I made it to the show, and even peeled off some cousins from the wedding to help fill up the venue. Turns out, they didn’t need my help. I’d checked with the venue earlier in the day, and they told me they were planning on taking out the tables in the (very tiny) concert room which should allow about 120 people in there. They said the doors opened at 9pm, and if I got there by 8:30, I’d be good. They lied. We got there at 8pm and were at least a hundred people back in line. I asked a guy up front what time he’d gotten there, just to gauge how early I’d have had to get there to get front row. He was there at 6pm. Obviously, Lestat’s Coffee House underestimated the power of the Coulton.
So we stood. The room was so small though that that put us maybe 30 ft. from the stage? And lord almighty, was it hot. It was hellishly, goddamfuckinghot, that’s how hot it was. When you walked in the front door, you could feel yourself passing through the wall of heat, and as you were standing around in there, you’d take deep breaths of air that were almost the same temperature as your body and you’d seriously start to wonder if you were going to pass out. Turns out nobody did (although some people left because they thought they might), but it was that hot, and I am not kidding when I say that pumping my shirt like a bellows to keep my head cool(er) was the only thing that let me make it through the evening. I’ll bet being on stage under the lights was murder for those guys.
My nine-year-old daughter wasn’t going to be able to see anything standing in the back but it turns out that she got to go up and sit on the edge of the stage with a couple of other people. So for her very first Coulton concert, she spent the entire thing about four feet from the man. Pretty sweet.
I was honestly expecting Paul & Storm (the opening band) and JoCo to be a little listless for the performance given how unbelievably hot it was in there. But not these guys. P&S were great and JoCo seemed, if anything, energized by the heat, like a lizard on a rock soaking up the sun. Whether because of the acoustics of the room, or the sound guy, or just those guy’s voices that night, they sounded probably the best I’ve ever heard them.
I didn’t bother trying to memorize the set list or anything, but it was a pretty standard line-up. The only thing new, for me anyway, was getting to hear “When You Go”, which was nice. Also, for “Chiron Beta Prime”, they pulled a guy up on stage who, it turns out, was the voice for the robot puppet on Mystery Science Theater 3000. He seemed very nice.
When it came time to play the encore, JC turned to the kids along the stage, bent down and started talking to them. I couldn’t tell what he was saying from the back, but we figured out that he was trying to find their parents to make sure that they were cool with the dirty, dirty song he was just about to sing. He couldn’t match all the kids with parents though and finally Paul pointed out that it was nearly midnight and that if their parents were OK with them staying up that late at a Coulton concert, they’d probably heard “First of May” before, so they let it fly. My daughter had never heard the song before although we’d warned her that it was coming. She was kind of stunned. I don’t think she has any idea what the song’s actually about, but she just couldn’t believe the sheer number of times JoCo said the F-word in that song. We could see a little bit of her childhood innocence flake off during the number, but she’ll be OK. 
All in all, I’d say that if you took out the standing for three hours and the riduculous heat, this would have maybe been the best JoCo concert I’d seen. And as I was telling my wife the next day, if I were 25 again, I’ll bet the standing and the heat would have actually made it even cooler. I mean come on, going to a tiny, crammed coffee bar to stand for hours in the blistering heat to listen to an internet rock star blow us all away? Heaven (for a younger man).