I thought this show was in the small indoor stadium at Olympic Park, not the large outdoor stadium. Perhaps that is on me. I’ve seen Coldplay and Beyoncé in the small indoor stadium—are RHCP really bigger than Coldplay and Beyoncé? Apparently so.

I've never been to a show at the large outdoor stadium so I didn’t realise Olympic Park can completely run out of parking. If I’d left home an hour earlier this would have all been fine—perhaps that is on me—but all the carparks were full, all the small streets around were full, and I drove for an hour looking for cow pasture, an abandoned barn, a bush.

I considered going home but made a last ditch approach to one of the car parks that said PRE-BOOKED ONLY and asked if I could park there, having not pre-booked. He waved me in; of course this is no problem, why even ask. This was a small outdoor parking lot—a huge advantage when leaving. I had spent an hour at the top of the Entertainment Quarter carpark after Elton John before the cars moved at all.

After circling through this comically suburban-supermarket-ass parking lot I began to understand they probably waved me in because it was full, however the joke was on them that night as I found the one remaining space and snuggled in.

So by now I was stressed and annoyed, sure that I had missed the start of the concert, and it was HOT as I rushed to the stupid large outdoor stadium rather than the smaller indoor stadium. By the time I got inside I had sworn off stadium gigs for life, but I’d managed to get there before they started and my buddy and his girlfriend were there and it is good to have a buddy.

And yet I was in a bad mood at the get go. Perhaps that is on me, but perhaps it was on them to turn me around?

They did not turn me around. Within the first few songs I realised what a huge mistake I’d made. Look. I like a lot of RHCP music, but it is primarily music for idiots by idiots. In the privacy of my own automobile I can enjoy the parts of RHCP I enjoy, which I now understand to be the more subtle and understated aspects, not so much the song Pea, for example.

My complaints about the actual show:

1. I’ve only been to a couple of outdoor stadium shows but the whole proposition is anti-audience in the extreme. A stadium of people is way more people than required for atmosphere, getting in and out sucks big ones, the band are dots on the horizon and a lot of care has to be taken to get a sound that works at all.

2. Care was not taken. Everything about this show seemed half-arsed. I don’t have any huge investment in whatever visuals they want to project behind bands, and maybe it was the parking situation talking, but the lack of effort on this made me angrier.

3. This is not a band that belongs in a large outdoor stadium. Perhaps no band does. Perhaps only U2 does. This is a messy rock band putting on a messy rock show that could have been great in a venue 1/100th of the size, but are nowhere near tight enough to sound rad in this context.

4. The noodling. My god, there was so much noodling between songs. This would have been an hour long show without the noodling. And this is not a band pumping out fine tagliatelle. The noodling of this band is No Name 2 Minute Noodles Weak Vegetable Flavour. Some noodles turned into whole songs that I was angry to hear people clapping for. Yes Flea is phenomenal but Frusciante is an incredibly uninspired guitarist who can ding dong ding dong on an arpeggio but should not noodle under any circumstances, let alone on 20 solo records. (Parenthetically, he looked like he belonged in a much cooler, small indoor stadium at best, band.)

I will never begrudge a band trying to play its “new stuff” to an audience that only wants to hear the old stuff. That is their right, nay, duty. But the horrific mess that was apparently 7(!) songs released last year made it awkwardly clear that the only thing making the rest of the show bearable was being able to make out a vague shape of that song you like.

The songs that worked were exclusively from the album By the Way, coincidentally(?) my favourite. Californication got the crowd excited but is a little too boring for my hypothetical top 20 RHCP anthems (produced upon request). Throw Away Your Television was my highlight, a By the Way deep cut.

Ultimately what I realised by the third song was I feel no general goodwill towards this band in the way I do towards Pearl Jam or Elton John, the other stupid large outdoor stadium acts I’ve seen. Perhaps that is on me. I simply enjoy a significant number of their funky rants from their middle era. This realisation may help prevent future mistakes like buying tickets to the Rolling Stones.

It was good to have someone to heckle them with, it was good he wanted to buy a hotdog for his girlfriend as a rite of passage and therefore could also get me a beverage during one of the many, many songs in which people left to get a beverage. Thank you, buddy. It was also good to briefly engage with a fellow traveller who was looking for Tracey’s car. We agreed we should first find out what it looks like and that given he has the keys it’s probably one of the cars that isn’t moving yet. It was so good to leave the parking lot and Sydney Olympic Park, never to visit a large outdoor stadium again.

I thought this was a band that you may as well see once in your lifetime. Was I wrong? We’ll have to leave that, once again, to the philosophers.