I used to be a huge Michael Jackson fan as a kid, my room was plastered with his posters, I had all the albums, I listened to his music _all the time_. In 1993, he was on tour and I badly wanted to go to the concert in Oslo. One Saturday morning, at about 8am, my friend and I had just left Oslo S and we were heading for a record store. The line from the entrance almost encircled the entire block and finally we arrived at the end of the line. We were an hour early, quite a few people had gotten there ahead of us. Literally minutes later we witnessed the line grow incredibly fast, we couldn’t even see the end anymore as it was wrapped around the last corner of the block. At 9am, the doors opened and the tickets went on sale. We got ours and it felt pretty amazing knowing we would be going to a live performance.

The problem with these concerts, of course, is that there are way too many people, and when you’re 12 years old and pretty damn short, it’s pretty much a given you’re not going to get much out of pushing your way to the front of the pack. We actually grabbed our seats at the very back, the stadium where the concert was had this grassy hill on one side and we sat there quite comfortably. (Seeing wasn’t a problem either with huge screens on either side of the stage showing what was happening.)

(more…)