#1 was off skiing with her school and #2 we sent to her grandparents because she preferred watching quiz shows with her grandmother to attending a rock concert with her parents; attitude like that and she’s only 6. But we swallowed our pride and let her go and, once her grandfather had picked her up and the front door had closed behind them, did that manic dance parents do when they have the house to themselves for the evening (any kids reading this just ignore that last bit, I’m sure your parents are different).

Prior to attending the concert, which featured the band of friends of ours, we went to an Italian restaurant for a couple glasses of wine and some food. My wife had the pizza bread and… no wait, she had the mixed appetizers plate and we shared the pizza bread, which in fact turned into sort of a m*tually-assured d*struction arms r*ce only with garlic instead of *ranium and we ended up ordering a second plate of it. You know how it is when you’re on a date and one of you eats garlic, then the other one has to eat garlic too?

I had a hunger for cheese. Little did I know my appetite would be satiated and then some that evening.

I went through the menu and ordered a cheese thing, “blah-blah FORMAGGIO blah-blah”. It arrived along with our wine etc and turned out to be a sort of Italian nouvelle cuisine crucifix of young parmesan cheese with thinly-sliced fruit (apple, melon, kiwi, strawberry and some other fancy orangish thing) on top instead of a guy.

Thanks a load, Mel, for hammering that image into my brain. And I haven’t even seen the movie.

Anyway, ate, drank, went to the concert. Accidentally snuck in without buying tickets. Went back out and bought tickets. You’re all thinking, doh! What’d you do that for? But as I said, the band was run by a friend of ours, and another guy my wife went to school with was in it so, hate to rip them off.

Came to regret that decision, though.

Started off good, maybe.

You know those situations where everything is perfect? Your mood, the weather, and say you’re at a concert, so the band, their musicianship and choice of songs are perfect too, as is the audience? And you have good seats?

And then there are other situations, where you don’t know if they’re serious or pulling your leg?

We had good seats. And the musicians in the band were good. But as the concert proceeded, we gradually came to wonder whether they were playing an elaborate joke on their home town, including their guest musicians.

A local politician opened the show with a short introductory speech. The band’s technician failed to turn on the spotlight, so she spoke in the dark.

They had a hyperactive fog machine, that teetered on the edge of serious irony.

But they were good. Great solos. Keyboards, bass, drums, guitar and theremin.

Guest musicians played, they were very good. I won’t say what they played. You have to be so damn careful, one never knows who’s going to stumble across a libelous blog post, you know?

Then the famous Hungarian vocalists climbed onto the stage. That’s how they were introduced. From Hungary! Where they are very famous! [Name] and [name].

Think figure skaters.

You know how female figure skaters used really have it in the booty department? Until this new generation of skinny ice dancers kicked them out of the rink? Like I went to school with this girl who looked… oh never mind. She had a big ass and thighs that could probably squat 500 pounds, 12 reps. She was a figure skater. The female vocalist looked like that: slender upper half, then bootybootybooty. And the guy had big ice dancer hair and tossed it around a lot. He looked like he had just been canned from a Wham! revival band. They wore their ice dancer costumes as well, except for skates: lots of sequins.

Listen: they sang a gospel song at the end.

Before the gospel song, the woman sang something that showed off her voice advantageously; she was good. I don’t want to be unfair. And then the guy sang something very, very weird that showed off his voice as well. But let me tell you something about Central European audiences in small towns: at least in Austria — it wouldn’t be fair to claim this applies to other Central European countries, since I don’t know — it’s really, really hard to get the old gospel shout and response thing going, the dancing and clapping hands and raising arms and so on, because the audience is typically quite stiff and not used to that sort of thing under the best of circumstances. And then, if you’re a couple of Hungarian lounge singers you’re really handicapped.

My mind started to wander. The male half of the vocal team chastized the audience. He encouraged us to snap our fingers, then chastized us for not snapping. What’s wrong? You’re not snapping! [He demonstrated once again, ad nauseum, infinitum et absurdum, how to snap]. What’s wrong? Snapping doesn’t cost anything extra! Then he tried clapping. A “journalist” from the local paper (whom my eldest daughter despises because said “reporter” is a moron in her opinion) approached the stage and snapped a couple pictures. My mind wandered and I imagined approaching the stage myself and doing an interpretive dance.

I am a hot-air balloon, I thought. Floating peacefully through a bright summer sky as figure skaters sip champagne in my basket and clink their crystal glasses together in a happy toast. Cheers! Uh-oh! I’m on fire! Too bad for you skater guys that we’re 2,000 feet up! Mayday! Oh, no! The figure skaters’ hair is on fire! Too much hairspray!

Clap, clap. The guy next to me was half a beat off and kept throwing me off so the audience were clapping on, say, the beat and two guys — us — were clapping on the off-beat. Until I figured out what was happening and corrected myself.

Through all this the guest musicians, who I’m not going to tell you what they played instrument-wise but they are very good take my word for it, they stood there on the stage, since they were not playing in this song, and looked as though they were fairly sure this whole thing was a joke, on the audience and on them, but wanted to be cool about it.

Then the song ended, the stage cleared, the audience demanded an encore, they returned to the stage (sans guest musicians) and repeated the gospel song! And then they cleared the stage again, vanished into the night leaving the local politician standing there in the dark with several bouquets in her hands that she’d meant to present to the musicians. Gradually, the last of the fog from the fog machine settled to the ground around her, and we all went home.