That’s not “weird” Missoula that’s just plain stupid.  I loved the concert, but if it weren’t for the completely hedonistic and disgusting displays of stupidity and lack of public safety within the crowd I would have thought Missoula was the greatest, but the more time I spend there, being exposed to people like this Missoula becomes more and more like any college town that lets students run amok because mom and dad are paying their bills.

There shouldn’t be pride in acting this way.  Yes Missoula is a great place if you have “alternative lifestyles” whatever that means.  Missoula is the place to be an individual without fear.  I like seeing people with tattoos and different colored hair having interesting and intelligent conversations.  Missoula accepts people who other wise would be stared at and ostracized in conservative communities throughout Montana.  We are, after all, a deeply Red state.  This is what Missoula should take pride in and encourage this amount of respect for everyone.  Your drunken pot head displays at concerts that people travel from all over to see are all that people will leave with and associate with Missoula.

By the end of the night they only seemed to notice they were at a concert when the music stopped and parents started taking their younger kids home.  There was chatter about after parties which is where I think drinking and smoking of that degree should take place.  Remember Missoula, it’s a community event.  Not everyone can enjoy a concert, that they spent hard earned money on, completely wasted.  It’s sad to think you’ll wake up tomorrow morning and not have a lot of memories, or quality memories from the night before.  Modest Mouse played a great concert and you weren’t even paying attention.

Worst of all it’s acting like this that gives conservatives ammunition to make pot illegal again and take away MORE jobs from Montanans. Congrats Missoula.  You are helping them take away your legal pot.

Missoula concert goers: You nearly ruined the concert for a stranger though I doubt you care.  Yes, Keep Missoula Weird but don’t keep it stupid.