Topic: John Mellencamp with Los Lobos
This evening my sister Bev (from Wheaton,IL) and I went to see John Mellencamp with Los Lobos in Des Moines, IA. Los Lobos started off a little slow, but gained momentum quickly and then took off like a wild, thunderous train down the track. Here's the setlist they played:
Aztlan
Wolf
Marie Marie
Chucos
Don't Worry
Neighborhood
Train Don't Stop
Loaded
Cumbia
La Bamba which morphed in to Good Lovin
Before Mellencamp came out we had to be subjected to a sleazy old guy with two young girls and their "make out session." eeeeewwwww!!!!!!!!! Gag me with a spoon scenario. And of course they were not in their correct seats to begin with............. They actually grossed out two full rows of people with their kissy-face game. 
Mellencamp opened with Pink Houses and had the entire arena in his hand. It was the first concert I have been to at an arena where no one had to stay in their ticketed seats. And it didn't take long for everyone to figure this out. You could find your way down towards the front fairly easy. So we went back and forth a couple of times.
We were hearing Paper & Fire, Hurt So Good, Jack & Diane, Small Town, Check It Out, Crumblin' Down, The Authority Song, Jena (new song) etc.....well at one point he said, "We've got somebody here tonight running for President of the United States. Well, out comes John Edwards and there initially was a cheer that then turned in to a booing session as people were upset that the concert had been interrupted. So he didn't stick around but 2 seconds on the stage after that. Mellencamp laughed it off. He had quite a bit to say politically and dropped the "F" bomb more than once. BUT We were having a great time dancing, dancing, singing, dancing......Mellencamp is quite the dancer himself. He definitely has his "groove thing on." His voice was superb and he delivered an unbelievable show.
And of course, excitement seems to follow me wherever I go. At one point, I will call her the "mystery girl" came up behind us and handed me her "ALL ACCESS" Pass and told me to go on down front to get as close as I could for some good photos of John. Well, on the way there I found myself sucked in to the middle of a fight between two big guys (yeehaw it was scary) So Mr. State Troopers came and got them and THEN I was sandwiched between a multitude of writhing twisting dancing jumping yelling singing bodies and I then began to panic as I couldn't really get any fresh air to my 5' 2" body. So I decided I had better get the heck out of Dodge while I was still in one piece and made my way back. Now the young lady was starting to panic, because she probably thought I had run off with her ALL ACCESS Pass, so she had sent my sister down to look for me. When we got back to our "Safe Zone" she was gone. I have this funny feeling that maybe she was John Mellencamp's daughter. It was quite wonderful to have a total stranger hand over this All Access pass. I have always wanted to have one of those laniards, so that was really cool!
We scored the Los Lobos setlist on the way out. We found ourselves at Popeye's Chicken to get a drink thru the drive thru, it took me awhile to order 2 small Cokes, so when I pulled up to the window, I apologized to the young man waiting on us and apologized that my brain was a little scrambled from the concert. He said, "What concert?" I said Mellencamp and he screwed his face up and said, "We gotta' do a dang order for them at midnite!" To which we replied in unison, "We'll deliver it to him." The kid then said, "Their just lucky I don't have school tomorrow." It was all quite hilarious there at the Popeye's drive-thru, then as we drove away we decided that we were hungry and began a debate on whether we should go back to Popeye's Chicken and decided the young man probably couldn't handle waiting on us a second time, so then we headed to Arby's. Have you all ever had to drive up a ramp at Arby's to get to the drive-thru window...when placing our order at Arby's I thought the voice sounded familiar......well, before you get to the drive up window, you have to go up a steep ramp to get to it...I had to tromp it to get up this incline....and lo and behold there was that familiar face in the window and he proceeded to tell us how he had been tranferred there to "clean up" the place and had won an award,etc....well, to leave the drive thru area you then had to go down another ramp, so I took it at about 60 mph.....we did find our way back to Indianola. It was a fun night to say the least. See you tomorrow night in St. Louis!
pattyluvsjoe & Bev
Joe Bonamassa 05-03-12
JBLP CHILD #184
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