On the Friendly Concert Crowd

When I was seeing a band in Courtenay a couple weeks back, I was chatting with a lady sitting next to me who remarked "I think everyone's so friendly here because we're all from somewhere else; we're all immigrants to the Comox Valley so we know what it's like to be new and we're looking to meet people." Whatever the explanation, when I was at a concert in Victoria this Saturday I was pleased with the notable friendliness and approachability of fellow crowd members; casual comments to a stranger could readily turn into a conversation in a way that just doesn't happen everywhere. The show featured The Paper Cranes (consummate unassuming artist types - "hmm, I dunno if we have any CDs for sale - we're not very good at that promotion thing" and when the gloriously energetic lead singer does find his CDs he's incredibly honest about them "you really should buy the newer one, the older one just wasn't recorded very well "), Rugged Uncle (a side project of Immaculate Machine - one of the few CDs I've bought from iTunes, which means you know I like them - which is itself loosely affiliated with The New Pornographers), and the I-suppose-they're-entertaining-enough Ontario-based d'Urbervilles.