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Elle

Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center - January 21st, 2018

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I know some people have already touched on this and LanaBoards probably doesn’t give a fuck about sports but when we were waiting in line we were literally surrounded by tailgaters all day because the sports stadiums and performing stadiums share a parking lot. All during the show people were asking about the score and when we found out the eagles had won the audience freaked the fuck out. It was great, lana fans and eagles fans all intermixed LOL


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Okay so I decided to do a long write-up about my entire concert-going experience yesterday, mostly because the situation with game day and all was pretty unique. I know a lot of people don't care about the boring details of my life so everything that is about Lana is in bold so you can skip the stuff that's not about her.

 

 


 

TO THE PROMISED LAND

I ended up leaving for the venue around 1:30. I had to stop and print my ticket, and I knew public transit was going to be hell getting down to AT&T station, so I figured I would arrive right around 3:00 if I left that early. I would have lined up earlier, but the person I was trying to meet up with decided they didn’t want to go so early because it would be very difficult for them to make it into the city that early in the morning. Later I would find that I probably would’ve had a better time if I had just arrived at the venue when doors opened, but, alas.

The trip down to the Wells Fargo center was incredible, but in a “what the fuck just happened?” kind of way. When I got on the trolley to the subway, two people immediately got into an altercation about the Eagles’ game. One man on the trolley said we should just flip over the trolley now, since when the Eagles would win the game that night, the city would be in shambles anyway. A nervous laugh was shared among the trolley-goers.

Once off the trolley and into the subway, the normally typical citizens of Philadelphia were replaced a mass of jersey-wearing rabble-rousers. A boisterous group next to me was making fun of someone’s watch. The mood was loud and jovial, and repeated chants of E-A-G-L-E-S washed over the train, along with hums of that seven nation army riff. People were slamming their hands against the roof and windows. It was very hot inside the subway, which was sort of like an omen for what standing close to the barricade was going to be like.

 

Getting off the subway into the station I sighed a loud “jesus christ”. Finally I was out into the open, I could breathe again. Signs everywhere indicated “TO THE GAME ->”. Seemed more and more like I was going to the wrong big event in the city that day.

WAITING

A bit of a walk later and I found my people in line at the venue. Without coming off too tactless, part of the line looked like a homeless camp. Bottles of pee and rough-looking blankets with tired faces wrapped up in them. Yeesh. Anything for Lana I guess.

 

I took my spot on line. Some people were marking their hands with numbers, I guess as a way to keep their spot in case they had to leave the line. I didn’t put a mark on my hand, but the people ahead of my were 80-something in line. So I guess I was 90-something, 5 hours from the show.

You’d think it’d be hard to entertain yourself for 4 hours waiting for doors to open, but actually, it was kind of fun with the tail-gaters all around us. People came up to us and asked us what we were waiting for, and most were nice, some were confused. Some entertainer (radio maybe?) had a tent and a microphone, and boy, did he not like us there. Told us multiple times that Lana had died in a car crash and that we should go home, Lana sucks, blah blah blah. I feel his heckling made the comraderie in the line much stronger.

 

At some point I had to leave the line to find a bathroom, and god was that a quest in itself. I ended up walking a mile and a half to a local CVS. I was probably gone for like an hour. I didn’t want to risk that scenario again so I began drinking my water pretty sparingly, which caused me to get dehydrated (relevant later).

About an hour before doors opened, we all stood and queued up. With the sun setting right around then, it began to get pretty cold. The people around me complained of not feeling their feet anymore, of twitching muscles and general exhaustion. I was right there with them. Not long after, a staff member came out and informed us that we were not allowed to have backpacks. Fuck! Apparently this is common in venues, but I have never gone to a show in a major metropolis at a big stadium before, so this has never been an issue for me. Thinking on my feet I inverted my backpack so it just looked like a brown bag with a draw-string. I was able to get it past security, but they made me throw out my thermos/my water.

 

AT THE BARRICADE - KALI

Once past security, I went down to the pit and ended up maybe only about 7 feet from the barricade once we all squished together. We waited there for about an hour, and this is when I began to have my doubts. I was really tired, really hungry, really dehydrated, my head hurt bad, and all my muscles hurt. There was a person behind me who complained about all these things in the world’s whiniest voice, and as much as I wanted to hate her, she was pretty much saying everything I was feeling.

 

Kali came out with little fanfare and performed excellently. Her backup singers were also quite talented. Her drummer was incredibly ferocious, and every time he hit the kicks I could feel it in my chest, like a heart palpitation. I’m not a big fan of hers or anything, but she was definitely entertaining to say the least.

Some time between Kali’s set ending and Lana’s set starting, the Eagles won their game. A cheer went up through the audience, so loud and passionate that I briefly considered that Lana had come out and I had missed it somehow. The venue turned the lights green briefly to celebrate it. This wasn’t just a Lana concert, but a Philly concert. We were all part of more than one community.

(P.S. Shot in the dark, but there was a brunette long-haired guy standing not too far from me when I was up against the barricade. He was there alone, I think. I thought he was cute but he was just far enough from me where I felt it would be weird to strike up a conversation. Anyway, if you’re out there, you were fucking cute, hmu.)

MAIN EVENT - LANA

As is the usual case with Lana’s entry, first her band came out, then her dancers, then she herself. Sometime during the entry sequence I got pushed from my spot further center but a little further back, and I was now standing behind a really tall guy, which would make it almost impossible for me to see her. I tried to enjoy the show- let me tell you, she was REALLY serving, vocals and moves- but I was getting a bit fed up with my whole situation. I paid a pretty penny to watch her through someone else’s phone… not my idea of fun.

 

Before she sang Yayo, I believe someone in the pit called out “You made it Lana!” and she looked up and gave a knowing glance and a smile. Honestly, just thinking about it makes me feel some kind of way. Yeah, you did make it. You made it out of that trailer park life… She reiterated that the song was about her friend Rob.

 

For me, the highlight of the show was Honeymoon. The whole stage was lit in red, and in the verses, those notes from the guitar and upright bass just hang on forever, creating some endless tension. This tension was highlighted as her dancers came on dressed in black holding wedding bouquets- they just stood still at her side. You are just desperately waiting for something to happen, because something must happen.

War was pretty emotional, it made me feel for the song in a way I hadn’t before, with the background visuals all protests and missile shells and war planes intermixed with veterans reuniting with their spouses. The sense was that amidst war, life goes on. Love still happens. We still dance. One could interpret it as a lamentation on how easily war gets integrated into our lives, but I think Lana’s message was more optimistic, that these moments of life will always exist no matter what.

I stuck around in the pit until Video Games I think, but by this time I was starting to get really faint, and feared passing out (three people passed out in the pit while we were waiting), so I made my exit for the back of the pit. As it turned out, the view in the back of the pit was much better- no more angling my head around other people’s phones and heads, and I could hear her much better, since I didn’t have to listen past everyone’s singing. From back there I enjoyed listening to the Old Money pseudo-acapella. It was a very pleasant surprise. Something I noticed from both her GBA acapella and this one, her lower register live is so much richer than it used to be. She also sang “Those jersey shores seem long ago” instead of “summer nights”, which made me wonder if it was another throwback to Rob…

I got very emotional during Ultraviolence and Summertime Sadness. It was probably part delirium and exhaustion, but maybe with the recent revelation about her relationship with Rob, someone close to her who died unexpectedly, “think I’ll miss you forever”, it just reminded me of some very personal stuff, and I definitely cried.

The show ended with OTTR, per usual. I recorded part of it for my roommate, as this is their favorite song by Lana. And then I went home! I wanted to stalk the venue to try and get a selfie, but as mentioned before, I was beat. So after 12 hours of this wonderful and whacky quest, I called an uber, and made it back to my apartment.

In conclusion, Lana served, but I was unnerved. If I had to do it again, I would just arrive when the doors open and hang out in the back of the pit. The view was much better and the air much more breathable, and I could actually hear her sing.


 


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Some entertainer (radio maybe?) had a tent and a microphone, and boy, did he not like us there. Told us multiple times that Lana had died in a car crash and that we should go home, Lana sucks, blah blah blah. I feel his heckling made the comraderie in the line much stronger.

Lol, what was his problem? The Born To DIe video only faked her death, lmao.

 

Glad that you enjoyed the show, but take better care of yourself next time! :kiss:


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Here is my write-up, if that's what's it called

 

 

 

OK so January 21st I woke up excited as all hell. Go out to eat with my dad. Plan to get there at 10am. Mom is like.. WTF? 10am is too early. So we go at 2pm. To our luck all the traffic from the game went on us. We get there around 6:30pm. I had to spend my 40$ for parking in the fucking Lincoln park parking.. That's really far away from WFC. We walk to one of the entrances. It looks super empty, like 50 people. Again, to our luck, it was actually a seating entrance so we had to walk all around the arena. This line is fucking HUGE. I'm bathing in resentment. 10am, I thought. My mom forcibly goes to the front of the line (eek). I would've stayed in my spot but its not like I'm gonna leave my mom. So there's a plant pot and we casually sit next to it for the next 10 minutes. It was about the 60-70 people mark put of around 400 at the time. I hear this group say "don't let those people cut in front of us" and boy was I scared to be called out. Thankfully (for me) they didn't anything and we saved like.. 10 hours of waiting. I am the OG scammer! Anyway, we get our bands in the line. There's water and sleeping bags. Shit, that would've been me, I thought. I go down the GA entrance and barely anyone is there. I managed to get first row with some friends I made at the concert. Same place as Atlantic City. The people beside my left were a boy and a girl, friends. They had #39 and #40 on their arm. They're the 10am. OH MY GOD. The shapries.. Holy shit bro. It was to the left of the stage. Its around 7:10pm right now. A lot of waiting. Around 7:30 this REALLY annoying couple went in between my mom and I. I was kinda pissed but she didn't care. Whatever. Chatted up the couple in front of me and discussed a lot of her unreleased.. The guy knew of Young Like Me & Steven Mertens. He was much older than me (same height tho lol) so I decided to just leave it as that. Kali did great! I dislike her music but damn, that Colombian can dance! Her outfit was too big for her. But it was OK, she looked captivating. 9pm right now. The girl's bf behind me (couple) asked if I was fine with squeezing in a spot. Like.. Bitch? I hate people who need other people to speak for themselves. I said yes but I didn't move, so if she wanted that 1cm square of space to fit with those other people go ahead. There were two VERY tall women in the front, so I woulda had a worse view in her position. 10:10pm I think it is now. Lights dim. Dancers go in beach chairs. LANA DEL REY!!! Queen of leather skirts I thought. 13 Beaches was soooo good. Songs continue as they did. The man beside me kept talking to me about the performance as it went on, her transition and her looks.. Man did I feel like a FAN. When BTD songs first came on all my negative feelings toward her still performing it went away. They're too powerful. Political side of Lana comes. Women's marches. I was pretty indifferent towards that. Now on to GBA. What a sound to my ears. WWTWAWWJKD. Is it the end of an eraaa??? Is it the end of America?? Bomb footage. Martin Luther King footage. Wait... Martin Luther King footage? A mirage of the 1960's came upon me. It felt good. I stopped to watch the footage instead of her. I felt it. Were right next to an eagles game. God, I love being an American I thought. Fuck yeah. Love this woman. National Anthem. Her JFK joke was pretty funny to me. Knew shed say something. National Anthem was flawless. Now Change. Change is my favorite song. This is the political song I felt most connected to. More MLK bomb footage. It was weird you guys... Before I went in the venue I had some thoughts about Manchester and such. During BJ the fireworks were going off. I guess the sounds brought up some correlation.. Idk it was weird seeing the footage in that sense. Were in that kind of time. Her voice was true. Again, just felt so good to be there as an American. Be there with my American people. More songs. Lana came left a girl ran up to my right side, putting out a rose. Lana couldn't reach. What was she doing? Idk. Now the crowd, around me at least, was a lot more calm. Not calm like not crazy. Like calm we were all there calm. A lot of personal dancing. When it was CW/UV I screamed cruel world. By her face she definitely heard me, lol. Then she said "ultra". That was cool. Ending song. OTTR. Shit was wild. Man in front of me's favorite song is OTTR. Him and I were singing. End of concert. Lana goes to do selfies. I know we are not getting one. I watch the camera. Show ends. We leave. Shirts are on sale by the men. They're cute. Not that cute. We leave. Listen to Drive by Hasley. Get a soda at McDonalds. Get home. Best night ever. My mom is a fucking savage, I'm thinking right now.

 

In case anyone was wondering I had on a red Nike sweatshirt and the big hair. I was screaming " yes queen" a lot.

 

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I am a little bit dissapointed about her outfit last night, but i'm so happy that she changes her setlist! It's a huge change for her, still waiting for Heroin and Yosemite.

Changing set lists is a powerful thing, people are powerful beings, tryna find the power in me to be faitful for Heroin

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Changing set lists is a powerful thing, people are powerful beings, tryna find the power in me to be faitful for Heroin

Maybe by the time LA To The Moon Tour's done, i will be able to hear Yosemite and RBFY


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Okay so I decided to do a long write-up about my entire concert-going experience yesterday, mostly because the situation with game day and all was pretty unique. I know a lot of people don't care about the boring details of my life so everything that is about Lana is in bold so you can skip the stuff that's not about her.

 

 

 

 

TO THE PROMISED LAND

 

I ended up leaving for the venue around 1:30. I had to stop and print my ticket, and I knew public transit was going to be hell getting down to AT&T station, so I figured I would arrive right around 3:00 if I left that early. I would have lined up earlier, but the person I was trying to meet up with decided they didn’t want to go so early because it would be very difficult for them to make it into the city that early in the morning. Later I would find that I probably would’ve had a better time if I had just arrived at the venue when doors opened, but, alas.

 

The trip down to the Wells Fargo center was incredible, but in a “what the fuck just happened?” kind of way. When I got on the trolley to the subway, two people immediately got into an altercation about the Eagles’ game. One man on the trolley said we should just flip over the trolley now, since when the Eagles would win the game that night, the city would be in shambles anyway. A nervous laugh was shared among the trolley-goers.

 

Once off the trolley and into the subway, the normally typical citizens of Philadelphia were replaced a mass of jersey-wearing rabble-rousers. A boisterous group next to me was making fun of someone’s watch. The mood was loud and jovial, and repeated chants of E-A-G-L-E-S washed over the train, along with hums of that seven nation army riff. People were slamming their hands against the roof and windows. It was very hot inside the subway, which was sort of like an omen for what standing close to the barricade was going to be like.

 

Getting off the subway into the station I sighed a loud “jesus christ”. Finally I was out into the open, I could breathe again. Signs everywhere indicated “TO THE GAME ->”. Seemed more and more like I was going to the wrong big event in the city that day.

 

WAITING

 

A bit of a walk later and I found my people in line at the venue. Without coming off too tactless, part of the line looked like a homeless camp. Bottles of pee and rough-looking blankets with tired faces wrapped up in them. Yeesh. Anything for Lana I guess.

 

I took my spot on line. Some people were marking their hands with numbers, I guess as a way to keep their spot in case they had to leave the line. I didn’t put a mark on my hand, but the people ahead of my were 80-something in line. So I guess I was 90-something, 5 hours from the show.

 

You’d think it’d be hard to entertain yourself for 4 hours waiting for doors to open, but actually, it was kind of fun with the tail-gaters all around us. People came up to us and asked us what we were waiting for, and most were nice, some were confused. Some entertainer (radio maybe?) had a tent and a microphone, and boy, did he not like us there. Told us multiple times that Lana had died in a car crash and that we should go home, Lana sucks, blah blah blah. I feel his heckling made the comraderie in the line much stronger.

 

At some point I had to leave the line to find a bathroom, and god was that a quest in itself. I ended up walking a mile and a half to a local CVS. I was probably gone for like an hour. I didn’t want to risk that scenario again so I began drinking my water pretty sparingly, which caused me to get dehydrated (relevant later).

 

About an hour before doors opened, we all stood and queued up. With the sun setting right around then, it began to get pretty cold. The people around me complained of not feeling their feet anymore, of twitching muscles and general exhaustion. I was right there with them. Not long after, a staff member came out and informed us that we were not allowed to have backpacks. Fuck! Apparently this is common in venues, but I have never gone to a show in a major metropolis at a big stadium before, so this has never been an issue for me. Thinking on my feet I inverted my backpack so it just looked like a brown bag with a draw-string. I was able to get it past security, but they made me throw out my thermos/my water.

 

AT THE BARRICADE - KALI

 

Once past security, I went down to the pit and ended up maybe only about 7 feet from the barricade once we all squished together. We waited there for about an hour, and this is when I began to have my doubts. I was really tired, really hungry, really dehydrated, my head hurt bad, and all my muscles hurt. There was a person behind me who complained about all these things in the world’s whiniest voice, and as much as I wanted to hate her, she was pretty much saying everything I was feeling.

 

Kali came out with little fanfare and performed excellently. Her backup singers were also quite talented. Her drummer was incredibly ferocious, and every time he hit the kicks I could feel it in my chest, like a heart palpitation. I’m not a big fan of hers or anything, but she was definitely entertaining to say the least.

 

Some time between Kali’s set ending and Lana’s set starting, the Eagles won their game. A cheer went up through the audience, so loud and passionate that I briefly considered that Lana had come out and I had missed it somehow. The venue turned the lights green briefly to celebrate it. This wasn’t just a Lana concert, but a Philly concert. We were all part of more than one community.

(P.S. Shot in the dark, but there was a brunette long-haired guy standing not too far from me when I was up against the barricade. He was there alone, I think. I thought he was cute but he was just far enough from me where I felt it would be weird to strike up a conversation. Anyway, if you’re out there, you were fucking cute, hmu.)

 

MAIN EVENT - LANA

 

As is the usual case with Lana’s entry, first her band came out, then her dancers, then she herself. Sometime during the entry sequence I got pushed from my spot further center but a little further back, and I was now standing behind a really tall guy, which would make it almost impossible for me to see her. I tried to enjoy the show- let me tell you, she was REALLY serving, vocals and moves- but I was getting a bit fed up with my whole situation. I paid a pretty penny to watch her through someone else’s phone… not my idea of fun.

 

Before she sang Yayo, I believe someone in the pit called out “You made it Lana!” and she looked up and gave a knowing glance and a smile. Honestly, just thinking about it makes me feel some kind of way. Yeah, you did make it. You made it out of that trailer park life… She reiterated that the song was about her friend Rob.

 

For me, the highlight of the show was Honeymoon. The whole stage was lit in red, and in the verses, those notes from the guitar and upright bass just hang on forever, creating some endless tension. This tension was highlighted as her dancers came on dressed in black holding wedding bouquets- they just stood still at her side. You are just desperately waiting for something to happen, because something must happen.

War was pretty emotional, it made me feel for the song in a way I hadn’t before, with the background visuals all protests and missile shells and war planes intermixed with veterans reuniting with their spouses. The sense was that amidst war, life goes on. Love still happens. We still dance. One could interpret it as a lamentation on how easily war gets integrated into our lives, but I think Lana’s message was more optimistic, that these moments of life will always exist no matter what.

I stuck around in the pit until Video Games I think, but by this time I was starting to get really faint, and feared passing out (three people passed out in the pit while we were waiting), so I made my exit for the back of the pit. As it turned out, the view in the back of the pit was much better- no more angling my head around other people’s phones and heads, and I could hear her much better, since I didn’t have to listen past everyone’s singing. From back there I enjoyed listening to the Old Money pseudo-acapella. It was a very pleasant surprise. Something I noticed from both her GBA acapella and this one, her lower register live is so much richer than it used to be. She also sang “Those jersey shores seem long ago” instead of “summer nights”, which made me wonder if it was another throwback to Rob…

 

I got very emotional during Ultraviolence and Summertime Sadness. It was probably part delirium and exhaustion, but maybe with the recent revelation about her relationship with Rob, someone close to her who died unexpectedly, “think I’ll miss you forever”, it just reminded me of some very personal stuff, and I definitely cried.

 

The show ended with OTTR, per usual. I recorded part of it for my roommate, as this is their favorite song by Lana. And then I went home! I wanted to stalk the venue to try and get a selfie, but as mentioned before, I was beat. So after 12 hours of this wonderful and whacky quest, I called an uber, and made it back to my apartment.

 

In conclusion, Lana served, but I was unnerved. If I had to do it again, I would just arrive when the doors open and hang out in the back of the pit. The view was much better and the air much more breathable, and I could actually hear her sing.

 

 

 

 

I enjoyed reading every bits! Question: did you find the sound quality better at the back? I've read the sound is better near the mixing board in arena concerts. I'm not talking about sound quality being bad because of fans screaming, but more about the best spot in the arena for a richer/better quality sound.

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I enjoyed reading every bits! Question: did you find the sound quality better at the back? I've read the sound is better near the mixing board in arena concerts. I'm not talking about sound quality being bad because of fans screaming, but more about the best spot in the arena for a richer/better quality sound.

I really can't tell if the quality was better or if it was just because people weren't screaming, but it definitely seemed better.


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More fan pictures & selfies.. haven't found any HQ pics yet!

39813285872_ed5098d6e8_o.jpg28066317039_0d48e37a86_o.jpg39845522781_e5f63815f6_o.jpg38946708005_152fb385f4_o.jpg25972244728_f39daab824_o.jpg39845523011_d3989fbbcb_o.jpg38946707755_b5849936ae_o.jpg


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lol she signed my arm two months ago and I wanted to get it tattooed, but I changed my mind. So glad I listened to my inner voice. Things change, people change and nothing is eternal beside diamonds  :hooker:

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