Came last Saturday, the day of the concert, the plan was to first go to a restaurant in Beverly Hills for an early dinner with an auntie of hers and her son, who had also bought tickets for the concert once they learned about it from us, then head for the concert at Sports Arena, the erstwhile Clippers basketball court near USC.
The dinner reservation was made for 5 PM, we left our house a little over 3:30, thinking that should be plenty time ahead. But a couple of slow-and-go's and the usual snarl on Fwy-405 when nearing West LA made it past 5 already when we finally got off the freeway onto the busy surface streets. Adding the parking look-around and last-block pedestrian walk, we ended up about 15 minutes behind when we entered the restaurant.
This is an upscale Vietnamese/fusion style restaurant, famous for its "tiger prawn garlic noodle" and crab meat, so we ordered some and more. It's all good and delicious, but pricey as well--I honestly think we can get same quality food for half the price at somewhere else in LA or Orange County, but this is Beverly Hills, as you know.
My wife's auntie Winnie's son, Sean, picked up the tab for his mother, who was the one suggested the place and said she'd be the hostess for it in the first place. I have known Winnie and Sean and his brother and sister since I came to the States over 30 years ago, when they just started their new lives in America as well. From swap-meet booths to doughnut shops to used car sales, and now owners of one of the largest AT&T wireless chain stores in the US, plus a couple of bakery stores Winnie herself owns, theirs is a rags-to-riches, another great American-dream-coming-true story that I undoubtedly feel proud of and happy for.
The drive from the restaurant to the Sports Arena again reminded me of the treachery of LA traffic that I almost forgot after years of cushy driving in Orange County. Again, when we finally pulled into the vast, flat, but well packed parking lot of the Arena, it's 15 minutes past the scheduled concert start time already.
Fortunately, the concert hadn't started yet and it took us only a few minutes to find our seats, ones right facing the stage, even though it's a distance away and on the upper level. This is a big arena that can seat up to 16,000 people, and one thing that much surprised me was the overwhelming majority of the near capacity crowd I saw here were young mainland Chinese in their early 20's, many of them recent immigrants/students from China, I supposed.
The concert blasted out with a couple of big smoky cannon bolts and all the kids went wild, cheering, yelling, jumping, flash light waving, one song after another, just like a typical rock concert crowd would do. My wife's nephew got an LED flash light ($15 per stick) for us and she started waving and jumping like the young kids were, while I sat and enjoyed the scene and the music in most gentlemanly way.
Other than hearing my wife mentioning their name a couple times before, I really had no idea who this "Mayday" group are or what their songs sound like until tonight. And they weren't too bad, frankly. The rhythms were soothing and melodramatic, at times rapt and at times subdued, captivating and "resuscitating"--meaning worthy of savoring over and over again; the lyrics were earthy and poignant, ebullient and titillating, circling around love, friendship, dreams of their lives, etc.
Granted, their stage props (and fireworks) were not as grand, and their vocal and instrumental skills not as over-the-top as a couple of big old vintage Western rock bands such as Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac that I've been to, and I sure wish I were familiar with their songs so I could sing along with them, like I did with those groups whose music I grew up with.
Granted, their stage props (and fireworks) were not as grand, and their vocal and instrumental skills not as over-the-top as a couple of big old vintage Western rock bands such as Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac that I've been to, and I sure wish I were familiar with their songs so I could sing along with them, like I did with those groups whose music I grew up with.
But herein lies the point, this is a group of their generation, singing songs for their generation, a generation of young Chinese all over Asia, from Taiwan to mainland China, Singapore to Tokyo, whatever dialect they speak, society or political system they live in, they seem to communicate perfectly well in this music, that touches their hearts, tells their dreams, and vents their frustration in trying to break away from whatever chains they feel themselves are under.
Somehow the song "Give Peace a Chance" from the hippie generation keeps reverberating in my mind, seems to say "let's give these young people a chance, to make a better world they know how themselves..."
It took us about half an hour just to get out of the log-jammed parking lot after the end of the show, and then just as we were finally cruising along in light late night traffic on the 405, Caltran completely shut down a major freeway transition and forced us all down the freeway to go through a bewildering detour route for another extra half hour. It was well past midnight when we finally got home.
I think I'd done a masterful good job chauffeuring my wife and had a great time myself for the night!
* Here's a video clip for one song I recorded at the Mayday concert:
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