Just An Orange County Girl...Or Not

Even though it's been over a month since I got to meet Lady GaGa, it still makes me happy whenever I think about it. Honestly, I was a bit nervous to meet someone I admired so much in person. What if she hadn't lived up to my expectations or, even worse, had been rude or mean? In fact, something along these lines happened to me once before.

I still love Gwen Stefani & No Doubt, but in 2007 I was OBSESSED. I REALLY wanted to meet her, and since I wasn't living on my own yet, I didn't have rent or as many bills to pay so I had a lot more leeway on where to spend my hard earned cash. Well, Ms. Stefani just happened to be on her Sweet Escape Tour that year. For every date of the tour, she held an ebay auction where all proceeds went to the Orange County Children's Hospital.

If you won the auction, you and three guests got: front row seats, a backstage tour, a chance to meet Gwen Stefani, a personal photo with her, a signed T-shirt and a signed copy of her "Sweet Escape" CD. On the No Doubt forum, fans were finding other fans who lived in the same cities as them to pool their money together and try and win the auction. I did my research and, to me, it all seemed worth it: one group who won for Bakersfield, I remember, wrote about how they spent 15 minutes with Gwen (and even some time playing with her son, Kingston), got multiple things signed by her and took multiple photos. I was sold.

I already had 3rd row tickets for Gwen Stefani's upcoming Irvine show that I had got through her "tour club", but I figured that if I won the auction, I could just sell them or give them away. So I found 3 other fans to split it with me and we ended up winning the auction. We were all students but loved Gwen, and each had to pay $6100! (The total was just under $2500!).

It was all worth it in my mind. Well, it didn't turn out as well as I had thought it would. I used to have a Live Journal back then, so after the cut, I have copied and pasted what I wrote about it in my Live Journal the day after it happened. I felt like doing this because the comparison between this and what happened with Lady GaGa is night and day, and I didn't pay anything to get the chance to meet Lady GaGa...(and please don't make fun of how I used to look...this was 4 years ago, and much has changed haha)



June 23rd, 2007:

So yesterday was the day I've been waiting a while for. I paid a lot of money to win the ebay charity auction to be able to meet Gwen Stefani and I was really looking forward to it. Well, it didn't turn out how I wanted it to exactly.

My good friends know how much time, thought, and money i had put into yesterday. i got new clothes, had thought of exactly what to say, and devoted 1/2 or 3/4 of the money i am going to make over the summer interning to this.

so daniela, rachel, phil, my mom, and i all went to irvine because we all were going to the concert. the day already started out crappy after we picked rachel and daniela up when there was so much traffic on the frickin freeway that it took almost 3 hours to get there. after we finally did, there was a little chaos with getting all the tickets, checking in as the auction winner, and getting a program for her to sign but it all ended up working out and things were looking up. also there were rumors no doubt was going to reunite for the encore, which was exciting.

her tour manager, this bald guy with a thick accent and quiet voice (so we could barely understand him) came to us and escorted us in. there was some more confusion because he was confused about our ages and didnt give us the right tickets at first but that got sorted out too. he gave us each a signed t-shirt (here's mine):


And signed CD's (later we realized that three of the four signed CD's we got were smudged, and not by us...see look at mine):


then we ran into Gabriel McNair, one of Gwen's and No Doubt's back-up musicians/singers, so i took a picture with him:

Then he took us backstage where all the tour buses and stuff were (the bald guy is the tour manager, the blonde is one of the other auction winners, perla, and the guy with the green shirt is one of the other winners, mike):

Shortly after taking this though, he told me no more pictures which sucked. so then he took us on a tour of backstage and we saw all of gwen's costumes, went into the cage that she's in when she first comes on stage, went onto the actual stage, saw where the harajuku girls get their make-up done (which he told us they do themselves), etc. danika snapped a quick picture when we were inside the cage Gwen comes out in during "The Sweet Escape" lol:

Then we saw gwen herself carrying kingston so he told her we were the auction winners and called her over. she talked to us for like a minute about all the money the auctions have raised so far, how no doubt opened for Ziggy Marley at the venue, and a little about tonight's show. then she had to go meet other people and they told us we would get pictures and autographs during the meet 'n greet. none of us really said anything to her because we didnt wanna interrupt her and because we figured we'd have more time later. so then the tour manager sat us down for about half an hour and told us not to take any pictures.

on the auction site, it says we are supposed to get a PERSONAL photo with gwen and a PRIVATE meet 'n greet. we were scared that they were gonna just put us with all the other meet 'n greet people who got it for free through people they know, radio contests, etc. plus we were scared that our "private" meet 'n greet had just happened. well, our fears came true.

they took us all to the general meet 'n greet area where there were about 30 other people. gwen came by one by one and signed one thing for each of us because those were the rules. so even though phil wanted an autograph, i only had her sign (and personalize) the program i worked so hard to get in time:


The signed program was probably the coolest thing i got out of all this. so we still didnt really get to talk to her because she just moved down the line of people signing things. then it was time for pictures and even though we all REALLY wanted individual pictures with her, they quickly told the four of us to all get next to her and told us to give them our cameras.

it was so quick, one of my group members, mike, didnt even have time to give them his! then they took all three pictures at the same time so none of us knew where to look! everyone is looking at a different camera in each of the three pictures! so this is the one from my camera:

It sucks because 1) i wanted my own picture with her, 2) im not even next to her, and 3) she (and the harajuku girls) arent even looking at my camera. so i did my best to try and recreate the picture of just me and her by cropping and using paint lol:

And this is the one from perlas camera...again not everyone is looking at the same camera and it came out blurry! i mean they didnt have the decency to take one picture at a time, they were in that much of a rush!?!:

And finally heres the one from Danika's camera (which is also blurry...she and perla both had Harajuku Lovers cameras...hmmm lol):

So then gwen said to us, "ok, ill be hanging out with you guys later..." and we all got really excited for a second but she said, "...in the front row." then the security basically kicked us out and said thanks a lot, bye. well we were all pretty upset, mostly because 1) we all wanted our own pictures with gwen (we assumed that's what PERSONAL PICTURE meant), 2) danikas and perlas pictures were blurry, mike didnt even get a picture, and she wasnt even looking at the camera in mine, 3) we barely spent any time with gwen and didnt even get to talk to her!

other auction winners that we knew had gotten 10-15 minutes with her, the option of taking a personal picture, and multiple autographs! so we asked to speak with the tour manager again and they told us to wait. while we were waiting the harajuku girls came by so we took some more pictures lol (I think Music is the one in the picture with me):


So gwen left the meet 'n greet and then the tour manager came out. we told him how we wanted individual pictures with her and how none of the ones they took even came out really, and he said that it was too late, that she had gone back to the bus to put kingston to sleep. we asked if we could wait around until after she puts kingston to sleep and he said no because then she has to get ready for the show.

he said if we told him earlier he could have gotten us them, which is the most frustrating part of all of this. but we didnt know it would be over after this meet 'n greet. we thought she would spend a little more time with us and we'd ask her then. when we saw that wasn't going to happen is when we talked to him, which was already too late.

we said how we were promised personal photos and didnt get to even spend that much time with her and he said we got that time at the beginning (which was like a minute) and that we did get a personal photo of just us and gwen. we said no, that's a GROUP photo, not a personal one. so we asked if we could come back again after the show for the pictures and he said to call him but that it probably wouldnt happen.

so we left and we talked to daniela and my mom about what happened. we tried calling some other contact numbers i had been given but no one answered. so we called back the tour manager and said that there were people with us who needed to know whether or not we would be staying. he said he talked to gwen's regular manager and they said it was "physically impossible" to take photos after the show.

i said how we were all young people, three of us students (one in high school) and that we paid a lot of money for this and didnt feel we got what we were supposed to get. i said that two of us came from out of town, and one chose to spend money on this over buying a car! i also said how other groups that won got much more time, and he said he's sorry but that we just won on a bad night because it was a home town show and a bunch of friends and family were there (which i understand but that still doesn't make it fair).

so i got no where with him, but my mom wanted to talk to him (thats the kinda person she is, very pushy lol). she finally got him to put her manager on the phone. the manager said that new photos were not going to happen and that legally they are not in the wrong when they said "personal photo" and gave us a group one (my mom said were not gonna sue them or anything lol). she said we did get a personal one but my mom said if she asked 20 people on the street if a personal photo with gwen meant just you and gwen or a group of people and gwen, they'd say the first one.

the manager said that they wanna make this right so even though a picture was impossible, they can send us some autographs (which my mom said doesnt help because we already had that!). so she said i can call her monday to try and work something out. i know that we may sound greedy or piggish, but if you think of how much we paid and how much we got, it isnt fair, especially because none of us are rich or anything.

basically we got the same thing that a radio contest winner got for free except we also got a smudged signed CD, a signed T-shirt, 1 extra minute with gwen, and front row seats (Except that i already had third row, center seats which i would have been perfectly happy with because its not like 2 rows makes that big of a difference).

anyway in the middle of all this we saw Stephen Bradley, another Gwen/No Doubt back-up musician and vocalist standing outside smoking a cigarette, so i took a picture with him too lol:

We finally went to our front row seats and met and took pictures with some of the other ND official forumers there:


Then Gwen came out and it was awesome. it was one of the most fun concerts ive ever been to. that would normally make me feel better since the front row seats were part of the auction thing but, like i said, i had two 3rd row tickets from the tour club pre-sale that were literally exactly two rows behind me (i know because i gave them to my friend and brother).

so im sorry but those 2 rows dont equal the amount of money i paid. but i did get a lot of good pics:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v689/iluvshania831/2007-06/?start=280
anyway here are my favorites:










Phil and Rachel, in the seats i got from the tour club exactly two rows behind where i was (before Rachel switched with Daniela a little later so that they could each be 3rd row for half of the concert):









So the guy who used to be in our group before danika, mark, got up to the front row and had a sign for gwen asking for a picture so she pulled him up on stage. how ironic!! the person who didnt do the auction with us got the personal picture (and sat front row with us!) but the rest of us didnt!:



So by now daniela had come to the seats lol:

"What You Waiting For," which is normally supposed to be the last song, but was moved up so that no doubt could perform together during the encore!!!:



I love this picture...daniela took it of me...look how close i was!! (obviously, it was first row haha):













And then the moment that everyone was waiting for...the encore was there, and she came out with Tony, Tom, and Adrian for the first public No Doubt performance in 3 years!!!! it was so cool! They sang "Just A Girl," "It's My Life," and "Spiderwebs." The place went nuts! It was definitely cool to be front row for that. Anyway, here are the rest of the pictures:

















And that was it! so then it took us like an hour to get out of the parking and then we got lost after we met danika's mom in the parking lot of a McDonald's lol (and my mom flipped out but thats a whole different story). so it was a fun day and this concert was one of the best of my life but the bottom line was that i still would have had just as much fun in those third row seats.

so the question is whether the signed program, group picture, and minute of gwen talking to us was worth all the money i paid. if this was all free, it would have been for sure. but considering i am gonna now half to use half to 3/4 of my summer internship money to pay for this, im a little bummed that it didnt turn out better (and i dont even care so much about not getting that much time with her...a personal picture would have made the difference!).

and im gonna call kompolt (the auction company) and gwen's manager like she said to on monday, so well see what happens with that. ok so that was my day yesterday...bye!

Epilogue: What happened next was, after speaking with the rest of my group members, we decided to tell her management that we can all get to one of Gwen's upcoming shows in Las Vegas (all on our dime, including the tickets) if they could get us backstage to take new pictures. So I called her management on Monday like they said to and they said no to the Vegas thing because they felt like they had given us everything they promised. They did say they would send out 4 new signed CD's, since the ones we were given were smudged, as well as some other merchandise (they ended up sending 4 copies of her first album on vinyl). As a final word, I sent them this email:

This is Michael Cooper, Friday night's auction winner. Here is my address to send the new CD's (and the other TBD merchandise you said you were going to send). You can send it all to me and then I will pass it on to the other winners. I just wanted to say also that I'm sure you did everything in your power to make us happy, but we are all huge fans and have been for a while. We are therefore your customers so I think that if 2 extra minutes with Gwen to take new pictures would have made us happy, then Rebel Waltz could have been a little more accomodating considering how loyal we are as fans and how much money we have spent on Gwen over the years. Thank you though for doing what you can.
-Michael

And that was that! Honestly, even though I still think Gwen Stefani's Sweet Escape Tour was one of the best concert tours I've seen, this all really spoiled my perception of Gwen. Since this happened, I haven't been as crazy about her or as enthusiastic of a fan. Sure, I still saw the No Doubt Reunion Tour 2 years later, and of course I'll still buy and listen to No Doubt's new album when it's released, but I'll never love Gwen Stefani as much as I used to.

She used to fall right under Madonna on my list of all time favorite artists, but now she falls below Lady GaGa, Madonna, Robyn AND Kylie. It's a shame all artists (AND the people who work for them) aren't as caring towards their fans as Lady GaGa is. It was an incredible experience for an artist I admired to EXCEED my expectations rather than shatter them in a million pieces.