Music Midtown 2012 - Part One

It seems like only yesterday that Jackie and I were making big plans for September 2012 and now, the month is almost gone and we have had so much fun! This past weekend, we took a road trip over to Atlanta for Music Midtown 2012. Back earlier this year when Eddie Vedder (lead singer of Pearl Jam for those of you who may not know, um, Erika) rescheduled his solo tour, I had asked Jackie about going to see him in Memphis - the only catch was that the concert is on the night before Thanksgiving. We seriously contemplated it and then, Jackie's superior Google skills discovered Music Midtown where Pearl Jam would be playing on Saturday night and The Avett Brothers and Foo Fighters would be playing on Friday night - a perfect line-up if you ask me. It was less than a week later that we had our weekend passes in hand - this was way back in May and the countdown began.

Friday morning I had a doctor's appointment after which I loaded up The Tide, swung by the VBC to buy another set of concert tickets, and then dropped The Tide off at my parents' house where she was to stay the weekend. I then headed to Jackie's house and we were on the road to Atlanta a few minutes after 11:00 a.m. The ride over to Atlanta wasn't too bad. Jackie drove the first leg of the trip and we stopped a couple of times to stretch our legs and take use of the facilities. I did have to call my dad once about directions - since Jackie was driving and I wasn't paying attention and I told her to take a wrong turn. At the second stop, I took over driving into the city. Traffic was really great on I-20 but when it was time to get on I-75, the traffic was backed up. Thankfully we only had to go a couple of miles until our exit and we arrived at our hotel about 4:00 Atlanta time, along with everyone else; there was quite a line to check in. We finally got checked in and went up to our hotel room. When we got on the elevator a guy was on there and asked us if we were in town for the concert. We asked him to hit the 10th floor button for us and he said, "Top Floor, Heard That." Needless to say, it became a catch phrase for us the remainder of the weekend.

We unpacked, changed clothes, put on make-up, freshened up, etc. etc. and headed out to find a place to eat some dinner. We settled on Jalapeno Charlies (Which I kept wanting to call Jalapeno Chedders) and ate outside on the balcony. I had tacos and Jackie had enchiladas - both of which were good. We then went back to the hotel to gear up for an evening of music. I packed my purse with all the essentials including acid reducer medicine which gave us a good laugh. Jackie said you know you're in your 30s when you make sure you have acid reducer for a concert.

We left the hotel at 6:00 to go to the concert. We walked up to the MARTA station and a lady that worked there was helping all us concert goers buy passes. When the machine gave us change in the form of $1 coins, the lady would pull them out, hand them to us, and told us to use them to buy beers, liquor, souvenirs, whatever we needed, which cracked us up. We weren't that sure which train to get on so we followed some guy in a straw hat who looked like he was going to the concert. He wasn't the only one, there were others as well and we all got on the train and it was the right one. We took the train to Midtown and then had to walk about one mile to get to the park. There were people all along the way with their coolers selling $1 waters. You were allowed to bring in one bottle of water (unopened) into the park. So we each bought one because it was hot and we figured we might benefit from that $1 price as opposed to outrageous price once we were in the park.

We finally made it to the park about 7:00 - the Avett Brothers were starting at 7:30 so we made our way towards their stage and listened to their show, which was just as good as expected. They played a lot of our favorites and some songs from the new album as well. We took a bathroom break towards the end of their set. There were quite a few port-o-potties, but there were even more people and so there was always a line. They were also pretty gross, especially towards the end of the night, as there were a lot of drink folks needing to take a pee. After the Avett Brothers show, we hit the port-o-potties again because, well, better safe than sorry.

The Foo Fighters show started at 9:00 on the dot, while we were at the port-o-potties. We managed to find a good spot once we made it over to that stage. The sound was incredible and Dave Grohl put on a fantastic show. He was absolutely hilarious when he was talking and his singing, well, it was just as awesome as I had hoped. Thanks to some ridiculous Atlanta city ordinance, the show had to end at 11:00 p.m. on the nose so there was no encore and they played for only two hours - I was expecting at least three - I guess the city ordinance must be pretty strict.

We decided to leave out of a different entrance than the one we came in which was a big mistake because we ended up walking about three miles, or at least it felt like three miles. I thought I was going to have to lay down in the street from exhaustion at one point. We finally made it to a MARTA station and took the next train back to Peachtree Station downtown and then walked the three blocks to our hotel. After taking quick showers, we called it a night and got ready to do it all over again Saturday.

 The entrance to the park

 Foo Fighters - Great shot, huh?

I took some photos on Friday with my camera but haven't downloaded them yet. I will post those as soon as I have a chance to download them. Some of those turned out better than the ones I took with my phone.