Concerned that he wouldn’t be prepared to fully enjoy Saturday’s Lifehouse concert, Josh Thompson stayed up most of Friday night diligently studying the band’s last three albums.
The concert was held this weekend at the Ravinia Pavilion in Highland Park, Illinois.
Thompson, a 26-year-old sales representative for a local coffee distribution company, was confident he had their early work committed to memory but had reservations about their last couple of albums. To be sure, he nearly pulled an all-nighter Friday night, boning up on Lifehouse’s latest work as well as some of their more obscure songs, fully expecting them to be on the playlist on Saturday.
“I’d been putting off picking up [Lifehouse's 2009 album] Smoke & Mirrors ’cause I had gotten more into Death Cab for Cutie and Mumford and Sons lately, Thompson said. “But when I heard they were coming to town, I’m like ‘crap, I haven’t been keeping up.”
Having been a huge fan of the alternative rock band in college, Thompson thinks he did pretty well considering he didn’t get much sleep in preparation for the grueling hour and a half long show.
“I’m glad I put in all those hours getting caught up ’cause I think I aced it,” he said. “At least judging by the in-group-affirming nods I got from other people who were also singing along. I mean, when [lead singer] Jason Wade points the mike out into the crowd, you can’t look like an idiot and not know the words. You gotta sing.”
But Thompson said that not everyone was as prepared as he was, observing that a lot of his fellow concert-goers slipped up and forgot the words to many of the songs.
“I saw some chick completely bomb on ‘Halfway Gone’. It’s like she was just mouthing ‘na, na, na’ during the second verse. She totally blew it. I mean really, what real fan doesn’t know that song?”
His long-time girlfriend, Becca Rogers, who is more of a Katy Perry, Maroon 5 fan, had a different take on his marathon study session.
“Look, I’m not really in to them anyway, so I just wanted to go and enjoy the show,” Rogers said. “I’m so glad its over. For the last couple of days it was all we listened to.”
She was also unhappy about having to help her boyfriend study and says he asked her to quiz him on the first three or four seconds of each song.
“He wanted me to play the first few notes and practice recognizing the song so he could be the first to scream out ‘I love this song’ or ‘oh, this one is awesome’,” she said. “I’m like, come on. This isn’t a competition.”
Rogers was also disappointed that she missed the opening acts Saturday night because she and Thompson stayed in the parking lot listening to a compilation CD he had made.
“There we are, sitting in our car, blasting ‘Hanging by a Moment’ on the stereo over and over again, along with hundreds of other idiots who apparently waited until the last minute trying to get their songs memorized before the concert started,” Rogers said.
She added that perhaps if Josh had spent as much effort studying for his LSATS, he’d probably be finishing up law school by now.
JB Goodbody frequently has thoughts in his head that makes him smile. Were they made public at the moment they poofed into existence, without some form of structured outlet such as satire, these thoughts would cause significant distress among his friends, family and coworkers. This is why he is here. 
