Arrive in time for the Opener.

Yeah, so I heard a song on my drive home from my daughter's violin lesson a bit ago.  
Song is Treason, from the band Naked Raygun.

Naked Raygun's a punk band outta Chicago, were active late 80's - early 90's, the same time period that found me working at my Alma Mater's FM radio station.   WDBM, East Lansing.  

Man, I was such a fan of this song, and the record that contained it.  The copy at the radio station was even pressed on red vinyl.      Sweet.

Snuck back to my hometown on a weeknight to catch them play the State Theatre, got back to my apartment around 2am, half deaf, half drunk and feeling so goddam cool for having gone on that adventure.  

Fast forward 12 years, I'm at the now-defunct rock club, The Double Door, In Chicago.
A good friend of ours boyfriends' band was one of six on the bill, a fundraiser for the Red Cross, JUST after 9/11.   We didn't love his band, but we loved our friend, Cara, and we liked being out with her, around music.    And of course, it WAS the Double Door, and I believe we might have been on the guest list.  It happened once or twice.  
So there we were, low musical expectations, half drunk and feeling so goddam cool....  

One of the other bands on the bill, The Pegboys, took the stage.   They played a song, and then stopped.  The guitarist stepped up to the microphone, and announced that for that night, given the circumstances of the show, maybe a different bands' music would be more appropriate.
Turns out, half the band were previously in... Naked Raygun.   I'm standing within spitting distance of the stage, watching an impromptu Naked Raygun set.   I was... transfixed, transcended, transported....
It was cool.

And I never would have experienced that, if I had not put myself in a position to be surprised and delighted.

Hey, it frequently didn't pan out.   For every surprise reunion set from a favorite band, were two nights where we decided it was more fun to stand out on the sidewalk, where the band noise was sufficiently muffled.  

But what if something amazing happened, and you weren't there?

In staying with the live music theme -  This is why we always try to arrive in time to catch the openers, and to stay for the headliner if the band we WANT to see's opening.     Because what if something amazing happened, and.....

Shoot, man.  You paid for the whole concert.    
And while it frequently doesn't pan out, if we didn't put ourselves in a position to be surprised and delighted, we never would have discovered Carbon Leaf.   We would showed up just in time for the headliner, enjoyed their set, and left, none the wiser.   20 years of awesome concerts, in three different states later, they've given us far more musical joy and memories, with far more friends, than any 5 other bands.    
All because we were open to putting ourselves in a position to be surprised and delighted.