OH SAY CAN YOU SEE? NO, ACTUALLY, I CAN'T

Maybe they don’t like the weather. I mean really, there was hail in some parts of Massachusetts today, halfway to summer when we’re all supposed to be on the beach. Maybe we’re just ugly, we palefaced New Englanders with our gray winters and thick sweaters and overstuffed, overeducated, rude populous. Maybe they just hate us.

But really. Rockapella doesn’t schedule a single remotely Boston-centric (No. New York does not count.) date on their tour. But they do decide to grace us with their presence for a moment or two. Yes they do. To… Fenway Park? Um. OK. That’s fine. We, the harried and overeager fans in this area, will duly trudge our way over to Lansdowne if need be. If given the proper notice. If the Ticket gods and the music gods and the luck gods all work with us.

Guess what? None of them worked with yours truly this afternoon. Why? Two words: The Yankees.

I went after work. I will go to Fenway Park, I said. I will see what I can see. Because after all, just because the Ticket Gods start throwing around words like "sold out," that doesn’t necessarily mean "sold out," you know? There are always other outlets. Nice people with extra tickets. Scalpers with no teeth. The usual orgy of sordid ticket-procuring activity.

But first, said I to myself, I will take a little walk. I will take a lap or two around the stadium. I will survey the scene. I will keep all eyes peeled for random, wandering men in a capella groups. They have to come into the stadium. They have to leave the stadium. Both trips would presumably require the use of an outside exist, and finding it, and being there at the correct time, would most certainly lay the foundation for a stellar Rockapella-seeing experience, no? I sure thought so.

But ah, behold Flaw in Logic #1. Laura was in Concert Mode. At concerts, the comings and goings of Les Stars du Rock, particularly the big, famous, inaccessible variety, are a bit of a deal. Not only had I forgotten that I was at a baseball game and not a Rockapella concert, it had also slipped my mind that not a single soul at that game gave a… uh… hoot… about Rockapella and their Anthem stylings at all.

Rockapella probably came in a car. A sealed one. They probably left in a vehicle of the same variety. See, I wouldn’t know. Because I missed both.

And the clock is ticking at this point. It’s scalp or die. But where in bloody hell are the tickets? I knew it was bad when a scalper, mistaking the Oh my God, I’m going to miss Rockapella and they will never come back here and I will die look on my face for an I have tickets to unload face, came up to me and asked if I had any extra to sell. Apparently games with the Yanks are rather hard to get tickets for, even if you’re a slimy unshaven man in a baseball cap.

Lap #5 around Fenway: Laura hears a man hiss, "Anybody need tickets?" Score. Laura leans in closer and starts hauling the cash out of her pocket. "How much?" says Laura, wondering if that’s the sort of thing men whisper out their car windows when they solicit prostitutes. Slimy man in baseball cap shrugs and says, "Seventy."

Um. Dollars?

Laura goes, "Bro, if Rockapella was performing a two hour set in the nude and I was holding a written guarantee that there wouldn’t be any songs of the patriotic persuasion and that I’d be sung to sleep by Scott Leonard afterward, I would still seriously consider spending seventy." Actually, that’s not what I said. What I really said was, "Uh, No thanks." And I kept walking. But to tell the truth, I’d probably pay 70 to have Scott Leonard to sing me to sleep. With his clothes on, even.

Lap #7: It’s getting really darn late now. I keep walking. I’m getting bummed. The a capella gods are hanging over my head singing, "Laura, Laura, you’re so lame, you don’t even know your name" in pretty four part harmony with vocal percussion, and I’m ready to stand in the middle of Lansdowne St. and start howling, "Why am I the only Rockapella fan in the whole wide stinking world?!"

And then I realize: I am standing under a speaker.

I am outside Fenway Park, yes. I am, in fact, standing directly behind the Green Monster. And I can hear everything that’s going on inside. They’re announcing the lineup. People are cheering, because that’s apparently the thing to do at baseball games. People are yelling things like, "MANNYYYYYYYY" and "PEDROOOOOOOO" and "YAN-KEES SUCK! YAN-KEES SUCK!" and I’m like, hey there now. If I stay here, ten bucks and a bag of jelly beans says I’ll hear Rockapella sing the anthem. For no more than the single dollar it took me to get there on the Green Line.

And really. Even if I did get in, what would I see? Rockapella, two inches tall perched on a riser for 2.61 seconds, half of the anthem drowned out by the beer-soaked hollers of icky middle-aged men who would just drop their alcohol on me and give me a headache and junk like that. Worth it? A seventy-dollar baseball game that I was planning on staying for zero minutes of? No.

Not like I really had time to think about it. A voice comes over the loudspeaker and says, "Please welcome J-Bird recording artists…" For one teeny tiny second, I panicked. "Oh my god," goes Laura’s hyperactive inner-monologue, "If they announce them as being from New York, they will get booed off of… whatever they’re standing on." They didn’t. It was cool. Then the inner-monologue said, "Oooh… I wonder what they’re wearing," and promptly responded to itself, "Seventy bucks, and you’d know, now wouldn’t you? Now shut up and have an ounce of respect. Your national anthem is playing."

And Rockapella wafted over the wall. Their version of the anthem is kind of muted and sweet. Very un-Gulf-War-Whitney-Huston. It distinctly lacks bombast. Although Scott does manage one or two really nice little runs here and there that aren’t really big enough to be runs, but I don’t know what else to call them. It was, in general, like a lot of what Rockapella does: It sounded lovely and Kevin and Scott got a lot of play.

A record-breaking Rockapella De-Virginization? Not particularly. But then again, first times generally kind of suck. There is time yet. And there is hopefully a Boston gig on the vast horizon somewhere in the very near future. (Please. Pretty please…)