theparkerfamily.org

so, I’m at a web analytics conference, and the product’s parent company rented too-famous-to-play-conferences band “the killers” to entertain the conference’s 2000 assembled web analytics geeks.

words can not describe how bizzare this evening was.

when I walked into the venue, they were belting “easy lover” on the pre-concert music loop, which makes me wonder if The Killers would list Phil Collins as one of their influences.

there were geeks everywhere (not that I fall outside that definition) and the geeky-er the male, the more the women hanging aroud them.

and somehow the alpha-geeks managed somehow to get The Killers to play? it was like I was in some crazy parallel universe where geeks weren’t the ones who got stuffed in their gym lockers in high school.

and it was arguably the best concert I’ve ever seen … even factoring in the age-inappropriately dressed 45 year olds, the legions of men in oxford shirts, and the 10:1 male-to-female ratio.

we were 10 yards from the band. they opened on fire, and kept the pedal down for the full hour and a half, through 15 songs.

the band was crazy into the show, even though they admitted they “didn’t know what to expect” when they showed up.

it’s still sinking in that the best concert of my life was a paid appearance at a web analytics conference. really, how bad must the rest have been?

not sure I can lay claim to having any street cred what-so-ever after this.

SETLIST: human, somebody told me, for reasons unknown, bones, the world we live in, shadowplay, jenny was a friend of mine, smile like you mean it, spaceman, a dustland fairytale, I can’t help falling in love with you, read my mind, mr. brightside, all these things that i’ve done, when you were young.